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What are the processes that small-to medium scale successful farmers go through to take their harvests to market in the modern day? Or like anything you can tell me about farming in the US from personal experience, really.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:20
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I grew up on a small dairy farm in Michigan in the 80s and 90s. We sold our milk through the Michigan Milk Producers Association who sent a truck every few days to take the milk away. After paying the bills and feed we made almost no money as we didn't have enough pasture for the number of cows, which lead to lots of problems with mastitis and other diseases and bringing us a much lower price for our milk. Our equipment was state of the art in the mid 1970s so we put in a lot more work than someone with modern equipment would. All in all it was a pretty hellish existence and I got more sleep and did less work when I was in basic training than I did on the farm. I'm sure there are small farms that do fine and all, but if they're not set up right they're not much fun at all.
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Sep 4, 2014 22:43
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There are a few farmer goons on the forums and now and then they'll pop up and do a thread. Always great reading and I hope they pop in here. It does always seem to boil down to you better loving love it, though, because there are little profits, no vacations and no sick days.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:54
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I currently live and work on our family farm in mid-western Canada if that's close enough. It's a little different than the US but probably close enough for general info. Not sure what you would like to know though, it's kind of a broad ranging topic.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:06
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ZoneManagement posted:There are a few farmer goons on the forums and now and then they'll pop up and do a thread. Always great reading and I hope they pop in here. It does always seem to boil down to you better loving love it, though, because there are little profits, no vacations and no sick days. Depends if you're doing livestock or cash crop. If you are lucky enough to be born into a family that located in a good area 100 years ago, you can do really well for yourself and have a fair amount of time off (compared to, say, dairy farmers, who work 5 am to 10 pm every day of their lives). As to getting product to market, for cash crop, you dry the grain, put it in storage bins, and haul it/pay someone to haul it to the nearby elevator or wherever else. That said, harvesting the grain can vary wildly - my dad transitioned to selling prairie grass seed instead of corn/beans, and the contraption he had to use was quite Rube Goldbergian.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:33
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Feral Integral posted:What are the processes that small-to medium scale successful farmers go through to take their harvests to market in the modern day? Or like anything you can tell me about farming in the US from personal experience, really. I grew up in Wisconsin, the few farms that could be described as small or family focused on dairy and high quality meat. There is essentially no money in crop farming until you get to massive economies of scale. The only exception is organic stuff, which can be successful because of the price premium and branding.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:37
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mastershakeman posted:Depends if you're doing livestock or cash crop. If you are lucky enough to be born into a family that located in a good area 100 years ago, you can do really well for yourself and have a fair amount of time off (compared to, say, dairy farmers, who work 5 am to 10 pm every day of their lives). Here in Norway farmers typically organise "avløserlag" (something like "relief team") to act as a kind of specialised employment agency that provides workers to temporarily take over the farm work if a farmer wants to go on holiday or is laid low by injury or illness. Is there no equivalent of this in the US?
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Sep 5, 2014 10:13
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Same system in Finland, my fiances sisters husband is a dairy farmer and he usually can only take a few days at a time in vacation, longest he ever had was 1.5 weeks. He needs to get someone to fill in for him every day he's on vacation or he can't get any.
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Sep 5, 2014 11:45
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Kopijeger posted:Here in Norway farmers typically organise "avløserlag" (something like "relief team") to act as a kind of specialised employment agency that provides workers to temporarily take over the farm work if a farmer wants to go on holiday or is laid low by injury or illness. Is there no equivalent of this in the US? No lol. You can hire a buncha illegals to help for cheap but if you get sick you get the dick
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Sep 5, 2014 11:54
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My friends family owns a massive dairy farm and they have this automatic milking system. Like, the cow gets on a pressure plate, suction caps automatically go on the udders and they go on their way. The cows come and go as they please and the family gets to take it easy. I think they are called AMS machines. I don't know many unsuccessful farm owners over here. One of my Dad's friends owns a sorghum farm and used to hobby farm cows, but discovered that his line of cows (dunno what kind) came from excellent stock so now he takes it easy breeding and milking bulls to sell to other farmers to improve their stock. Another is a local real estate tycoon who bought a few cotton and wheat farms that would earn him a very respectful living even after hiring a bunch of Zimbabwe (Boers?) refugees to run them. I live in Australia though, so it's not helpful for the OP. But I am curious as to what the average sized small/medium farm is in America. Most farmers lease land from the government over here so farms aren't small.
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Sep 5, 2014 12:13
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Some relatives of mine own what was once their family's farm, but now they all have other jobs and just collect a small amount of money from the land, while an in-law does the actual farming on theirs and a bunch of other farms for about 2/3rds of the harvest. Farmers around my area don't seem to have it so bad, because the price of land has been continually going up, and that brief ethanol fad inflated corn prices. Still, more and more farmland keeps getting consolodated in fewer and fewer hands, and I get the impression that unless you were born into the profession and are starting off with farm assets you'd better forget it. But I'm only tangitally connected to farming so what do I know. Also, I have zero firsthand knowledge, but I hear that when it comes to hand-picked crops (fruits, vegetables) some 60-70% of the workforce in the US consists of illegal immigrants being paid under the table. It's a disgusting situation.
