Small Family Farms: Definition and Some Challenges

Sometimes it seems like the world I think I know is just a falsehood, a play put on by the Powers That Be to keep me pacified, dumbed down, and walking the way they want me to walk.

Take, for example, farming in the United States.  This has always been, in my estimation, an honorable profession.  The nation was founded by farmers wealthy and dirt-scrabble poor.  Farming helped drive the expansion and eventual rise of the nation.  Farming has fed us all.

But when I speak of farming, I have in my mind a certain kind of farm.  It’s not too big; not more than a family can manage.  Maybe it’s several hundred acres or more if it’s a ranch out west running cattle.  If it’s dairy, it’s only got 200 or less cows.  If it’s vegetables it’s growing a main crop and then lots of little crops for the farmers’ family.  Or maybe it’s like my farm, with lots of different vegetables in small amounts, and some goats for milk, cheese and manure.  The animals on the family farm are healthy, happy and living under the warmth of the sunshine in deep green pastures, or roaming semi-free over hot western plains.  You know, the farm looks like all the commercials we see.

A farm is not a CAFO (‘Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation’).  It is not 10,000 chickens or 2,000 pigs, or 5,000 cattle all under the same roof.  These animals never see the light of day.  They are given only square feet to live in.  They are dealt with as though they were pieces of plastic running down an assembly line belt.  That is not farming.  And yet, CAFOs have become the source of much of the meat we eat, much to our shame.

A small farm does not have a ‘manure lagoon‘ which is full of liquid that can be so deadly it will kill you if you fall into it.

The farmer (read manager) of a huge agri-business farm uses satellite positioning and GPS to determine when and where to fertilize and harvest.  The manager ‘drives’ a tractor which can be self-steering (pdf).   Computer monitors sense the condition of the soil, the air, the plants.  These give feedback that tells the manager when to plant, fertilize, harvest.  Anyone can do it, as long as they can read a computer screen.

A farmer walks her acres, strand of grass in mouth, feeling the condition of her plants and soil.

Small farms, traditional farms, don’t grow patented seed.  They don’t grow seed which has been bio-engineered with e. coli (yes, e. coli!) to carry resistance to herbicides.

A true farmer plants traditionally hybridized or open pollinated seed.  She tries to find organic seed if possible.  She uses seed catalogs which source from places other than huge seed houses which are trying to lock up all the genetic potential in plants through patents on common seed genomes.

Small farming is under attack from every side in our world.  It is almost impossible to make a decent living from a family sized farm.  For several generations now often one part of the family has to work off the farm to make it viable.  In my own family, the men worked off the farm and the women farmed.  We are so used to subsidized food, subsidies started in part by FDR to help even out the ups and downs of farming but quickly taken over by big business, that we don’t know what it really costs to grow it.  Believe me, it costs more than 79 cents a pound cabbage.

Dairy farms are under attack.  Recently official prices for milk were lowered to below break even point for farmers.  Thousands left the business, closing up family farms (note that in this article, even 1000 cow dairies, BIG dairies are closing) .  What is left?  Big Agribusiness, of course.

The government, in a scramble to prove to voters that it really does care that food be safe, is legislating and regulating small farming out of existence.  Dairy farms, cheese making operations with actual ties to farms (not Kraft, thank you), CSAs and even backyard vegetable patches are coming under increased regulatory scrutiny. The amount of food borne illness attributable to these operations is infinitesimal,  and yet, that is what is regulated.  Only 1% of food shipments into the country will be inspected, only written warnings, blown off by the egg factories which then recall 1/2 a billion eggs, will be issued.  But you’ll be safe from your neighbors’ eggplant!

Below is the trailer for a new documentary:  Farmageddon