Forum: Author Hangout

animal abuse

Jenny the cow or Billy the pig or Nellie the chicken weren't allowed to be born or raised to be pets. They were born and raised to be FOOD.

It's also not in their best interest to be unkind to the animals that are their milk and butter, too. Those critters are their literal production machinery. Fair Oaks Farm with their herd of 35,000 dairy cows had a big stink about animal abuse a few years ago. The funny thing is - they'd already fired the three employees that had abused the animals before the story even broke, and there were no charges ever brought against the animal rights activist that was right there, FILIMING them. (It was reported he was also egging the morons on, too, but hey, activists can do that, right?)

cattle raising itself is a terrible use of limited resources

Are they grain fed, feed supplemented, or simply allowed to graze? What else do you propose to do with the 5,000 acre fields that grow grass and that's about it? Seems to be a great place to let cattle graze.

Again, these aren't pets. They are food. Also, having commercial meat processing plants helps farmers, by giving them someplace central to TAKE their animals for slaughter and processing. It hasn't hurt very many of the smaller slaughterhouses, either - and small farmers, if they can, will butcher their own animals, anyway. A couple sides of beef is enough to feed a family for a year.

cattle raising itself is a terrible use of limited resources

That's a common myth perpetuated by people who are ignorant of evolution and how it has resulted in dietary iron being far more effectively absorbed from beef than any other source.

AJ

Because no matter how much I like to argue with him, he's not a complete idiot?

However, I think what you're asking, versus what DS is answering, are two different things.

You're asking about whether it makes economic sense to sell what your farm produces yourself, or to the giant agri-business. In other words, if your local Kroger sources their produce and meat from farms that are within 50 miles of their store, versus selling your products to a the larger conglomerate. In milk production, for example, unless you have the equipment on hand, you're better off selling your milk to the local conglomerate because pasteurizing and otherwise making it ready for sale isn't cost effective.

In case you're curious on how big of a herd IS cost effective, Braum's in Tuttle, Oklahoma, has 15,000 dairy cows that support their own chain of 300 stores in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas, and they will only ship within a 330 mile radius of Tuttle for freshness.

Anyway, that's also why all the farmers in the area where I grew up took their grain to the elevator and sold it that way. Much easier to sell whatever you get there, and then the elevator aggregates it and ships it out via rail for processing for whatever end product. In Lafayette, Indiana, there are two huge corn processing facilities that make corn syrup (artificial sweetener) by the rail tank car load. Now, Joe Farmer on his small farm isn't going to negotiate with them for his four truck loads of corn - Joe's going to sell it to the elevator, and let Cargill, who owns the elevator, sell it to A.E. Staley's.

That's the question I think you, PB, are asking. Hey, why are they teaching people to sell their products to the big companies, instead of themselves?

Now, what DS is ANSWERING is, if we all started small farming instead of having our big farms, then yeah, welcome to mass starvation. In 2021, the US produced 31.7% of all the corn in the world - nearly 350 million metric tons. (That's more than 6 times the entire EU.) China was second, at 16.5%, and Brazil was third, at 8.25%.

However, in soybean production, Brazil and the US are nearly equal at about 120 million tons each, while China only produces 20 million. (Note that the EU barely produces 1.5 million tons.)

As for beef, the world produced 131 billion pounds in 2022. The US produced 28.3 billion, Brazil produced 22.8 billion. (The EU actually produced 15 billion pounds, which is the same amount China produced.)

When you can drive through Kansas and see some of the giant farms running six harvesters (or more) at the same time, it's the scale of operations that come into play. We used to joke about 'poor' farmers - because while they may only have a net income of $40,000 per year, they also had $3 MILLION in equipment at their farm. I still have cousins and friends in Indiana that are farmers. What happens with small farms is they don't have the cash reserves of a big business to handle two or three bad years in a row, whereas the big agri-business can simply write off their losses. That's how they became big companies in the first place, they bought up the farmland of people that went broke.

Now, the biggest thing that would be affected by breaking up the big companies is there wouldn't be enough people to farm all the land - which would probably cut our production in half. Seriously, the way people complain about having to work even forty hours per week, you think they're going to be happy having to work around the clock at harvest and planting time? Then, of course, if we cut back to the UN definition of small farms - 2.5 acres or less - and that's not just us, that's Brazil and the EU, as well - then you may as well figure 60% of the world will die from starvation, because you simply don't have either the supply or the distribution capabilities now - or for that matter, the number of people willing to work their butts off to feed themselves, let alone someone else. (We had about 1/2 acre as a garden when I was a kid, along with 4 acres where we had three cows. 10 rows of green beans, 4 rows of corn, 4 rows of tomatoes, lots of squash, and a dozen hills of potatoes, was the normal planting. It's a fuck load of work, and backbreaking to pick beans. Some years we'd have a surplus, some years after all that work, we got squat.)

University degrees, even at the undergraduate level are fairly expensive these days.

A university degree in small scale farming:

Would make no financial sense for the prospective farmer. Too high a cost for little to no prospective return on investment.

It would only make financial sense for the university if the government is willing to subsidize people obtaining such degrees.

As per my earlier post about college and universities in Colorado, Washington, and Wisconsin. All three are majority Democrat, and there are constituencies that desire "organic" produce, and "locavores" as well as "small" "family" farms and ranches (that remain profitable).

