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I have a duck farm. When the recession hit, my metalworking shop went form $10K/mo to almost 0. I landed a job feeding chickens, it paid $15/hr which I am still greatful for. Six months later my boss bought a 12 acre farm. In this area of San Diego, land is about $8500/acre. About 2 years in, he offered to leg me do whatever I wanted with an acre of land, and I went with ducks. Turns out I am the only operation in the county and I am quite profitable. I thank you for the link to the microloans, it is sad that it took an "Al Jezerra" article to learn about it. I now have 450 ducks on 3 acres, laying nearly 250 eggs a day, and have 2 commercial supply contracts at 60cents-$1.20 per egg.
Did you know that San Diego County CA has the highest count of family owned farms for a county in the US at over 4000.
My biggest hassle in expanding is dealing with zoning. You can't subdivide out here any more, but they still want the fees associated with a "major use permit" for my attempts to reactivate a derelict 40 acre farm nearby that has been virtually unoccupied since 1974, the property is zoned ag, but since they won't make a lot in fees that way they are looking for any roadblocks they can, including a $1500 startup fee "on case I have questions". They seem to be intent on not letting my do my "by right use" unless they get $30K in incidental fees. FWIW, I did pay to have the well tested, even with CA's drought, we got 325 gallons/min. There is even a functional 2nd well powered by a 50 foot windmill tower.
That is a California specific problem they will have to solve or not. Draught is a big problem in west that I have seen.
50 years ago, it took about 1/3rd of the population to feed the nation. In other words, farming was labor intensive.
Today 1 1/2% of the people are involved in producing the food.
Reason, modern machinery and equipment. Someone above mentioned how on a ranch, the need for help is so much less.
In the past men on horses rode the fence lines, and checked and repaired fences. This could take days on a large ranch. Today a cowboy hooks a trailer behind an ATV to haul fence repair supplies and equipment, and does it in a day. Cowboys went ranch to ranch looking for work, pulling their horse in a trailer behind them. Today, the modern cowboy has an ATV in the back of his pickup. You have all seen pictures of cowboys roping and throwing down cattle to brand them, and castrate bull calves to turn them into steers. Today they will pull a squeeze chute and some panels to force the cattle into the chute. One cowboy can with an ATV drive cattle into the chute, where the sides clamp the animal still, brand them, castrate them, shoot them with their vaccinations, etc., then let them go out the other end.
It used to take a large crew, to cut, rake, and bale hay, and a crew to haul it from the field. Today one man with a modern tractor with an enclosed cab with heat and air conditioning, can cut a lot more hay than they used to cut, laying it into a windrow. Then when the hay is dry and cured ready to bail, the same man can then take a small machine behind his tractor. Drive down the row and pick up the hay going fairly fast with a machine. The machine makes it into a round bale, and stops, squats and lays a bale every so often. Then back to picking it up and making it into a bale. Comes time to gather the bale, one man can use a machine to pick up bales that can weigh half a ton or more instead of half a ton being 20 bales that were picked up by hand and thrown onto a truck. That one man can in a few minutes load the truck, secure the bales, and drive to the holding area, and use another machine on a tractor to unload the bales. And repeat till done. Instead of maybe a dozen men working for long periods, one or two men do it with equipment.
Here in Montana, we have more cattle than people. My grandfather grew up in the 1860s in western Montana, on the family ranch on Dry Cotton Wood Creek. When he was 16 for the first time he took a crew of cowboy/gun fighters to Mexico with his saddle bags full of gold coins. He bought a large herd of cattle, and they drove them back to Montana. Today if you wanted to do the same, one or two men would go down there to do the buying, and they would be shipped to Montana in trucks. A couple of days to move the cattle instead of months to drive them back with horses. Back then there were wars between rustlers and ranchers, and sheepmen, vs. cattlemen. And between big ranchers and smaller ones that had gotten land from the government the big ranchers claimed was theirs. My grandfather was involved in the wars, as he was a real hot gun fighter. He met my grandmother who was an army nurse at a fort, and she told him if he wanted to marry her he had to give up the guns and leave the state. He changed his name and they moved to California.
The ranching got easier over the decades and by mid 1900s, no gunmen needed, but it a crew of men on a medium to large spread. Today, with modern methods, it takes very few employees, often just the family that owns the farm or ranch.
^^^^This.
You can only farm until the cost of food drops to the cost to produce it. When that happens, you're not profitable and therefore must look elsewhere for work.
Young people are interested in farming: Although perhaps not so much at the industrial scale. Micro farms are in. Urban farms are in. Truth is, you can grow a lot on a little bit of land, if you optimize things.
I think the future of farming is bright, so long as people continue needing to eat.
bigger corporate run farms will buy up the land and hire cheap labor to do the work while the corporation not only owns all the land, they make all the money too. Such is the way of the world.. wealth and power consolidate until they reach a breaking point... right now the barrier to entry in farming is the cost of land and equipment... only existing large farms can afford to buy large swaths of land.
bigger corporate run farms will buy up the land and hire cheap labor to do the work while the corporation not only owns all the land, they make all the money too. Such is the way of the world.. wealth and power consolidate until they reach a breaking point... right now the barrier to entry in farming is the cost of land and equipment... only existing large farms can afford to buy large swaths of land.
In some regions that is the case. In other regions, it has not been the case.
Fortunately it is still possible to get into farming with a small purse.
I was listening to a guy talk about how there used to be thousands of small farms. Now big companies own miles of land and there are few farmers. I looked into it. The cost keeps me away from being a farmer.
I was listening to a guy talk about how there used to be thousands of small farms. Now big companies own miles of land and there are few farmers. I looked into it. The cost keeps me away from being a farmer.
The cost can be high, fortunately it is not high in terms of money.
Giving some one anything does not begin well
Farming is hard work and long hours
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