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Real Food, Naturally: Dirt Poor
by Glen Boudreaux, Jolie Vue Farms
"Dirt poor" used to be a phrase that described the farmer who was wealthy with land but could not make a living on the farm - or just barely did. Today, it is taking on a new meaning.
How can young people, who would like to make sustainable agriculture their profession, afford the land in the first place?
First, let's look at the economics of conventional agriculture. Michael Pollan describes it pretty well in Omnivores' Dilemma. Spending time with an Iowa corn farmer, Pollan notes that it takes only one man to farm a 1000 acre corn farm, and that man spends only 52 days a year working the farm. But it takes a huge mortgage, a big tractor with huge plowing, planting, cultivating, spraying, and harvesting equipment and lots of suppliers of pesticides, herbicides, and NPK synthetic fertilizers to pull it off.
And he'd better not miss a step, because the foreclosers are watching him all the way. So he farms for 52 days and earns a paycheck from an outside source the rest of the time, his wife doing the same. He can live where land is cheap because our long distance, energy-consuming transportation system will haul his grain to market for him - if the grain is cheap enough.
And his children will not do what their parents have done. They've seen too much of the sparse and uninteresting lifestyle of their parents. When the parents die, the farm dies, is sold to a developer, or purchased by the mega-companies who will pay the sparse wages to have an employee run the farm for them.
There is no economic room for the true farmer, the land steward, in the conventional system. One of the essential attributes of sustainable agriculture is access to the consumer market, or at least the retailer, avoiding all of the many middlemen in the Big Food business today. You cannot earn a living wage if you sell to the commodity brokers. You've got to get retail price for your harvest, or something close to it, and you have to be within a reasonable distance of that market to get that price without losing all of your profit in transportation costs, not to mention all of the lost time spent in transporting it yourself. Therein lies the new definition of "dirt poor". There is a scarcity of land near the metropolitan areas that is affordable for the farmer. When the young farmer has to compete with the developers for farm land, the price is just too high. The developers provide a fine retirement for the retiring farmer, but their very existence eliminates the next generation from doing it again.
So what to do if you are just entering the farming business and want to do it in a sustainable way. Assuming you do not inherit land, my only answer to the dilemma is to rent it. One advantage of being a Texan is that there is still a fond attachment to the land. City dwellers who have even a modicum of success almost always want a country place. They don't intend to be real ranchers or farmers, they just want to be close to the process, enjoy the vistas, and have a weekend respite. They will appreciate having someone who will improve their land through harmonious production techniques. Their land will improve as well as their environment. I even know of situations where there are no-cost leases because the benefits of having a steward on the ground every day are benefit enough. And the young farmers, once established on leased land, can invest their savings to buy land more remote from the city but in its growth path. In 15-20 years, that land will be near the urban markets as the city grows toward it.
Go for it, young folks! Help 'em, weekenders!
Yours in the local harvest,
Glen Boudreaux
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