I recently ran into a farmland planning consultant on his way to a failing dairy in the Hudson Valley. Milk prices had fallen through the floor… again, and the farmer just couldn’t hold on anymore. When you’re about to lose the land that’s been in your family for five generations – the life’s work of your father, your grandfather, his father and his father – it can be hard to handle. And that’s why suicide is a leading cause of death among farmers. The consultant explained that right now, 78 dairies in the Hudson Valley are on the verge of bankruptcy. That news hit home when I got a call from a town councilman who informed me that one of my neighbors, a third generation dairyman, had sold his herd. He just couldn’t make it anymore on the price of commodity milk. Ughhh!
According to data from USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, between 2015 and 2017, 37,000 farms went out of business. That’s an average of 356 farms a week. That’s crazy!
Last time I checked, everyone I know is eating several times a day. Most of the 7.5 billion people on the planet are eating something every day. About 98 percent of our food comes from farms. It doesn’t make sense that farmers are going broke. It’s like knowing that people will always get sick, but doctors are going broke. That would never happen. So why is it happening to farmers?
Answer: The business model of American agriculture is a farce! A first class disaster! And it has to change!
The problem isn’t growing food. We grow enough food to provide nearly 3000 calories a day to everyone on Earth. The problem is the industrialization of food production and its distribution. The failure of industrial ag as a valid business model is blatantly obvious. Consider that for decades farm failures have exceeded farm creations by a large margin; That the American diet is miserably unhealthy because it is created by a miserably unhealthy production system; And that industrial farming has exhausted America’s soils through tillage and the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. This is a system that abuses people, animals, the land and water. It should have been abandoned long ago! So why hasn’t it?
Of course… it’s the money. There is enormous inequity in the flow of capital through the vertically-integrated industrial system which places farmers are at the bottom and multinational corporations and global commodity markets at the top. Between the bottom and the top is a supply chain populated by middlemen, each taking a cut of the “action”, as money and food flow along the chain. Those at the top always seem to profit. Those at the bottom always seem at risk of losing everything… to the tune of 356 farms a week.
So what’s the fix? Well, one thing that isn’t the fix is Congress. Congress’s solution to all things agricultural is to “prop up the industry” with subsidies. The feds spew billions into agriculture to help dairy farmers survive milk price failures, to help soybean farmers survive the trade wars, and ranchers to deal with the collapse of beef prices. Subsidies temporarily mitigate the anguish of watching your milk being poured into a ditch, your soybeans rotting in the field, or your cattle selling at auction for less than it cost you to raise them. But subsidies don’t provide a livelihood. The family farm is still failing. And the dignity of the American farmer is failing with it. “Propping up the industry” is like giving a shot of morphine to a cancer patient. It relieves the pain, but it doesn’t cure the disease. Famers don’t want to be propped up. They want a business model that works.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably not a farmer. Only one in a hundred people in this country makes a living farming. I’ll speak to that one percent soon, but first let me suggest to the other 99 percent that whether or not we cure the disease that afflicts modern agriculture depends largely on you. The most important component of agriculture is the consumer. The survival of every farm in America is in the hands of consumers. The thrice-daily act of eating is among our most intimate activities. It requires that the things we put in our mouths be flavorful, nourishing and above all, safe. The act of eating helps determine the health of the most important people in our lives. The relationship that consumers have with the people who produce their food should be equally intimate. It should be based on trust and respect and the belief that the people who produce our food are concerned with safety and quality.
Certainly, most of us cannot know where everything we put in our mouths comes from. But we can know a good deal about our food by getting to know the people who produce it. Opportunities abound: through farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA) programs and buyers’ clubs, to name just a few. By buying food from farms in your community, you ensure the sustainability of agriculture. You are the alternative to the failing industrial food system. You become the cure.
But farmers have to take the cure. The old ways don’t work anymore. Farmers need to embrace a new paradigm. Commodity prices are set by supply, demand, and other, often obscure, factors beyond the control of the farmer. If you don’t have control of your production and pricing, you don’t have control of your farm or its future. Consider dairy. If you produce fluid milk, you cannot sell it off the farm unless it’s pasteurized. If you don’t have pasteurization equipment, which is expensive, you depend on co-ops and corporations that do. And you become locked into commodity pricing. As a result, you may get less for your milk than it costs to produce. That’s not a business model!
