- Author: Andrew Meyers
Applications are being accepted for the Beginning Farming Academy on December 7th and 8th. Spaces are filling up quickly, so apply now. More information here.
- Author: Dan Macon
Local food and small-scale farming seem to fit hand-in-glove - folks interested in locally grown food want to buy from small, family-owned farms that are part of the community. Small-scale farmers want (and need) to sell directly to consumers - selling to the end user eliminates the need for a "middleman" who takes a cut of the value of a farm product. While I've considered these issues in this space previously, I'm increasingly convinced that the middle - that space between micro-scale and large-scale farming - is a difficult place to be.
A vibrant local food system, then, requires a diverse community of medium-sized farms - enterprises that produce on a big enough scale to make food affordable but on a small enough scale to be personal. In his book Eaarth, author Bill McKibbon puts it this way, "what [a local food system] really requires is not huge commodity producers or small, incredibly wonderful gourmet farms. What [we] need are 1950s-size farms." If this scale is so desirable from the standpoint of quality and community economics, why are mid-sized farms increasingly rare?
As a struggling mid-sized farmer, I think there are several reasons. Some small-scale farmers start small with the specific intent of growing their operation. Others start small but treat their farms as true businesses. Many, however, are hobby farms that do not truly account for the cost of doing business. I've had several micro-scale farmers tell me, "I don't really care if I make any money - it's something for my kids [or grand kids] to do." While I don't discount the value of teaching a new generation about the skills involved in producing food, I do think that this approach to agriculture devalues the act of farming. When these micro-scale farms sell their products for less than it costs to produce them, it puts downward pressure on everyone else who's operating in a local marketplace.
On the other end of the scale, industrial farms can out compete mid-sized farms. The factory model of purchasing inputs, converting them to a marketable form, and selling them at a profit, allows industrial-scale farms to enjoy significant economic advantages. Farming at this scale pays the farmer, in most years, a living wage.
Farming at my scale - right in the middle of these two extremes - involves full-time (and then some) work on the part of the farmer. At least for me, our farm has not yet provided a full-time wage, let alone retirement, paid vacations or health benefits. In other words, our farm is too big to require part-time work and too small to provide full-time pay.
The answers to this problem are elusive and challenging. Local food security is dependent upon mid-sized farms being profitable. Perhaps increasing processing and shipping costs will reverse the economic advantage currently enjoyed by industrial-scale farms. Perhaps we need to recognize that in demanding cheap food, we get what we're willing to pay for. As a mid-sized farmer who is taking a part-time off-farm job so that I can continue to farm, I hope our community continues to seek these answers.
- Posted By: Foothill Farming
- Written by: Jim Muck
Is it irrigation or irritation? That is the question I always ask myself this time of the year. March was too wet and now April has been too dry so it is time to get the water flowing on the newly planted crops. I farm in what used to be a walnut orchard. The good and bad thing about using a former orchard is that it comes with the permanent sprinkler system that was used to irrigate the trees. The good part is that the pipes are all underground and there is a riser pipe every 60 feet. The trouble comes when the cover crop really gets to growing and pipes that used to be easily visible disappear in the lush growth of the vetch, bell beans and rye.
I like to mow my cover crop and then disc it in to get the crop to break down and open up the ground so that it can start to dry out so I can work it with my rototiller in a few weeks. I started the process listed above about 3 weeks ago and even though I am careful and I mark the sprinkler locations with tall poles I managed to hit a few. I always expect to hit a few and yet it never fails to annoy me.This year in addition to fixing the pipes I broke with the disc and mower, I am lowering all the riser pipes to a few inches below grade. This is my latest attempt at finding an easy way to farm the rows that contain the pipes. With the pipes below grade I can now take my mower or tiller right over the top of the pipes without breaking them (I hope). In the past I have just ignored the pipe rows and grown my crops in the alleys between, but I learned that is not a good idea. Two really bad things happen. First the weeds go nuts and sprawl all over the place, and second all the gophers and field mice move in to avoid the tractors and tillers going back and forth in the alleys. The rodents then stage nightly sorties into the alleys to chew on everything in sight. Not this year! This year I have a new plan. Now all I have to do is fix the irritation system so the plan will work. Did I say “irritation?” I mean “irrigation.”
The next week promises to be hard. I will be spending a lot of time on my hands and knees cutting pipes and gluing on new fittings. I am sure I will be making about fifty trips to the hardware store to buy more parts, especially the one part that I must have but forgot to buy the last time I was at the store. I would rather do this work now and conquer my pest problem in the beginning than trying to figure out a solution at the height of the growing season when I am lucky to think about anything other than picking and planting.
- Posted By: Foothill Farming
- Written by: Allen Edwards
The radical fluctuations in the timber market, along with increasingly expensive logging permits have refocused attention on other crops. Some of these, such as firewood, Christmas trees, and tree fruit, have a long history. Others such as berries, and cool-season vegetables are new, but are well suited to soil and climate conditions.
There is also a renewed interest in livestock -- particularly high-end, locally produced meat. This includes grass-fed beef, sheep, and increasingly poultry raised on irrigated pasture. It also includes browsing meat goats and sheep on brushland – both as a way to produce salable meat, and as a means of controlling brush and reducing the risk of wildfires.
Within the traditional lumber crops there is increased interest in producing lumber and other tree products on-the farm for local sales, rather than selling raw logs to the large regional sawmills.
