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Original URL: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm
Liz Whitehurst dabbled in several careers before she ended up here, crating fistfuls of fresh-cut arugula in the early-November chill.
The hours were better at her nonprofit jobs. So were the benefits. But two years ago, the 32-year-old Whitehurst — who graduated from a liberal arts college and grew up in the Chicago suburbs — abandoned Washington for this three-acre farm in Upper Marlboro, Md.
[...] This new generation can't hope to replace the numbers that farming is losing to age. But it is already contributing to the growth of the local-food movement and could help preserve the place of midsize farms in the rural landscape.
"We're going to see a sea change in American agriculture as the next generation gets on the land," said Kathleen Merrigan, the head of the Food Institute at George Washington University and a deputy secretary at the Department of Agriculture under President Barack Obama. "The only question is whether they'll get on the land, given the challenges."
The number of farmers age 25 to 34 grew 2.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the 2014 USDA census, a period when other groups of farmers — save the oldest — shrunk by double digits. In some states, such as California, Nebraska and South Dakota, the number of beginning farmers has grown by 20 percent or more.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:20PM (22 children)
The article does not address some key points:
What their rate of commercial success is.
Where they acquire land, or capital for obtaining land.
Where and how they obtain training (or information).
What programmes are available for them at state and federal level, of which they may not be taking full advantage.
How the current situation came to be with respect to regulations and subsidies in specific, that prefer large farms over small.
It's a nice feel-good piece, but it should have been much larger and more in-depth. One of the major concerns is that most small businesses fail within 5 years - and farms are businesses.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:00PM (7 children)
I've tried with little success to find a local farmer (Finger Lakes area of NY State) to simply take the hay off my 90 acre rural property. As a result, the fields (about 20 acres, rest is steep/wooded) are tree-ing in.
My parents bought the land for a family retreat in the 1960s and back then there was a nice old dairy farmer who took the hay for his cows. Once he retired, there has never been anyone regular. I love the place, but it's a couple of hours away by car and I don't have time to give it the attention it deserves.
It would be great to have some aspiring young farmer growing crops (we never sprayed the fields--so it is ready for organic), but I fear it's too far from any city or larger farmer's market to be a good location.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:30PM (5 children)
You might consider a lease. Farmers who might be reluctant to work another person's land, may be more willing to lease that land, for twenty, fifty, or 100 years. It's kinda like a rental, but of course, it's different. With a lease, all of YOUR rights are spelled out, and all of HIS rights are spelled out. You get payments, regularly, according to the schedule you agree on.
For his part, that farmer has invested something into your land, and he's not going to neglect it. If he only pays you a couple hundred dollars per year, he's going to get all he can for that money. If he's paying you a thousand dollars per year, he's going to do his best to get five thousand dollars out of that land.
I would imagine (don't really know) that you can make arrangements through a real estate agent. See a lawyer, get some guidance on the lease, then have a real estate agent advertise your land for lease. See the lawyer again before actually signing the lease. Lease the entire property, or lease just those bottom lands fit for hay and/or truck farming. If you have buildings that might be leased with the property, the value increases tremendously.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:59PM (4 children)
It's a poor area (who would have guessed in NY State) and as the farmers leave then the rural land is being bought up by NY City money...who use it once a year for deer (etc.) hunting. I'll investigate your idea of a lease, but don't have much hope when everyone with farming history is leaving (and/or dying off).
Our land is posted for no hunting, but we don't even try to go there during the seasons (bow and gun) due to the danger. I've collected many shells and even removed a couple of tree stands left by illegal hunters. Oh, and found a wide variety of beer cans, wine bottles and hard liquor bottles--hunters seem to be drunks(?)
Over the years a few neighbors have asked to hunt and I'm happy to give them permission (often kids going for rabbit or squirrel with a 22 or something small), but I wish I could do something to keep out the drunk hunters that come in from the cities.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @08:49PM (3 children)
Go to a sporting goods store.
Buy some game tracking cameras.
Salt your property with them. Especially places where they might walk or park.
Go to your local county sheriff's office with pictures, and your lawyer.
Nail them hard.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:16PM (1 child)
Nice idea, but the local sheriffs (and deputies) are often hunting too, along with the influx from the big cities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @12:37AM
If they are trespassing on your land, and you have evidence, then you take it to state enforcement.
Many sheriffs have discovered that there's a bigger dog, rather to their disgust.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Monday November 27 2017, @01:26AM
I don't live in the US, so I don't have to deal with that particular genus of redneck. However, I got really REALLY really sick of poaching on my land soon after buying it. I posted no trespassing signs all over the place, and scattered game cameras around the woods. Since then, I've had no further sign of poaching. Granted, I live on the property so it's easier for me, but a lot of it has to do with marking my territory with the signs. It signals to assholes that things have changed and word gets around that someone new owns the land.
All I've caught on the camera so far are deer, but it makes for pleasant watching.
When there's a vacant property and people have been doing whatever they want on it for years with impunity, it's going to be hard to change that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:38PM
Let the land tree in. Or have a proper mixed forest planted on it. Your local DNR can probably help.
Your kids or grand kids can harvest the wood and start again.
Its better for the environment, and you are hopeless at farming anyway, and apparently so were your parents.
Nobody needs that hay.
The reason there is so much of that happening to land everywhere is that there is no longer any need to have that much land under cultivation.
Especially land in that particular area. Dairy was all it was really ever good for - maybe sheep, but you clearly don't seem interested in that.
