We would have to modify some of our socioeconomic structures to support small-scale farms. Most importantly, the financial pressures placed on small farmers need to be significantly scaled back/curtailed. A family farmer should not be in a position where a single crop failure or inadequate yield results in the end of their operation. Also, the problem of glut-starvation-cycle, where a price drop forces the farmer to grow more, pushing the price lower, needs to be managed in some way better than just free market capitalism.
If small farmers are so marginal that they have to use barrels of pesticides/herbicides/antibiotics to get a good enough yield, I believe that is a serious problem that needs to not happen. Financial security should be all but guaranteed if we want to retain a strong contingent of skilled, experienced agriculturalists.
But whence do these current financial pressures come? Oh, yeah, guys wearing suits, working in 37th floor offices in the city. Most urbanites give little thought to the country folk, but those that give them the most thought are the ones calculating how much more can be squeezed out of those people. The only people counting beans should be the ones growing them.
Of course, the obvious solution for this is for farmers to work together, either in the form of cooperatives or voluntary collectivization. A single family farm is inherently less efficient than a corporation; a group of farmers working together for their mutual benefit can be more efficient.
New Yorkers often forget that after the 40 min drive they actually care about, New York State has another 5-6 hours of driving to reach the other side of it.
I would suspect that as with most states that contain one or more major metropolis, most of the population and wealth actually sits within the relatively small area of the citie’s metro area. So it’s really the city that subsidizes the rest of the state.
But to your point, I would imagine most rural people don’t want to pay high state taxes for things like railroads and highways so they can be more connected to places they don’t really want to connect to in the first place.
Right, nothing controversial there about redrawing the map of the United States along a half dozen or so megacities.
How would that help small farmers compete against Big Ag? Small farmers are essentially share-croppers now, they may own their land but they are working to get a cut of the yield which may entirely be owned by someone else.
I don’t know why people think there’s even a reason to have small family farms any more than small family car manufacturers. It’s a quaint notion but not really practical to meet even a small portion of our agricultural needs.
A base income against the potential of bankruptcy is good for everyone. It may be just the sort of small boost that small farmers and rural areas in general need to keep people sticking around instead of fleeing to the more populated parts.
We still get the vast majority of our food from smaller operations. Those crappy tomatoes in the supermarket, they weren’t grown by a large corporation, they were grown on a family farm.
You really are moving goalposts here. First you said we needed to keep family farms to keep us from having crappy food. Then you said that the food that we have is crappy, and we need the farms that are producing crappy food or we will have even crappier food.
Maybe what you are thinking of is artisanal farms, where they use very unsustainable practices to produce a higher quality product that they sell at a premium.
Those will probably stick around, as they do not need to be economical, as they cater to the population that doesn’t care about price. Mostly people that work in 37 story towers in the city.
But not everyone can afford to shop at whole foods. The rest of us need to eat as well.
Sure, and it is often even complained about even if the recipient is living at the same address as the complainant. Even if the recipient shaves the complainant’s face every morning.
I grew up pretty rural, my father grew up on a farm, and then made his living selling farm equipment. I’m still more on the outskirts than in a city, but the city is encroaching. 15 years ago, where I sit now was a field.
And yes, rural people do consider themselves to be the real Americans, they do consider the people in the city to be weak and immoral. They are told that they are the real Americans, by the politicians that pander to them, and by the media they choose to consume.
They complain that all their problems come from the cities, and they are very distrustful of anyone who is perceived to be from the city.
Not in my experience. Sometimes they will talk shit behind someone’s back if they find out that they are on some form of assitance, but that is just being snide and mean, as they are sometimes.
But, if they think that a fair chunk of their local taxes are going to pay for those benefits, then they are misinformed, whether through deliberate willful ignorance, or because they have chosen to consume media that will mislead them.
Which is why we pay more in taxes, and also pay more for food, in order to alter the playing field to keep them on it.
The financial pressures comes from the same place that anyone running a business gets pressure from. Competition, and the consumer’s desire for less expensive products. That’s not because there’s a bean counter in the 37th floor, that’s because that’s just how a market works.
During the great depression, farmers were actually shooting at eachother to keep their neighbor from taking their products to market.
Yep, and that is how the agricorps that everyone likes to complain about got their start.
In my youth I lived in an unincorporated part of the county that was the major economic center for the county outside of the city. And then the city decided to annex.
The annexation was not of homes. The city drew the boundaries to engulf businesses and exclude residents. This resulted in the city robbing the sales tax base of the county while limiting to the maximum extent any services the city would need to provide.
The most immediate effect on services was the volunteer fire department that served the area having its county funding cut due to lower tax revenues for the county. And yet the VFD was still expected to be the primary fire response for these businesses that were now in the city until the city could get around to figuring out how and if they would provide fire protection…
Those pandering politicians and journalists have been doing so for over 200 years. Heck, Jefferson was all about the myth of the virtuous Yeoman Farmer (himself being anything but that) as the bedrock of the Republic , in opposition to the corrupt urban moneymen.
No. I said one thing, which you are misinterpreting in various ways.
I will grant one thing: ‘family farms’ is an extremely vague term. Walmart is a family business, after all. I tried to shorten posts by using your terminology, but that was probably a mistake.
To the contrary. The farms I’m thinking of are generally the ones that are using sustainable practices, or trying to according to our best knowledge at a given time – practices that sustain the health of the soil and the diversity and health of crop species and other species in the farm environment (humans included), over the long term.
Maybe that’s the only place you personally can find a tomato with flavor (and the better nutrition that often goes along with it.) There are plenty of people, including rural people, who select for quality produce at farmers’ markets, at the farms themselves, through CSA’s, etc. The price premium is generally much less than at Whole Foods when it exists at all, and systems are often available to provide discounts to those who need them.
Your repeating this broad brushed canard isn’t evidence for it. Sure, some rural people think that way. And some city people think rural people are all deadbeats living on welfare. But there are large numbers of people in both categories who know better; and also large numbers who don’t spend any significant chunk of their time thinking about anyone who doesn’t live like they do.
In New York State, some benefits are paid for by county taxes, and do take a significant chunk of those. Other states may do it differently.
I’m curious as to where this was. In my locality, there are county levied taxes (sales and property), and any city taxes are additive to that. So if an unincorporated area is grabbed by a city, the county doesn’t lose any taxes. Not surprised that it works differently in different places, but just curious as to where that was.
“Often they want it to go away to rural areas”? Hell, that’s just not so - here in town we’re piling it up in Constitution Park and on the high-school football field!
Running out of space, though, so we’re looking around for new sites. Where did you say you’re located?
The city of Spokane did something similar to this around 25 years ago. There’s a suburban neighborhood just north of the city limits that’s surrounded on three sides by Spokane. For years, Spokane has tried to annex the area but each attempt to do has been overwhelmingly rejected by the residents (e.g., the last time annexation was put up to vote, it lost by a 7 to 1 margin). The eastern boundary of the neighborhood is Division Street which is a major commercial thoroughfare with fast food joints and big box stores lining both sides of the street. Since these businesses were the real treasures the city was seeking, Spokane limited its annexation to the commercial property on the west side of Division Street and let the mostly suburban remainder of the parcel remain in unincorporated Spokane County.
No, it’s labeled “Town and Country” on Google Maps and sometimes called “Linwood.” It’s bordered by Francis Avenue on the south, Cedar Street on the west, and a line of commercial lots along Division Street on the east.