North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[road's end farm <organic101@linkny.com>]

On Saturday, December 20, 2003, at 01:02 PM, Claude Sweet wrote:

> Some people have deeply held beliefs that are akin to religious 
> convictions.  I will not change their  convictions.

I doubt anybody's going to change yours, either. It's hard for most of 
us to realize the extent to which our beliefs on particular issues 
depend on our underlying assumptions and convictions; we'd almost all 
rather think that everything we ourselves believe is entirely reasoned 
out.

> I do believe there are many other factors that should be considered.  
> The founding of our nation required 95% of the people to live on a farm 
> and to barter for items. We have now transformed to nation where 5% 
> live on a farm, allowing the other 95% to pursue other goals and 
> objectives.

Such as telemarketing and fries-with-that, with no hope of ever being 
their own bosses? I have no idea what percentage of the population 
really wants to farm. It's almost certainly a lot less than 95%; but it 
may well be much more than 5%. A lot of the people who quit farming over 
the last fifty years very much did not want to do so.

> I am ignoring the statements that demonize the food producers because 
> they are large. We can not have a productive discussion when using a 
> board paint bush to describe people who have a tradition of farming 
> that requires a subchapter S corporation to protect their assets and 
> attempt to preserve the tradition.  Even children who grow up on a farm 
> may not wish to personally be involved in the farming activity as a 
> career. When senior family members die there can be inheritance 
> problems, especially if some family members want a cash settlement.

People do indeed incorporate businesses for many reasons, and many 
genuine farmers incorporate for tax reasons or to make it easier to deal 
with the interests of multiple family members who may be involved with 
the farm. Incorporation itself is not the problem. There is a correct 
size for any operation, and the right size for some is larger than for 
others. Getting bigger than that size reduces rather than increases 
actual efficiency.

Measuring "efficiency", however, is not a simple matter. Efficiency can 
be measured in terms of food produced at farmgate per hour of human 
on-farm labor; in money produced per hour of on-farm labor; in money 
produced per unit of financial investment; in food produced per acre; in 
food calories produced per calories of input; in food produced at the 
table in terms of total labor, on and off farm (including for instance 
labor spent producing tractors, fertilizer, packing materials, shipping, 
etc.); in food produced per amount of natural resources damaged or 
benefited; probably in other ways I haven't thought of. If you rated 
seven farms using different types of management according to the seven 
criteria I listed, you might well get seven different answers as to 
which one was most "efficient".
> There have been lots of suggestions on this list that producing and 
> processing your own food is cheaper than what can be purchased in the 
> store. These statements are not true if the true cost of a person's 
> time and cost of facilities/tools etc. are considered. There also is 
> another cost involved - alternative uses of capital that are risk free.

To get in the store anything resembling the quality I can produce myself 
is very expensive, and often impossible. Processors use varieties that 
are readily available and easy to process, which is varieties that bear 
heavily, ship well, and have consistent size and shape; these are not 
the varieties with best flavor. The cost of a person's time, tools, etc. 
varies with the individual setup. The statement you've made is true for 
some people but not true for all (even leaving the quality of the 
product out of it). To decide whether it's true for a particular 
household, you need to know a lot about the costs of their actual 
equipment (much of which is available used, and much of which is 
reusable for many years), the costs involved in the produce they are 
using (which in my case, for instance, is a side effect of the produce 
operation, things that would otherwise end up in the compost), the 
potential alternative uses of their time (this is something that can be 
done at home, which may make it possible to, for instance, 
simultaneously caretake for children or elderly family members -- 
perhaps with their aid in the process), and the costs of those potential 
alternative uses (every means of generating income involves expenses; 
for instance the clothes required for an office job, and the costs of 
travel to it). You may well have evidence that many people spend more 
money on their home-preserved produce than it would cost them to buy 
their food at the store; but you do not have evidence for a blanket 
statement saying that nobody can possibly save money putting up their 
own food.
> I caution people to be realistic about these factors, especially if 
> considering a small business opportunity.  Over the years I have 
> advised many people who contemplate such ventures and provide all of 
> the management and most of the physical effort - "What will you do when 
> you require time off for personal business, illness, disabilities, or 
> death?".  Will the business be able to continue without your direct 
> input and oversight.

That's certainly true. And many people's business won't be able to do 
so. But your own business can't fire you, or demand you move away from 
everyone you know if you want to keep your job; and it's not likely to 
close its profitable local offices due to decisions made by somebody 
thousands of miles away from you. Anyone who thinks that being employed 
by others in a standard business will provide job security these days 
hasn't been paying attention. Being self-employed -- in any line of 
work -- has its own difficulties, and not everyone is suited to it. You 
do want to think out what you're getting into first.

> Imagine if we had to depend on real horsepower for transportation.  We 
> would also have a real pollution problem of a different nature. There 
> also would be limitations in the distance we could travel in a day.

The pollution problem would exist, and would be of a different nature; 
but we certainly have a pollution problem now; much of it disguised by 
the fact that some of the nastiest pollution occurs away from the 
drivers of most of the cars. Oil spills that poison entire coastal 
ecologies may not be noted by those not living near them. Improperly 
handled manure can cause similar problems, but it's harder for those 
creating the problem to not notice that it's happening.

As far as travelling -- plenty of people drive two hours or more a day, 
five or six days a week: because the ability to go that far means that 
the working areas, shopping areas, and housing areas get separated out 
and spread out. The time people spend travelling does not decrease for 
long with added speed; it just becomes necessary for them to go further 
to get what they need. The people I know who do get around with horse 
and buggy seem less rushed than the rest of us, not more.

In any case, this is a false choice. There are a lot of ways to get 
around. If we tried to consider, as a society, the best ways to provide 
easy transport to as many people as possible (including those who 
shouldn't be driving 60 mph vehicles), we could almost certainly do 
better than we are, with less energy usage.


Now I'd like to apologize to the list as a whole for spending so much 
time going on off-topic.  I'll try to shut up on the subject in future.
>
-- Rivka