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  • From: farmer1@gasperfarm.com
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] NYT morons at work: Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Farmers - NYTimes.com
  • Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 11:52:36 -0700

I'm sorry but this is highly offensive. The situation the author speaks of
is both legitimate and common amoung young farmers. Ridiculing them helps
no one; especially since most of the permaculturists I know mainly grow
food while relying on off the farm jobs in situations not really much
different than what the NYT article describes.

There is only room for just so many educations centers in any given
market. That is not a solution if we want to see any significant number of
acres transitioned to permaculture systems.

There was a time in this country where you could support a family from a
farm, but that is no longer the case because of the cheap food system
which was intentionally setup to concentrate all the profits in the system
in the hands of the processors.

Pete


> Seems very shortsighted to me for the author to argue that the only
> legitimate yield from a piece of land, its residents, and their abilities
> should be food. For centuries, farmers have worked at other jobs during
> the off season. If there are grants available for farm non-profits, then
> set up a non-profit. If your farm can also be an educational center, tour
> site, or other multi-functional, multi-yield venue, what weird form of
> purism says you can only sell food?
>
> I know small farms that gross $100,000 per acre. This guy's "woe is us"
> mentality is blinding him to other possibilities. Once again, the biggest
> limit to yield is the designer's mind.
>
>
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
>
>
>>
>> Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Farmers - NYTimes.com
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/dont-let-your-children-grow-up-to-be-farmers.html?_r=1
>>
>> Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Farmers
>>
>> NEW HAVEN — AT a farm-to-table dinner recently, I sat huddled in a
>> corner
>> with some other farmers, out of earshot of the foodies happily eating
>> kale
>> and freshly shucked oysters. We were comparing business models and
>> profit
>> margins, and it quickly became clear that all of us were working in the
>> red.
>>
>> The dirty secret of the food movement is that the much-celebrated
>> small-scale farmer isn’t making a living. After the tools are put away,
>> we
>> head out to second and third jobs to keep our farms afloat. Ninety-one
>> percent <http://bit.ly/1oxxUsJ> of all farm households rely on multiple
>> sources of income. Health care, paying for our kids’ college, preparing
>> for
>> retirement? Not happening. With the overwhelming majority of American
>> farmers operating at a loss — the median farm income was negative $1,453
>> in
>> 2012 <http://1.usa.gov/1oxCabT> — farmers can barely keep the chickens
>> fed
>> and the lights on.
>>
>> Others of us rely almost entirely on Department of Agriculture or
>> foundation grants, not retail sales, to generate farm income. And young
>> farmers, unable to afford land, are increasingly forced into neo-feudal
>> relationships, working the fields of wealthy landowners. Little wonder
>> the median
>> age for farmers and ranchers <http://bit.ly/UYZu6D> is now 56.
>>
>> My experience proves the trend. To make ends meet as a farmer over the
>> last
>> decade, I’ve hustled wooden crafts to tourists on the streets of New
>> York,
>> driven lumber trucks, and worked part time for any nonprofit that could
>> stomach the stink of mud on my boots. Laden with college debt and only
>> intermittently able to afford health care, my partner and I have
>> acquired a
>> favorite pastime in our house: dreaming about having kids. It’s cheaper
>> than the real thing.
>>
>> But what about the thousands of high-priced community-supported
>> agriculture
>> programs and farmers’ markets that have sprouted up around the country?
>> Nope. These new venues were promising when they proliferated over a
>> decade
>> ago, but now, with so many programs to choose from, there is increasing
>> pressure for farmers to reduce prices in cities like my hometown, New
>> Haven. And while weekend farmers’ markets remain precious community
>> spaces,
>> sales volumes are often too low to translate into living wages for your
>> much-loved small-scale farmer.
>>
>> Especially in urban areas, supporting your local farmer may actually
>> mean
>> buying produce from former hedge fund managers or tax lawyers who have
>> quit
>> the rat race to get some dirt under their fingernails. We call it hobby
>> farming, where recreational “farms” are allowed to sell their products
>> at