State colleges (formerly "community" colleges) and programs at State Universities (in particular Western Washington University and Central Washington University) have courses, even degrees that focus on "organic" farming, or various "boutique" (such as "exotic" cheeses, or goat milk products, etc. There are markets for these products. Mega-Agri-Conglomerates are rarely interested in dealing with the requirements (that may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction).

Co-Ops that assist in marketing (almost always "locally"), and allowing multiple smaller farms/ranches to band together to purchase (sometimes locally manufacture) pesticides, fertilizers, acquire insurance, etc. Some Co-Ops even have restaurants, grocery stores, etc.

Co-Ops, 4H, FFA (Future Farmers of America), and other organizations subsidize, or offer scholarships at local colleges and universities.

Despite being a One Party (D) State, California seems hostile to farmers of any type; despite the strong demand for "organic" food, flowers, etc. I have not looked lately, but I did not notice nearly as many programs for small "family" or even "organic" farming in colleges and universities in California; compared to Colorado, Washington, Wisconsin, or even Texas.

(I believe states such as Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming, among others have similar courses/programs for "family"/"organic" farming/ranching.)

Why universities aren't teaching/pushing small scale farming in their agriculture programs?

That's pretty much how I took it, and the answer is - in modern society, it's stupid and will kill lots of people from starvation.

There is this little thing called economy of scale. The decrease in unit cost of a product or service resulting from large-scale operations, as in mass production. Same thing happens with farming. A small scale farm (by the UN definition I mentioned) might have enough land to grow two bushels of wheat, since they're also going to have to grow every OTHER crop they need to live. Or you get a yield of 45 bushels (on average) per acre, giving you a yield of more than 1 million acres in an otherwise empty and rural township.

If nothing else, it'd take care of all the overcrowded cities around the world.

fuel for cars

About 40% of that gets wasted as biofuel.

the sugars and starches in the corn are converted to alcohol

The problem is, the energy content you get OUT of converting corn to alcohol is less than the energy you put into the process. I'm not talking about just the actual process itself. I'm also talking about the reduction in fuel economy in your vehicle - which is typically about 10% versus using 100% gasoline, regardless of the blend. Oh, and we have 100% gas still available here. It's just it's about 50 cents per gallon more expensive than E10.

Do small family farmers in the 21st century actually NEED to go to UNIVERSITY to learn their trade?
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As for the small number of Amish farmers in my county, they did not send their children to our public schools. I assume their homeschooling covered agricultural topics.

Do they NEED to? No. Does it help them? Yes. Now - let's use the US definition of a small farm, where the gross annual income is less than $250,000. 91% of all US farms classify as small farms - but keep in mind that includes all those 'farms' that have barely $1,000 in farm income, and in fact, primarily rely upon non-farm income to live. Also note that 85% of total market value in agriculture comes from large farms - not necessarily the big agribusinesses, either.

I grew up in a rural county in Indiana that Aroslav ended up using in one of his stories, but that's beside the point. The FFA guys in my school were like yours, in that they mostly only went to high school. And while WE would consider them a small farm, the USDA would classify them as a large farm, because their gross income would be more than $250,000, even if their NET income was only $20,000, once they got done paying off all their annual bills.

Perfect example would be the guy that owned the land next to ours. He was a 'poor' farmer. He owned (and the family, of course) owned basically four sections - about 2,500 acres of woods and cropland. He'd have a hundred head of livestock that grazed in the woods, and would farm half of it. He was always broke - but that's because he effectively only got paid twice a year. At harvest, he'd get half a million for his crops, and at butchering time, he'd get another half million for his cattle. But his EXPENSES were year round, so when it was all said and done, he may only show a net of $30,000 or so. His wife was the school nurse, so that's how they had health insurance. And, of course, he and his kids worked their butts off, keeping the machinery up.

As an aside, I remember when a guy came to town and said, hey, my car cost me $40,000 brand new, while looking down his nose at Sam. Sam just looked at him and said, "Shit, that's almost a down payment on my tractor."

Amish are a different story. It was funny that they would have a tractor - but only with steel wheels and a steel seat, no padding. They wouldn't hook up to the REMC, but they'd have a generator. They could have a washing machine, but not a dryer. And their kids were raised working on the farms. No 'child labor laws' for them - five year olds would help, at least in their gardens. Which I see nothing wrong with, myself.

Also note that 85% of total market value in agriculture comes from large farms - not necessarily the big agribusinesses, either.

You also have many that are more or less "hybrid" farms. Where they are still largely run as if they were a small farm, but owned by a larger company.

This is something I touched upon in one of my stories, as the JR Simplot company is one of the largest such operations in the nation. However, a great many of his farms were failing farms the company bought up during the various farm price crashes in the 1970s and 1980s. They would buy them out of bankruptcy, and would then be the owners. But the family would continue to work the land, and sharing in the profits.

Technically at that point they were "industrial farms", and provided their products to a single company. But each was still run like it always had been, and the main company rarely got involved unless asked.

But with the increase in urbanization farming seems to have largely devolved into almost a family business. And other than a few specialty high profit crops, I doubt that very many who get into it today need such educations as they grew up learning it.

I knew many in Idaho that planned on working the family farm. But I can't think of anybody I knew in California that had a dream of being a farmer when they graduated.