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  • From: miekal and <dtv@mwt.net>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Family Farms
  • Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 08:43:35 -0600

Personally, I believe that some of the reasons why family farms are disappearing are justified. Where I live in southwest Wisconsin the really small family farms are dropping like flies. The soil has been worn out, the USDA subsidized dairy pay price is at the same place as 1980 (& that is a price propped up by our taxes), GMO & designer genetics demand that the farmer buy into a never-ending loop of hybridized seed & herbicide regimines. But the picture out here also has a very positive & forward looking alternative to such a doomsday scenario. The organic industry is the fastest growing sector of the food industry right now (tho a very small percentage of it, in the US I believe somewhere around 1 or 2%.) As an industry it is growing by 25 to 30% a year. The company I work for decided that as a 150 mil company it needed to slow down its growth because it is growing TOO fast & such growth is not sustainable. Our pay price for organic milk is over $19 a hundredweight while commerical is around $8. & that's for putting a lot less inputs into the soil. We have farmers signed up to get on the truck almost 2 years in advance. So strategies to shift the paradigm of the family farm are quite in place, in fact some of our farms have been organic for generations & operating on very local scales. Organic farms are much more likely to be polycultural, having plantings of things like fruits & nuts, CSA vegetable gardens, pick your owns. In general tho one of the largest issues seems to be of keeping the next generation on the farm so these homesteads are not lost. Whether conventional or organic, farming is a lot of work, long days & each succeeding generation has access to a lot of other ways to make money that are far easier. Often they have to leave to come back.

mIEKAL




On Tuesday, March 18, 2003, at 06:08 AM, Bruce Hansen wrote:

Anything worth doing is difficult. The problems that beset farmers are the
same problems in every living room. Change. Demand more, better. It does not
always cost more money. Read a book. Eat brown rice. As little as 60 years
ago there was truck farming in Michigan. Now it is five crops all for feed
for animals; oats, corn, wheat, soybeans and white beans. Every year all
things remain the same, plow, spray, plant, spray, harvest. Same people,
same equipment, same rut!

There is one heck of a lot of blame to go around. I doubt if there are too
many innocents. Perhaps it is time that the best gift for a friend is a
mirror.

Bruce z5 MI



  • [NAFEX] Family Farms, miekal and, 03/18/2003

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