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AgricultureBig AgCaliforniaFarmingLife storiesLife News. On the radio this morning I heard a story about the growing number of young people choosing to become farmers. The farmers in the story sounded a lot like me — in their late 20s to mids, committed to organic practices, holding college degrees, and from middle-class non-farming backgrounds.
Some raise animals or tend orchards. Others, like me, grow vegetables. The story was uplifting, a nice antidote to the constant reports of industrial ag gone wrong, of pink slime and herbicide-resistant super-weeds.
Do you make a living? Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage? If the reporter had asked me these questions, I would have said no. My farm is located in the foothills of Northern California, 40 miles east of Sacramento on 10 acres my partner, Ryan, and I lease from a land trust.
In the heat of summer, my fields cover the bronzed landscape like a green quilt spread over sand. Ten acres of certified organic vegetables trace the contours of a small valley floor. Watermelons grow fat, littering the ground like beach balls. A businessman once advised me never to admit my business was struggling.
No one wants to climb aboard a sinking ship, know what I mean? At the time, I agreed. I believed if a business was failing it was because the entrepreneur was not skilled enough, not savvy enough, not hardworking enough. Whenever a customer asked how things were going, I replied, Great. One afternoon, a fellow farmer came over for a visit.
He asked how we were doing, and this time I told the truth. The more we talked the more I began to wonder about other farmers I knew. I wondered how many small farmers actually made a living. I did not encounter a single farmer who met my requirements.
Then I looked into national statistics. Smaller farms actually lost money farming and earned percent of their household income from off-farm sources. Only the largest farms, which represent just 10 percent of farming households in the country and most of which received large government subsidies, earned the majority of their income from farm sources. One day late into my second season owning the farm, a customer walked in while I stood behind the counter spraying down bins of muddy carrots.
The man asked how things were going. He held a head of lettuce in the crook of his arm, a bundle of pink radishes dangled from his hand. I opened my mouth to reply, but the man had already turned away and was gazing dreamy-eyed out at my fields, each row buttered in late-afternoon sun. I turned back to the heap of carrots, not sure what I would have said anyway. But I knew what he meant. I heard this kind of thing all the time: Customers repeated these aphorisms warmly in an attempt to offer me some consolation or encouragement.
Surely many farmers enjoy what they do, as I often find pleasure in my daily tasks, but ultimately farming is work, an occupation, a means of making a living that must fulfill the basic function of a job: Does the notion that farming is lovable work excuse the fact that the entire industry relies on underpaid labor? I had to wonder if this notion works only to assuage a collective discomfort provoked by an unsettling fact, a binary options signals erfahrungen that should enrage us, that should disgrace us as a society: A few weeks later I gave a presentation at a local high school.
The teacher had asked me to talk to her food systems class about being an organic farmer. After I finished my talk the teacher turned to her class. Soshe asked, how many of you think you might consider a career in agriculture after high school?
Most of the kids probably earned more that this with a summer job. As the average age of the American farmer neared 65, I knew young farmers fastest way to make money in family farm seaside badly needed in this country.
And when the egret unfolded two white wings and lifted into the sky, a breath of wind pushed against my cheek. Surely there were plenty of professions that offered moments of joy and satisfaction, surely the doctor, the wildlife biologist, the chef, or mechanic, at times enjoys her work.
But no one expected these people to take this satisfaction as pay.
Like all the other farms I knew, my farm relied on uncompensated labor and self-exploitation. My farm was not sustainable because I knew the years my partner and I could continue to work without a viable income were numbered. One evening while running errands in town I recognized a customer walking toward me on the sidewalk.
Heythe woman said, I drove past your farm today, it looks beautiful, all those flowers blooming. I love having an organic farm in our community, the woman continued, I just think this whole food movement it so great. I imagined this woman walking into my farm stand, fumbling a tomato in her palm, admiring the new-car-shine how to get vc points in 2k13 ps3 each purple eggplant.
Maybe she chooses two crookneck squash and a handful of thumb-size jalapenos. Before getting back in her car she looks out at the fields, at the tidy rows of salad mix and baby kale; then the woman drives away smiling, watching my fields rise and fall in her rearview mirror. It fastest way to make money in family farm seaside abundance and prosperity— two young smiling farmers working among neat rows of greens under a crisp morning sun.
Heaping bins of produce, all of it picked fresh and free of synthetic chemicals. Meanwhile, millions of dollars in federal subsidies are doled out to mono-crop farms growing high-input GMO corn and soybeans. Meanwhile, the EPA continues to approve the use of pesticides such as Atrazine, which have been linked to birth defects, infertility and cancer.
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Meanwhile, the Supreme Court rules in favor of Monsanto, allowing the corporation to sue farmers journal entry for buying common shares fields are inadvertently contaminated with GMO seeds. Meanwhile, Ryan and I rifle the Internet in search of a new opportunity, one that can provide us with enough income to purchase health insurance or see the dentist, to take our soon-to-be-born child on a trip to visit its grandparents, to save a little chunk of money each year so that one day we might be able to buy a piece of land ourselves, and perhaps then we could return to farming.
I smiled at the woman on the street. Thanks, I said, and we both continued in our opposite directions. Then the woman glanced back over her shoulder, I hope the farm stays here forever, she added.
I hope you never go off and get a real job.
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I let out a too-quick, too-loud laugh. A quarter mile up the road from my farm the land rises just enough to give me the elevation to look down upon the entirety of my operation — the fields, the greenhouses, the barn.
I look down at my farm, at the rows of tomatoes and peppers. I notice the thistle has grown high around the fence line, the bindweed curling up the steel tines of an idle tractor implement. I wonder how long it would take for the landscape to erase my farm if I simply walked away, if I quit farming tomorrow.
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If no one dragged a scuffle hoe through the rows of onions or mowed the thistle, if no one harvested the wheat or the melons or the squash, no one seeded cover crop in fall. The thistle would flower, each bloom dropping a dozen yellow seeds into the soil like needles into a pincushion.
Ground squirrels would wait for the melons to ripen, for the pumpkins to flush orange, then carry them away in pieces. The neat edges of each half-acre block would fray, weeds creeping in until the 10 acres appeared once again undivided, just a fallow field. Or maybe another young farmer would take over my lease, buy the greenhouses and tractor equipment, irrigation lines and stacks of harvest bins.
Maybe this farmer would do it better, last longer. Or maybe she too would quit after only a handful of years. No regrets for Trump voters: Alexandria shooter acted alone Charlie May. Donald Trump is worth less than he was last year, but it has nothing to do with him Matthew Rozsa. Trump voters will stand by their man Amanda Marcotte. Uber founder Travis Kalanick resigns as CEO amid scandals Matthew Rozsa.
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Log out Sign in. Tuesday, Feb 10, AgricultureBig AgCaliforniaFarmingLife storiesLife News Credit: ThanksI said. Jaclyn Moyer is a writer and vegetable farmer based in the foothills of Northern California. Why Trump fans won't dump him now Amanda Marcotte. Why Oliver Stone is telling Putin's story: Dutch documentary investigates Trump's alleged past links to the Russian mob Alexandra Clinton. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited.
Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. I can't make a living",3],"2":