Re:What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a l...
by tptacek on Friday January 01, 2016 @10:37PM
(#10824873)
I don't know what I think about commodity agriculture and consolidation. We don't have to agree to disagree about it.
But I think many readers would have an intuitive sense that if you're going to try to go into business selling products whose prices are set not by local buyers like restaurants but rather giant exchanges --- and for commodity crops, that's been the case for much of the last century! --- you're going to need all the economies of scale you can get, because your only axis of competition in those markets is "price".
It's for similar reasons that we tend not to be as concerned with the plight of small family oil well operators.
This article isn't lamenting the fate of small family cotton farmers, or even small alfalfa farmers. They're outraged that it's impossible for small vegetable farmers to make a living.
What moved me to comment is that I think they're wrong about that, and, in the fashion of many Salon-featured essays, are substituting the experiences of "mid-20s-to-early-30s" dilettantes for those of family farmers for whom this is a life-defining vocation.
But I think many readers would have an intuitive sense that if you're going to try to go into business selling products whose prices are set not by local buyers like restaurants but rather giant exchanges --- and for commodity crops, that's been the case for much of the last century! --- you're going to need all the economies of scale you can get, because your only axis of competition in those markets is "price".
It's for similar reasons that we tend not to be as concerned with the plight of small family oil well operators.
This article isn't lamenting the fate of small family cotton farmers, or even small alfalfa farmers. They're outraged that it's impossible for small vegetable farmers to make a living.
What moved me to comment is that I think they're wrong about that, and, in the fashion of many Salon-featured essays, are substituting the experiences of "mid-20s-to-early-30s" dilettantes for those of family farmers for whom this is a life-defining vocation.