So very unfortunate, and, so very true.

I plan to farm. I know I won't make a living at it. It will be done in my case as both simple enjoyment, and a way to track the nutrition and quality of foods I'll eat, and as something I've got to hand at least for me and a few friends. I won't over extend -- I plan to grow gradually -- 6 or 9 chickens at first, a small greenhouse at first. Hardy New England veggies, and a few fruit trees. I think some folks over-extend too early.

I agree with pinkmountain -- disturbing for long term food security.

In my case, my farm will be supported by my pension and my 401K. I simply hope to break even. Others don't even get near that much.

Very interesting, but:

it is because our archaic food and agriculture system has failed them

Is our system archaic? There was no giant monocrop industrial farming before WWII. I'm not sure I'd say that, although there is plenty to be said about our current system and the dangers it poses.

A most excellent read for anyone interested in food security and the problems of our current agricultural system is "Just One Backyard" by Dr. John Zahina-Ramos:

http://www.amazon.com/Just-One-Backyard-Search-Sustainability/dp/1505834821/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455494517&sr=8-1&keywords=just+one+backyard

I never trust farmers market produce. It is so difficult to make a living by farming. I would not be surprised that they do have to use a huge amount of chemicals to maximize output.

So I decided to do a lot more of my own "backyard farming" this year. Bought a larger piece of land.

I will need a little tractor. I bought a broken $2,000 tractor for $26 on eBay. Fixed it in a few hours.

dcarch

agmss, Dad used to tell me that if he won the lottery he'd just keep farming until the money was gone. He was joking.....kind of. I've often said that in a perfect world I could make a living farming. I am strong, fiercely independent, truly love my animals and playing in the dirt. However, I spent 35 years stuck in a law office, because that would pay the bills, and gardening and helping Dad with the farm on weekends and taking vacation days to can. Dad always had a job outside the farm until he had that quadruple bypass, then a leg amputated and the doctors put him on disability. Now we don't make money farming, but we eat well and thank goodness for pensions!

Makayla wants to set up a farm stand, sell vegetables and eggs and some jam and baked goods allowed under the Michigan Cottage Food Act. She might make some summer money, but only if I provide all the ingredients for the baking, LOL, and we don't eat too many. She can "earn" her vegetables by working in the garden. So, as a "summer job" for a young teenager, she can make a few bucks, but a family certainly could not be supported.

I remember breaking down the costs to raise a turkey, and it was about $45 before any labor was added. Big Ag can produce a lot of food cheaply, but it's not particularly good food, it's just cheap. I can produce good food, organic food, but not as much and certainly not as cheaply. Some people can't afford anything except the cheap and chemical laden food, and some don't care.

There are also the romantics, they think farming is all furry little animals and sunsets on the back porch and the smell of hay. They don't look far enough to see that furry little animals need food and care and fence and housing and that eventually they'll be big animals and there's a lot more smell of manure than of fresh hay, LOL. Their dreams never include standing on the back of a pickup at 20 below zero pumping water into drinking tanks because the well quit or trudging out every morning in the snow at -3 to give your favorite horse aspirin because of his laminitis and then doing it again in the evening, or spending 5 hours outside in the 30 MPH wind in January because that's when the processor can get to your beef. Oh, and no days off and no retirement benefits and no health insurance and no sick days...

My roots to this piece of ground are deeper than any crop I've ever planted, and I can pretty much guarantee that I'll always grow something. But my old horse will die and I won't replace old cows so there will be no spring calves eventually. The garden will get smaller or someone else will step in to help with it, same with the chicken flock. And so I'll no longer be a farmer, eventually, but I'm hopeful that maybe Amanda and Dave will want to be, or Bud or one of Ashley's girls. Maybe, if they could just not lose too much money doing it, but it sure isn't going to be by selling beef. Maybe hops or chestnuts or asparagus or....and that's the nature of a farmer, there's got to be SOMETHING we can grow and make money on, LOL, even when there isn't.

Annie

The issue isn't whether you can make SOME money farming, but whether you can earn a living to support a family. I know lots of young folks who are trying and working around the economics. Inevitably, they rely on supplemental income from off the farm. Either one person in a couple who are farming works a good paying job, or they inherited a lot from someone else, including using other folk's land, etc. I've done the math and been to the seminars. The big issues are the high cost of fuel, the middlemen, and the ups and downs of the variables. Most "farmers" have to combine their farming with something else, like agro-tourism in some fashion. Of course many of these problems are no different than the problems of running any small business--like inventory costs, for example. As always, if you want to go small, you have to be really good at knowing and meeting your market share. There are plenty of "hobby farmers" but as a business, geeze louise, the success stories are few and far between, over the long haul. Sure, they'll show up for the photo op to try and drum up business all the time. They'll never completely leave it, but it is not their main source of income for living off of.