>> the same farmers’ markets as commercial farms. It’s all about property
>> taxes, not food production. As Forbes magazine suggested to its readers
>> <http://onforb.es/WZl391> in its 2012 Investment Guide, now is the time
>> to
>> “farm like a billionaire,” because even a small amount of retail sales —
>> as
>> low as $500 a year in New Jersey — allows landowners to harvest more tax
>> breaks than tomatoes.
>>
>> On top of that, we’re now competing with nonprofit farms. Released from
>> the
>> yoke of profit, farms like Growing Power in Milwaukee and Stone Barns in
>> Pocantico Hills, N.Y., are doing some of the most innovative work in the
>> farming sector, but neither is subject to the iron heel of the free
>> market. Growing
>> Power <http://bit.ly/1oxwoHh%5D> alone received over $6.8 million in
>> grants
>> over the last five years, and its produce is now available in Walgreens
>> stores. Stone Barns was started with a $30 million grant
>> <http://bit.ly/1sbXNhv> from David Rockefeller. How’s a young farmer to
>> compete with that?
>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/dont-let-your-children-grow-up-to-be-farmers.html?_r=1#story-continues-4>
>>
>> As one grower told me, “When these nonprofit farms want a new tractor,
>> they
>> ask the board of directors, but we have to go begging to the bank.”
>>
>> And then there are the chefs. Restaurants bait their menus with homages
>> to
>> local food, attracting flocks of customers willing to pay 30 bucks a
>> plate.
>> But running a restaurant is a low-margin, cutthroat business, and chefs
>> have to pay the bills, too. To do so, chefs often use a rule of thumb:
>> Keep
>> food costs to 30 percent of the price of the meal. But organic farming
>> is
>> an even higher-risk, higher-cost venture, so capping the farmer’s take
>> to a
>> small sliver of the plate ensures that working the land remains a
>> beggar’s
>> game.
>>
>> The food movement — led by celebrity chefs, advocacy journalists,
>> students
>> and NGOs — is missing, ironically, the perspective of the people doing
>> the
>> actual work of growing food. Their platform has been largely based on
>> how
>> to provide good, healthy food, while it has ignored the core economic
>> inequities and contradictions embedded in our food system.
>>
>> Unlike our current small-bore campaigns, previous food movements of the
>> 1880s, 1930s and 1970s were led by highly organized farmers’
>> organizations
>> — like the American Agricultural Movement, National Farmers Union and
>> Colored Farmers’ National Alliance — trailblazing new paths for the
>> economy.
>>
>> They went toe to toe with Big Ag: crashing shareholder meetings;
>> building
>> co-ops and political parties; and lobbying for price stabilization. In
>> the
>> late 1970s, for example, small-scale family farmers organized a series
>> of
>> protests under the slogan “Parity Not Charity,” demanding a moratorium
>> on
>> foreclosures, as well as the stabilization of crop prices to ensure that
>> farmers could make a living wage. They mobilized thousands of fellow
>> farmers to direct action <http://bit.ly/XBGPj7>, including the 1979
>> Tractorcade, where 900 tractors — some driven thousands of miles —
>> descended on Washington to shut down the nation’s capital.
>>
>> It’s not the food movement’s fault that we’ve been left behind. It has
>> turned food into one of the defining issues of our generation. But now
>> it’s
>> time for farmers to shape our own agenda. We need to fight for loan
>> forgiveness for college grads who pursue agriculture; programs to turn
>> farmers from tenants into landowners; guaranteed affordable health care;
>> and shifting subsidies from factory farms to family farms. We need to
>> take
>> the lead in shaping a new food economy by building our own production
>> hubs
>> and distribution systems. And we need to support workers up and down the
>> supply chain who are fighting for better wages so that their families
>> can
>> afford to buy the food we grow.
>>
>> But none of these demands will be met until we start our own
>> organizations
>> — as in generations past — and shape a vision of a new food economy that
>> ensures that growing good food also means making a good living.
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>> human habitat --
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> How to permaculture your urban lifestyle
> http://www.ipermie.net
> Avant Geared http://www.avantgeared.com
> https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
> Permaculture: -- portal to an expanding global network of landtech
> pioneers practicing and teaching permaculture
> while designing ecological, biointensive land use systems with integrated
> elements for synergy, sustainability, regeneration and enhanced
> nature-compatible
> human habitat --
>






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