Earning a Living Feeding Other People
It is perhaps the greatest indication that the "free" market (or at least our U.S. early 21st century version of it) is a failure when those who work very hard to feed other people can't cover their own basic expenses. I bring this up after reading this article from Grist:
Dispatches from the Fields: The trouble with small-scale farming
Can sustainable farming provide a sustainable living?
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/24/133720/582
One item I disagree with is the notion in the article that farming isn't "highly skilled." That really depends. Some jobs are mundane, but overall I have found that advanced management skills and sublimely honed knowledge sets are needed to farm well. Where does the idea that farming is "unskilled" come from?
One hypothesis I have is that the cheap availability of fertilizer inputs masks the actual difficulty of caring for the soil properly and making compost that works.
A second hypothesis is that farming is associated with rural, poor and foreign minorities with low SAT scores.
I would like to get paid to grow food for other people and am going to ask the members of my farm to do so next year. As the article suggests, most farmers don't make it on the food value alone. This is true in my case as well. My wife has a nice salary and I am her "kept man" so to speak.
What the article doesn't delve into is the changing economic environment. In a collapsing economic situation I'd expect more people to grow their own food. And with few high quality fertilizers and fuels available over the long term farming will require greater knowledge, much of which has been lost to the general population.
- jcbradford's blog
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There in lies the problem and I agree with your opinion that the article doesn't delve into the changing economic environment. The article assumes that future levels of energy consumption will remain relatively unchanged for the producer and consumer of small scale produce. I'm hedging my bets that what we have become accustomed to will change radically over the next 5-10 years. By necessity, and as fuel/energy flow rates become constrained, and prices become increasingly volatile, both relocalized and small-scale agriculture must change from being an income supplementing hobby into a necessity. Under those circumstances it will become painfully obvious to a huge number of people how difficult it is to create and maintain a healthy soil and then to understand even a handful of vegetable species enough so that you can actually produce something for a reasonable amount of physical labor efficiently. Couple this with the fact that there is a learning and construction curve of about two to three years (my opinion) to convert even a one-acre plot over to something that can produce efficiently using non-certified organic and energy saving permaculture design techniques.
This idea that we must convert everything we grow into currency is at the root of the problem. Currently most small scale farmers (myself included in the near future with luck) are married to the existing paradigm of paying off a mortgage and other debt. Last time I checked banks won't accept a load of your freshest summer squash as your house payment. Key in small scale agriculture survival will be lowering household debt attached to the mortgage and lowering the house payment as much as possible.
In short the article is short-sighted and actually does more harm than good as it potentially distracts from the tangible benefits of growing your own food and could scare off many individuals from trying their hand at growing food and increasing regional food security. My mother always said think before we speak. The same should be true for writing.
Good work Jason.