Farming is no way to make a living. I'm glad that these people are finding success, but I come from a farming community and family and for decades farming has only been affordable if you also had another full-time job. Although microfarms for trendy produce might not be so bad.
You're right, most farming is a race to the bottom; more crops and produce for lower prices has been the goal for years. This article however is more about exclusively-priced artisan goods, probably even without an intermediate party / wholesale. I can imagine that, as long as the economy stays good, some people can make a decent living with that. But it really depends on, on the one hand, how long they can do it with minimal overhead (like wholesale), and on the other hand how long people are willing to pay a premium for organic / local produce.
Not a farmer, but it's hard manual labor to produce a commodity product, competing against mega-conglomerates with endless capital, robotized everything, and economies of scale for days. Water rights are hard to come by, actual water is vanishing, and airable land is getting ever more expensive. Many farmers farm plants that can't be propagated (Monsanto). Soils have been mismanaged for decades, insects & weeds are constantly developing pesticide & herbicide resistance.
Basically, talk to a knowledgeable farmer and you'll learn about a whole new world of struggles. Just about the only upside is increasing interest in local and/or organic products.
It varies with whatever you're trying to produce, but the biggest problem is that family farmers are being displaced by larger farms mostly because of economies of scale. The only thing left (at least, where I'm from) that family farms can do alright by is beef, and the reason is that you can't just stick a calf in a feedlot for its entire life like you can with chickens or hogs, so there's not as much room for economies of scale.
Farming has been a race to the bottom for a long time, and this is welcomed by people who want to see cheaper food at any cost. I'm sympathetic to that view, but when I watch the continued erosion of rural communities based around the erosion of farming as a living, I have to think we should do something. What will happen to those people? And what will we do when (or if) we take into account the enormous environmental costs of large-scale farming? You're not going to just get those family farms back, because unless you're raised on a farm you probably won't have an interest in farming.
You are absolutely right, but that visual quality comes at a huge cost in other areas. For example, I find tomatoes in the US disgusting (and don’t tell me “oh, you need to try fresh/cherry/whatever tomatoes”, I have). They look good but taste horrible. They’ve been bred for looks and weight, not flavor.
In many places outside the US, the tomato breeds there are bred for flavor, not looks. They’re uglier, but they have a vastly higher sugar/fat/whatever content and taste much better.
It's well known that tomatoes you buy in the store in the US are pure garbage, even among Americans.
I live in the Northeast. Around here practically every single person plants tomatoes if they have a backyard, even if they never plant any other vegetables ever. Chatting about how your tomatoes are doing and what type of tomatoes you are growing is a classic pasttime around these parts.
Of course the reason is there's nothing you can buy in the store that tastes like what you plant in your yard. I know quite a few people who don't like store tomatoes but like home-grown tomatoes.
To be fair, the gross tomoato issue isn't just the US. I am from Indiana, where summer tomatoes from farmer markets (or a backyard) were wonderful. Grocery store tomatoes were foamy, tasteless things.
I'm in Norway now. Same issue, only I've never found yummy summer tomatoes.
here's an exception to that rule: san marzanos are pretty cute and they're IMHO the best tasting tomato, and they look the same in Gabicce Mare or in Sacramento.
When it comes to food --and specifically fruits and vegetables-- visual aspect is not a good indicator of taste or nutrition value. I would actually argue the opposite.
I would guess that the commenter who said that is making the statement that the US farming market touts visual quality because consumers look for visual quality and that is the reason for visual quality being a premium in the USA. Tomatoes being an example for this where recent years find the taste being almost absent but visual quality and uniformity of grocery store tomatoes being very high.
Can you show me a quality metric where American fruits or vegetables are consistently different compared to other countries? These are commodities, after all, so there is little differentiation. Is it visually, callorically, or nutritionally different somehow? I immediate went to visually, because one does notice this in the US compared to Latin America.
Everyone is jumping on me about tomatoes, but Europe has the same bland greenhouse tomatoes in my experience.
> Farming is no way to make a living.... Although microfarms for trendy produce might not be so bad.
You contradict yourself here. If they manage to find a niche in which they make a living, then they're doing fine. It doesn't make sense to grow corn when that portion of the market is already saturated.
Then the comment above was ambiguous at best. The tone of the parent's post was definitely criticizing the trend of people going into farming.
"Farming is no way to make a living... I come from a farming community and family and for decades farming has only been affordable if you also had another full-time job."
Here's another way of thinking of it.
"Tech is no way to make a living. I'm glad that these people are finding success, but I come from a sysadmin community and family and for decades tech has only been affordable if you also had another full-time job. Although software dev for trendy websites might not be so bad."
Tech is broad. Even though tech support and sysadmins are doing poorly, other facets of tech are doing fine, making the phrase "Tech is no way to make a living" inaccurate. Just like saying "Farming is no way to make a living" can be inaccurate if there are still parts of the market largely profitable.
I'm also from a farming community. They're scraping by currently, with college debt... Every farmer will tell you that unless you get enough "good years" stacked away in the bank, when the inevitable "bad years" hit, you will go under. I've seen it dozens of times to young farmers starting out. If they time it right, they'll just make it. If not, the farm is in foreclosure and they're back to their 'old' jobs.
