In Gene's Weekly Posts on February 3, 2016 at 8:54 am
From GENE LOGSDON
Economists sanctify expansion in
agriculture as the way farmers survive but in the very act of saying
that, they are also pointing out why farmers don’t survive. If all the
land is occupied, for every farm that expands, another ceases to exist.
So it would be just as accurate to say that expansion is the way farmers
don’t survive. And that leaves us in a situation where, according to
the statistics, as quoted in a new, soon- to- be- published book, Miraculous Abundance,
some 80% of the arable land on the planet used in intensive mechanized
agriculture is owned by multinational corporations. Meanwhile, the
proponents of big farming continue to flaunt their challenge: “get big
or get out.” When all the land is owned by one big corporation and it
still doesn’t make enough of a profit to satisfy the stockholders, what
then?
As a matter of fact, small commercial
farms and so-called hobby farms are on the rise again and whether or not
they are profitable by today’s money standards, they are generating a
lot of other economic activity which in aggregate becomes quite
significant. These farmers are creating a different economic model than
that of industrial production. They are successful because they really
aren’t about how much money they can make but how much of what they do
make they can keep in their pockets while they spend their time doing
what they really want to do in life. As they proceed, they generate all
sorts of other small businesses and avocations that in turn prompt more
small business. The sum total amounts to big
business. For example, judging from the exhibits at our county fair,
looks like there are more goats on farms now than cows. And who would
ever have thought that kale would become a cash crop and soul food of
America?
The backyard chicken craze is another
good example. It is hardly a scheme for making money or even for saving
money but it is generating lots of business. John Emrich, who has 25
years of no nonsense experience in investment and corporate finance,
writes in his book, The Local Yolk, about the business he started
delivering chicken feed and supplies to backyard hen raisers in
Chicago. Hard telling how many little businesses have started up
manufacturing and selling cute little chicken coops for the backyarders.
I hear you can buy coats for your winter weary hens or diapers if you
like them wandering around in the house. Farm supply stores are doing
well selling straw and grain to backyarders too. It pays because hen
hobbyists are willing to pay more for supplies than commercial growers.
A good way to become convinced of how small scale farming is in aggregate not all that small is to read one or more of the new Edible
magazines, of which there are about 80 representing almost every area
of the U.S. These magazines themselves are evidence of the way new farms
are generating new business. Edible Cleveland (Ohio) lists 18
farm-based artisanal cheese makers in the state. I count 74 ads in just
one issue from farms, stores, restaurants and other businesses selling
food directly to consumers and 28 CSA farms just in the Cleveland area.
There are some 60 farmers’ markets in northeastern Ohio alone (I use
this area because I am familiar with it—similar statistics hold for all
the more populous areas in the country.)
The explosion of interest in greenhouse
agriculture has been a bonanza for all the manufacturers of the new hoop
house structures, buildings that essentially are almost all roof made
of various fabrics. They might be more susceptible to storm damage but
not enough to offset their obvious advantages. I like to do the math on
what could happen if a society of backyarders and small farmers got
serious about this kind of enclosed farming, especially with global
warming looming on the horizon. Check my math here. Think of the fact
that the United States has more acreage in lawn than in cultivated
crops. Let us say that 50,000,000 homes (in the U.S. population of
around 330,000,000 right now) would each grow food on an eighth of an
acre undercover. That would add up to some 6,250,000 acres more acres of
farmland. With the higher yields possible in enclosed farming, each of
these acres might produce three times the yield of an open air acre, or
the equivalent of 18,750,000 acres, right? (If that sounds dubious to
you, read Eliot Coleman’s books where he describes how to get five crops
per year undercover, in Maine.) Total cropland in the United States is
right around 442,000,000 acres (and surprisingly the number is falling).
If each of those enclosed one-eighth acre “farms” housed six egg-laying
and meat producing hens and a couple of pigs to eat the plant parts
from the greenhouses that humans can’t consume, we could be looking at a
very significant amount of food that did not depend on the gambling
whimsy of the Chicago Board of Trade or the weather. Who says we need
big factory farms. We just need a whole bunch of little factory farms.
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