- Author: Vanessa Reed
A few weeks ago I was honored to be involved in putting on a food and farming conference in Grass Valley, with keynote speaker Joel Salatin. That name alone drew quite a few people, farmers and eater alike, and overall the day was a great success.
There were a couple things that have really struck me from that day, and I thought I’d share them with you here. The first take away idea of the day for me was the concept of farming infrastructure that is multiple-use—that is not investing a lot of capital in equipment or systems that are only good for one enterprise and one application, but rather thinking about creating systems or finding tools that can be applied to multiple operations. The second point that really stuck out to me was in the same vein as the first, farm infrastructure should be scalable in both directions. We were pushed to think about infrastructure that can flex and change as the demands of your operation change, as you make decisions to expand, or the even more challenging decision sometimes to scale something back. Of course there will always be some necessary investments that break these rules, but these ideas have urged me to think about infrastructure investments in a different way than I had before.The third point, similar to the first two, was not really a new idea, just something that stuck this time and has resonated ever since. In his final talk of the event, Salatin referred to one of the greatest strengths of successful small farmers, like any other entrepreneur, is being able to identify our weakness and then gather people around us that are able to support us where we are lacking. Joel gave the example from his farm of other members of the family take over where his skills wane, particularly with the accounting, and credited that teamwork is freeing him to do what he excels at and ultimately makes their farm a success. I've found that asking for help can go against our nature sometimes and I've seen how relational dynamics on small farms are quite often strained, but I have also found that it is usually these relationships that make it worth while.
We need to remember this concept as a community as well—as we all work separately on our own operations—we need to remember that we will all be more successful if we are willing to both offer and accept a helping hand.
“A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another.” –Wendell Berry
- Posted By: Foothill Farming
- Written by: Jim Muck
alone. Because my farm is small, I am the only labor most of the time. For me this is the ideal situation. It is not that I don’t like people. I love people. That is why I go to the farmers market each week. I need the feedback from my consumers to recharge my batteries and keep me focused on what is important: growing good food. That being said, I don’t want to be with people every day.
I love the solitude of farming and I love the luxury of focusing on a task from start to finish. I find that when I have employees, I don’t get to focus on tasks; instead I get to manage. I don’t really like managing and I have not made myself get good at it. The best part is that is okay. I don’t have to manage people if I don’t want to.
What I do have to do is pay close attention to how big my farm is. If I am not careful I could plant more acreage than I can take care of. How do I know this? Done it. There is nothing worse than getting too ambitious and planting so much land that none of the ground gets managed effectively. The result is that all of the crops underperform, and the farm either doesn’t make money or makes a fraction of what it could have made if less were planted and more attention were paid to a smaller space.
Success in farming is in the details, not the big picture. Sure you can plant 10 beds of carrots, but can you weed 10 beds of carrots? I can’t; I can only manage one bed at a time, but one well grown bed of carrots will make you more money than 10 weed infested beds any day. I know this, yet I often have to control my urge to over plant. I usually fail on at least one crop each year, but that is also part of the joy of farming. I never said I was perfect.
Spring is the hardest time for me as a farmer because I have so much pent up farming energy. The quiet of winter lets me recharge my batteries and once the weather warms up I am ready to go. Sometime in March I can feel the call of the land to come and farm (not too much different than the Sirens calling the sailors to the rocks). Like the sailors, I must keep my wits about me. Otherwise, I am headed for a shipwreck: a shipwreck of over ambition.
Jim Muck
Jim's Produce, Wheatland
- 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
- 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: 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.