Everything considered, there are many opportunities for viable farm businesses in Sierra forestland.
Posted by Allen Edwards, Edwards Family Farm, Colfax, CA
Comments on Estimating Firewood from standing trees
- Posted By: Foothill Farming
- Written by: Dan Macon
Small is beautiful, E.F. Schuacher tells us, and Schumacher’s vision of economics at a more human scale certainly resonates with me as a small-scale farmer. From a local food perspective, small farms are held up as a more compassionate, sustainable and responsible alternative to corporate-managed industrialized agriculture. Small, family-owned farms, the theory goes, are more ecologically sensitive than their “industrial” counterparts. As a practitioner of “small” farming, I am philosophically and economically inclined towards this perspective. As someone striving to make my living from small farming, however, I often struggle with the question of scale. Balancing the idealistic goal of staying small with the realistic need to be big enough to earn a living wage is, I think, one of the most critical questions for small farmers.
From a practical standpoint, there are advantages to staying small. On a small farm, the farmer can pay close attention to details that might be lost on a larger operation – details like soil protection and pest detection. Wendell Berry writes that a farm is sized correctly if it can be cared for by the farm family and perhaps by a few seasonal employees. Obviously, this definition means that a right-sized farm will vary depending on the crops produced. For example, our family can properly care for 400 ewes with a minimum of outside help. On the other hand, five or ten acres of vegetables might be the correct size for another operation.
Perhaps by necessity, smaller-scaled farms also have more direct contact with their customers. With fewer units to sell, small farms are driven to maximize their profits per unit, which often means direct marketing. This direct connection means less time between harvest and consumption, which allows small farms to market fresher, better tasting, and more nutritious fruits and vegetables. As a small farmer, I focus more on feeding my neighbors and my community than on the oft-repeated focus on “feeding the world” espoused by the proponents of industrial-scale agriculture.
The romantic notion of making a living from 100 ewes or an acre of mixed vegetables, however, quickly runs up against the realities of scale. Small producers typically have higher unit costs for purchasing supplies, obtaining processing services, transporting products, and other inputs. In some cases, these higher unit costs on the expense side of the ledger partially or totally offset the higher per unit revenues that result from direct marketing. In other words, I receive more per lamb marketed than my large-scale counter parts, but my expenses per lamb are greater as well. Size is related directly to costs. For example, the harvest cost for a lot of 19 lambs is $25 per animal. For 20 lambs, I only pay $20 per animal. A semi load of lambs (400 or so), would cost even less to process. Similarly, a bale of alfalfa costs $14 at our local feed store. If I buy a ton of alfalfa, I save 10 percent. If I purchase a truck and trailer load, the hay costs just $8.50 per bale, and it’s delivered to our place.
Finally, scale matters to customers, too. Buyers like restaurants and retail grocers would generally rather purchase food from a handful of sources rather than from a greater number of small farms. The Farmers Diner, a small New England chain of restaurants committed to buying from local, small-scale producers, can’t afford to pay $7.50 per pound for bacon from a farmer just down the road (the price the farm received for bacon at the farmers’ market). Says Bill McKibben in Eaarth, what Farmers Diner owner Tod Murphy “really requires is not huge commodity producers or small, incredibly wonderful gourmet farms.” Murphy tells McKibben, “What I need are 1950s-size farms” – the mid-sized farms that have disappeared in the last 30 years.
Economically, a farm is “profitable” if its revenue per unit sold is greater than the direct costs of producing each unit. For me, I earn a profit if I can sell my lamb for more than the cost of feed, veterinary care, shearing and processing. Once a farm can sell each unit at a profit, the farm family must determine its total income needs (for things like living expenses, overhead costs, health care, retirement, etc). Is the farm a part-time occupation? Does the family need to derive one or more full-time salaries from the operation? In other words, the farm must operate at a scale that covers its production expenses and its overhead, and that produces a profit for the farm family. While this scale varies by the type of operation and by the farm family’s needs and expectations, it is a question that must be answered correctly for the farm to stay in business.
Our primary activity is the production of grass-fed lamb. We started our business with 27 ewes in 2005. Today (2011) we have approximately 100 ewes. Experience suggests that I could manage 3-4 times as many sheep without a significant increase in labor or land expenses. Economics analysis suggests that 400 ewes would produce enough lambs to generate both a salary for me and a profit for the business. My conclusion is that we are not yet operating at the proper scale, given our goals and financial needs.
While small farms may represent a way to invest labor (instead of or in addition to capital), capital costs take center stage when considering any expansion. The typical return-on-investment analysis is not a sufficient gauge of success on its own. As a small farmer, I don’t have much capital to invest in my operation. I do have my time, knowledge and skills, however. Consequently, I’m far more concerned with how much a specific enterprise or activity will return per hour of my labor. That being said, once I’ve learned the skills necessary for an enterprise, it may make sense to invest enough money to increase the scale of our operation.
Much of the solution lies in making our national food system more equitable to those who produce our food. “We need to be willing to pay our neighbors enough to grow our food that they can make a decent living,” says Bill McKibben (Eaarth, p 178). To be sustainable, agriculture must address three key elements: resource conservation and enhancement, social equity, and economic viability. To ignore any of these three issues is short sited; to ignore economic viability is lethal. A farm that fails economically will ultimately fail to conserve resources and social equity. Ultimately, economic viability requires farms to operate at a scale that provides for profitability.
Posted by Dan Macon, Flying Mule Farm