Please indulge me while I effuse for a paragraph. The farm I work on is WONDERFUL. First of all, the food that is grown there is organic, so the people that eat the produce from this farm can enjoy without worrying about the chemicals that come with conventional produce. The absence of those chemicals is significant, as many have been linked to cancer among farming communities where they are applied and endocrine disruptions for those that consume them via their food. Secondly, the farm feeds the soil with compost, and they leave roots in the soil when they can. This is great for soil health and makes the food produced there healthier. Thirdly, the folks that work on the farm are friendly, knowledgeable, and passionate about what they do – so much so that they like to share their favorite tool or piece of equipment with us. They happily answer questions, and they create lots of laughter for us volunteers. Thanks for letting me effuse.
Today, we were prepping beds for planting. There was a great turn out, which makes for lots of fun chatter and encouragement. The day could not have been more beautiful – warm, sunny, and low humidity. We were raking hay and some residual pea plants off the beds so we could broad fork (a way to aerate the soil), add compost, and then plant seeds.
Me: Will, I heard that residue on the soil is good. It can break down and feed the soil life, control weeds, and protect the soil. Without cover, soil temperatures rise to be too hot for soil life and plants, and the soil is susceptible to wind and water erosion. So why are we removing the hay and pea plant residue?
Will: Well, we can prep the beds this way and use our $600 direct seeder, invented by the lead singer of Jethro Tull, by the way, fun fact. Or we can buy a $150,000 piece of equipment that is strong and precise enough to drill through the residue and plant the seeds that way.
Me: Oh.
Are those the only two options, I wonder? Even so, different equipment and therefore more expense is called for, I imagine, to some degree.
Legislators, please listen to Regenerate America and help farmers that want to protect the soil by further subsidizing capital equipment investment meant for regenerative farming practices. And John Deere, thank you for your amazing farming technology but make your equipment cheaper. It appears that equipment is prohibitively expensive for two reasons – the larger farms create a large demand, and the federal government gives tax breaks and sometimes even subsidizes the purchase of this equipment. So the companies that manufacture the equipment have raised their prices. That’s probably not the outcome the federal government was aiming for. While the larger farms can afford the price hikes, small to mid-size farms struggle to do so, and that puts them at a disadvantage. And just this week, I heard the cost share program administrators may want to remove new equipment as a qualified cost share item. They typically provide up to $2,500 per farm, which is a pittance to begin with, when considering the cost of equipment.
One of the bad habits I’ve had on my learning journey is to come up with “solutions” that have long been considered. I started to daydream about farmer cooperatives (several farmers coming together to invest in equipment and resources to make them more economical) organizing and buying equipment together that they can share. Apparently, this is already a thing. Mad Agriculture has organized this for their farmers out west, per Brandon Welch of Mad Ag on the podcast Investing in Regenerative Agriculture. The challenge is organizing farmers who are willing to do so. Not all do, despite their need. Why not? Could be that the distance between farms is a hindrance. Could be that the tax benefits of owning equipment outright are too appealing, so that is the ultimate goal. It could be that some farmers are just not good at building community. But that’s a rabbit hole I won’t jump down at the moment!
The fact of the matter is equipment is expensive. And without equipment, farm tasks are more labor intensive. Labor is expensive – especially now that human rights groups are demanding that seasonal farm laborers are paid a fair wage and provided adequate housing – as they should. So unless equipment costs go down and/or farmers are paid a fair price for their produce, farming better, and really ask any farmer, farming AT ALL is a tough business to be in. Every human on earth needs food to live. So we should be making sure those that make us our food can earn a living. And ideally, they can farm in a way that is healthy for us and our earth, so we can rely on it for our existence well into the future.
According to the USDA Economic Research Service, off-farm costs such as marketing, processing, wholesaling, distributing and retailing food products accounted for 85 cents of every retail dollar spent on food in 2019. That leaves an average of only 15 cents returning to farmers and ranchers. Over the years, this number has been on the decline. In 1980, farmers received 31 cents out of every retail dollar spent on food in the United States. And, while this number continues to decline, the farmers’ expenses to produce food for our country continues to rise.
https://www.agfoundation.org/common-questions/view/does-most-of-the-money-i-pay-for-food-go-back-to-the-farmer
Here’s a question for my readers (if you’re out there!). What do you think works better as a farming system – scaled agriculture (massive farms), making all of our food OR more community-based farming cooperatives, where the surrounding population supports local production of their food? My heart votes for the cooperatives, but my business sense says scale equals efficiency equals profitability. So much is lost at scale, though. I’m not sure I want us to be without what we would lose with scale.