On the radio this morning I heard a story about the growing number of young people choosing to become farmers. The farmers in the story sounded a lot like me — in their late 20s to mid-30s, committed to organic practices, holding college degrees, and from middle-class non-farming backgrounds. Some raise animals or tend orchards. Others, like me, grow vegetables. The farmers’ days sounded long but fulfilling, drenched in sun and dirt. The story was uplifting, a nice antidote to the constant reports of industrial ag gone wrong, of pink slime and herbicide-resistant super-weeds.What the reporter didn’t ask the young farmers was: Do you make a living? Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage? If the reporter had asked me these questions, I would have said no. Jaclyn Moyer, "What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming," Salon.com February 10, 2015
She has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, this organic farmer and writer from Northern California. In her piece she goes on to confess with disappointment and almost certainly some embarrassment how the numbers never add up -- now, or when she and her partner forecast the years ahead. Moreover, after querying other farmers about their small-to-medium farming operation viability she could find none who paid themselves a weekly wage that equaled what a person working full-time would make on minimum wage, who abided by labor laws and therefore harbored no unpaid workers doing essential farm tasks, and actually earned their living from farming as opposed to grants and outside sources. Even large farms, she notes, rely heavily on government subsidies to end the year in the black.
I am not in my late 20s to mid-30s, though the rest of her descriptors fairly well describe me. I am, I suppose you could say, idealistic about healthy practices in the field and chicken yard and do everything I can to keep them chemical free and naturally good. Moreover, I enjoy this giant luxury: while I wouldn't turn it down if it leaked in under the garden gate, we didn't move to this farmstead to make money. I understand, then, that my quarter in this jukebox must necessarily be taken with a grain of salt. While we are enthusiastically invested in making a different kind of life, it isn't wrapped around the added burden of making a living.
Ms. Moyer has received quite a bit of push back from those who, like her, are trying to make a go of small scale, sustainable farming, and some of those have put their numbers where their dissent is. They are, they insist, making a living at farming. That said, when the time and energy and capital invested are stood alongside the income generated I'm not sure I really believe them. People make it work by doing all kinds of sometimes related, sometimes ancillary things -- selling jellies, fibers, salsas and soaps they've made on the farm, or dividing their time with off-farm employment. None of which should be heard as disparaging. Creativity, ingenuity, and capitalizing on assets in hand are the very things that lie beneath most success stories, and bi-vocationality is more and more prevalent among all sorts of professions, including my chosen career in ministry. It isn't just farming, in other words, where the ends struggle to ever meet.
Perhaps we'll eventually have to revisit our expectations about what constitutes "a living," and almost certainly some will conclude that this "ag bit" isn't really for them after all.
But here are my two cents to toss into the conversation: the problem isn't with farming. The problem is with our specious assumption that food should be cheap.
I sell eggs for $5 per dozen and will tell you that I am losing money on every dozen I sell. That $5 almost covers the cost of the feed -- almost -- but it doesn't touch the cost of the coop or the miscellaneous hardware involved -- the waters, the warmers, the feeders, the litter -- let alone the cost of the birds themselves. I only somewhat jokingly note that my eggs at this point are worth $125 per egg. I could feed them for less, but I value the premium organic grains milled locally, and I value the liberal living conditions in which I keep them. I rather prefer to call it "humane." I am putting these things into my body, after all, and I don't take that destination lightly.
I am fully aware that eggs can be had for less. Far less. If you watch the ads you can find them in the major grocers for less than a buck. And the way to produce those eggs for those prices is to employ strategies of scale and care that I deem untenable. And then, as a country, subsidize them accordingly. Similarly with tomatoes, peppers, pork and beef and anything else we plan to eat. The only way to make it all cheap is to undertake it on a massive scale, and pay those who manage that scale next to nothing. And then denigrate them and send them back across the border.
The fact is food is not cheap and we need to stop deluding ourselves into thinking we can nourish ourselves for nothing. We need to pay those who produce it whatever it costs, and help those who have difficulty paying the tab. Sure, it may mean a few fewer trips to Starbucks or the McDonald's drive-through, but it will at least start recognizing and shouldering the truth. We can try to keep fooling ourselves -- and each other -- about all this "economical nutrition" and patting ourselves on the back about the wonders of "modern agricultural", but ask the astronaut what she or he thinks about the rocket built by the lowest bidder. Again, this isn't to denigrate those who are giving us what we demand; it's just to beg the question: Is basic life support really where we want to be cutting corners?
The options are finally these -- as is true with virtually everything else we need: we can produce more food for ourselves, or we can pay someone else to do it for us recognizing that the latter will come at a premium, not a loss.
If we paid the price that our food is really worth then people like Ms. Moyers could spend their time growing more instead of lamenting what they are giving up on our behalf.
But here are my two cents to toss into the conversation: the problem isn't with farming. The problem is with our specious assumption that food should be cheap.
I am fully aware that eggs can be had for less. Far less. If you watch the ads you can find them in the major grocers for less than a buck. And the way to produce those eggs for those prices is to employ strategies of scale and care that I deem untenable. And then, as a country, subsidize them accordingly. Similarly with tomatoes, peppers, pork and beef and anything else we plan to eat. The only way to make it all cheap is to undertake it on a massive scale, and pay those who manage that scale next to nothing. And then denigrate them and send them back across the border.
The fact is food is not cheap and we need to stop deluding ourselves into thinking we can nourish ourselves for nothing. We need to pay those who produce it whatever it costs, and help those who have difficulty paying the tab. Sure, it may mean a few fewer trips to Starbucks or the McDonald's drive-through, but it will at least start recognizing and shouldering the truth. We can try to keep fooling ourselves -- and each other -- about all this "economical nutrition" and patting ourselves on the back about the wonders of "modern agricultural", but ask the astronaut what she or he thinks about the rocket built by the lowest bidder. Again, this isn't to denigrate those who are giving us what we demand; it's just to beg the question: Is basic life support really where we want to be cutting corners?
The options are finally these -- as is true with virtually everything else we need: we can produce more food for ourselves, or we can pay someone else to do it for us recognizing that the latter will come at a premium, not a loss.
If we paid the price that our food is really worth then people like Ms. Moyers could spend their time growing more instead of lamenting what they are giving up on our behalf.
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