When Seth McEchron convinced his dad to co-sign on a loan to purchase pasteurization equipment, he transformed his foundering family dairy in Washington County, NY, into one of the state’s top producers. Ronny Osofsky of Ronnybrook Dairy Farm and the Van Wie family of Meadowbrook Farm discovered the same thing years ago. Pasteurize your own milk and sell it directly to the public. Break free of commodity pricing and you control the future of your farm.
One savvy, 20 year old, whose family grows specialty crops for restaurants in Chicago, said it perfectly, “Those people growing thousands of acres of corn, never make any money. When they get a good harvest, corn prices fall; in a bad year, nobody has any corn to sell. How do you let someone else set your prices, anyway?” How come he gets it, and people who have been farming for 30 years don’t? Commodity ag is a bad deal for farmers and consumers alike. Food is part of our life support system. It is not a commodity!
Certainly, I’ll bring my culled lambs to the auction, where I might get 89 cents a pound for runt, but that’s really not how I sell my lamb. I have a relationship with my customers, created by years of working together in the food system. My customers know how we raise our lambs, because we tell them how we do it. They appreciate that our lambs are born on pasture, weaned when their mothers – not the farmers – decide to wean, fed only forage from our pastures and prime-quality hay, and provided with a clean, safe, low-stress environment. My customers appreciate that. They appreciate the care we take in producing their food, and our food – we eat it too. They pay a lot more for that food than 89 cents a pound. It’s worth it to them. Call it what you want – niche marketing (necessary for small farms), community supported agriculture, direct marketing. It’s really about providing great food at a fair price. It’s also about providing information. Consumers want to know how their food is produced. They want the “backstory”. Delicious vegetables are more delicious when people know how you grew them, how you care for the land and that your family eats them too.
“Diversity” may be the most important word in agriculture. When we hear that word, most of us think biology. And certainly the biodiversity of the plants in our pastures, of the microbes in our soils, of the pollinators in our hedgerows, is crucial to a farm’s productivity. But diversity in what we produce and in the markets we sell to are equally important to our bottom lines. Industrial agriculture is based on monoculture – one farmer, one product. Reality check: Nature abhors monocultures. She destroys them. If you produce monocultures you will spend enormous amounts of time, money and sweat in a hopeless battle against pests, diseases and soil degradation. Ultimately, you will fail.
Diversity, on the other hand, creates stability. Diversify your production. Diversify your markets. Before Richard Ball (now New York State Commissioner of Ag and Markets) bought Schoharie Valley Farms and the Carrot Barn, the guy who owned the farm produced one product, carrots, which were sold to one customer, Beechnut Baby Foods in Canajoharie, NY. When Beechnut decided that they didn’t want his carrots anymore, the farm went bust. When Richard Ball bought it, he planted all sorts of vegetables. His wife, Sue, started a nursery, producing flowers and, in season, mums, Christmas trees and ornaments. Richard turned the carrot barn into a retail store, selling much of his own produce, as well as produce from farms throughout the region and beyond. He sold to diverse markets, including grocery stores, restaurants, institutions and when the price was right, commodity markets. His kids have since bought into the operation, opening a bakery and a lunch counter in the Carrot Barn. Result: No matter how any single market fluctuates, Richard’s operation is always stable. Just like a well-balanced investment portfolio. Diversity creates stability.
At Longfield Farm, production and market diversity are what make us profitable. We sell grass fed – grass finished lamb directly to our customers. We sell eggs from the farm, at farmers markets and to a restaurant. We sell pastured broiler chickens through a CSA. We sell fine woolens and fiber crafts at juried craft shows, at famers markets, and at a State operated, Taste NY store. We sell Pam’s greeting cards made from photos of critters on the farm, and we sell a book that I wrote and Pam illustrated at several markets. Everything is also for sale at our website. And, of course, we sell over 100 breads a week at farmers markets. Some growers might argue that’s we’re trying to do too much. Not so, sez I. Even though we’re a couple 60-something seniors working a tiny farm, we’re doing quite well. And if we can do it, you can do it!
As long as people eat, we’re going to need farmers. Farm failure is not acceptable. If Congress won’t fix the food system, we need to do it ourselves – we who produce food; we who consume it. It’s about the health of our families and the health of our planet.