So give the world a gift of trees.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:18PM (13 children)
Those are all very good questions, and the point that struck me in the article is that the women work a 3 acre farm.
Where I come from that is nowhere near big enough to make a living, and would be considered a lifestyle block, (a really, really small one).
As a comparison, my brother lives on 10 acres and makes enough money from the few sheep and beef cattle he fattens up each year to pay his insurance and land taxes, so there is some financial benefit, but he still needs to work a job in town.
I'm guessing vegetable growing is more lucrative, but the bulk of their income is from subsidies.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:41PM (4 children)
On the other hand, you can almost live and raise a family off of what you can grow on three acres. 5 or 8 would be better. Then you would have room for a small barn, couple of cows and chicken coop.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by qzm on Sunday November 26 2017, @10:23PM (3 children)
Ummm. No. No you cannot.
Not even close.
You really don't have any clue about farming, do you?
What these people are doing is a lifestyle, not a job.
3 acres would barely feed a small family on average, let alone anything else.
It is a large back yard, not a farm.
I am sure they enjoy doing it, and feel good about themselves, however it has very little to do with farming.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:28PM (1 child)
That's right. 3 acres is a joke, a veggie garden, not a real farm. Anyone who thinks otherwise is woefully clueless.
In the 1930s, my grandfather farmed 80 acres in Iowa with a team of horses, and even then that was small. With the arrival of the tractor on their farm in 1939, they needed to expand. Needed 160 acres, minimum. Instead, my grandfather kept farming on just 80 acres and took a job as a postman, while my grandmother got a job as a schoolteacher. Today, you need at least 500 acres, if you have livestock. If you're only going to grow crops, you need 1000 acres. There's no freaking way a few people can cover that much ground without serious farming equipment.
The sorts of stuff you see in food commercials, of people walking up and down the rows carrying sacks from which to sow seeds by hand, or swinging scythes to harvest grain, is extremely antiquated nonsense.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Monday November 27 2017, @01:43AM
No, no, no. See my other comment.
You need 1000 acres if you're farming like the kind of farmer who needs 1000 acres. Think like a farmer who only has three acres, and your viewpoint changes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Monday November 27 2017, @01:41AM
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @10:55PM (7 children)
Well, you have to do a good job of selecting your crops and finding markets for those.
This guy [wikipedia.org] was a bit of a legend in the field of farming in the city.
.
Today [armoudian.com] on her "Scholars' Circle" broadcast/webcast, [kpfk.org] on Pacifica Radio, Prof. Maria Armoudian interviewed farm boy turned city boy turned farmer Will Allen, author of Good Food Revolution.
A major topic was building proper soil without using petrochemicals (with an emphasis again on worms).
N.B. His disciples are even doing this in the city and they do that ON TOP OF concrete/asphalt because of the contaminants that are in the even-worse stuff that is under that.
The 2nd half hour of the program has food activist Prof. Raj Patel and Saru Jayaraman JD, founding director of the UC Berkeley Food Labor Research Center.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Monday November 27 2017, @02:41AM (6 children)
Square foot gardening gave me a pretty good yield a year ago while my wife's growing in rows (and walking between the rows) yielded less per foot. Definitely disturbing the soil as little as you can, and treating it organically and with good compost helps.
But it IS work, and between work and our son, i found it too much, really, for us to maintain, so this year i switched to growing the asparagus i planted 2 years ago and last year (next year i will get my first harvest) and potatoes.
Got a nice yield of potatoes and next year will get a fair amount of asparagus, and THAT yield will go up for the next 20 years, hoping.
I'm planning on expanding my potato farm, and between the asparagus, the potatoes and what my wife grows, we should be doing pretty well in our back yard.
When i retire, that all may expand.
Won't reach the yields of the guy you're talking about though.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @05:07AM
Clearly, you need to concentrate more on acquiring earthworms.
(Contact Les Nessman.) [google.com]
...or go completely nuts. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @06:57PM (4 children)
Most aliums are pretty good "leave-alone" plants, if you're looking to grow more without much work. Plant into mulch if you're after bulbs (or use a topsetting variety), and the best thing is they like the shade so you don't have to use to your nice sunny spots. Even if you don't plant them, original owner's recommendation of building soil is good. Start building raised beds now (if you've got years to do it, use wood, leaves, lawn clippings, cat and dog shit, anything that will decompose, just keep piling it up!) so that you don't have to bend over so much when you're ready to garden more intensively again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:43PM
The recommendations I've heard specifically say to avoid cat poop.
It can contain human-threatening parasites. [google.com]
(The heap won't get hot enough to destroy the eggs.)
Now, if you're going to use your compost on house plants that don't produce edibles, pet poop is acceptable.
The problem with putting anything non-plant-based into a compost heap is that it then tends to attract vermin.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 27 2017, @09:52PM (2 children)
Oh yeah, raised beds all the way and i'm getting a tumbling composter for Christmas that i'll put near the back door for kitchen compost. I have a couple garbage cans and a couple pickle barrels full of leaves, clippings and some food.
Just can't get enough compost!!!
I was thinking i should make a solar oven to cook the dog poo: cook it til it HAS to be free of pathogens, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @11:46PM (1 child)
2 of each would be even better: a just-started unit and a pretty-much-done unit.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:42AM
I see you've met my girlfriend and my wife!
:)
I am in ssssooooooooooooo much trouble!!!!!
Luceeeee, I'm home!!!! *Bammm!*
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---