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Sep 6, 2014 04:25
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mastershakeman posted:If you are lucky enough to be born into a family that located in a good area 100 years ago, you can do really well for yourself and have a fair amount of time off (compared to, say, dairy farmers, who work 5 am to 10 pm every day of their lives). That's us. Once I get off work in an hour I'll answer any questions about medium-large scale grain production. Also genetic engineering since that's what I'm studying in school.
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Sep 6, 2014 05:02
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ghetto wormhole posted:That's us. Once I get off work in an hour I'll answer any questions about medium-large scale grain production. Also genetic engineering since that's what I'm studying in school. When you say genetic engineering, do you mean like the sci-fi taking of genes from one source and splicing them into another or are we talking the less sci-fi trait selection?
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Sep 6, 2014 05:44
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Lord Windy posted:When you say genetic engineering, do you mean like the sci-fi taking of genes from one source and splicing them into another or are we talking the less sci-fi trait selection? The former, though I know a lot about traditional breeding too.
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Sep 6, 2014 05:58
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That is awesome, how difficult is it to do? Do you get to do it in class/college or do you just learn the the theory and see examples? You should make a thread, because I would have a million questions.
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Sep 6, 2014 06:37
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Lord Windy posted:That is awesome, how difficult is it to do? Do you get to do it in class/college or do you just learn the the theory and see examples? You should make a thread, because I would have a million questions. It's not super hard to do, it just requires a lot of trial and error since honestly our current methods are fairly primitive compared to what most people probably imagine. I'm just a lowly undergrad so I've never gotten to actually do any of it, we just learn the theory, but I'm sure grad students can have the opportunity. Here's a really good video I stole from my plant science lab a couple semesters ago that explains one method pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTraZwHDHXk Gene guns are the other method used for plant transgenics. Sorry to derail your thread OP, although this type of stuff is pretty important to farming in the US. As far as taking our crops to the market goes we harvest the grain, load it on to semi trailers(we'll have 2-5 trucks and 1-2 harvesters operating at once when harvesting) and then either take it to our grain bins for storage or immediately take it to the local grain elevator where it's sold through the local farmers' cooperative and taken away by train. Any grain stored in bins is eventually taken to the coop when it needs to be sold. Ideally the grain will be dry enough when harvested to be stored without needing additional drying but that's not always possible so sometimes that is also required. We occasionally grow sunflowers and the local coop doesn't take the seed so we have to pay to have it trucked a couple hundred miles to a place that does take them(I think it's a different coop?). Here's a cool picture I took last spring of the inside of one of our newer tractors:  And here's one of the controls of a combine(harvester):  A lot of things are controlled/adjusted by that touch screen, also the GPS guidance/tracking unit you can see in the left side of the tractor picture is put in the combine when it's being used. It costs more than my car did.
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Sep 6, 2014 07:44
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Feral Integral posted:What are the processes that small-to medium scale successful farmers go through to take their harvests to market in the modern day? Or like anything you can tell me about farming in the US from personal experience, really. What would you like to know? My grandfathers generation owed 1000+ acres, most of which we now rent out for farming. We do have a small (120-ish total) acre farm that I have always live on/near. My father raises meat cows, which he gives to the family and sometimes sells. Most of what we do is make hay however. So I can answer small farm questions, and maybe some about the other. I have an Ag degree, but have never worked on anything but a 'small' farm. I do know Non-commercial mid-large agricultural operations are rapidly dwindling population. If you aren't employed by one of these large corporations , or have a family who has been hand-me-downed a farm, getting into the mid-large game is virtually impossible. The cost of buying land, equipment and the upkeep of them (even on a small farm) is exuberant and you almost never make back your operating costs. The benefit of farming comes from your love of the work, nature and having your own crops/meat (also the friends you make). Not saying you want to, but let it be known that no one would get into farm ownership in this day in age just to make money.
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Sep 11, 2014 04:44
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I work as an ag lobbyist to the EU, so if you have any policy questions 
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Sep 11, 2014 11:24
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I was one of the fourth generation of my family to grow up/live on our cattle ranch on the very rural plains. It's a small family operation and it really only exists because my dad is incredibly dedicated and loves what he does. It is not remotely lucrative and a lot of intense work, best example is during calving season in late winter and early spring. The momma cows start dropping babies right when the worst blizzards hit. Often they go into labor because of the big storms. So, like clockwork, he does his rounds to check on the expecting mothers every 3 hours, day and night, for 4-6 weeks in the shittiest weather. Anyway, it's tough to make it as a small operation. That's been the trend for a long time. Not to say there aren't benefits. Awesome, amazingly awesome, garden produce and home-grown, grass-fed beef. Your own pretty big chunk of land, good hunting grounds, complete independence. He doesn't really get vacations but thankfully we have several family members ranching nearby who are often willing to help watch things so he can sneak away for a long weekend, and we returned the favor. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Sep 12, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 06:59
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Corn
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Sep 12, 2014 07:21
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I co-own a small farm in Vermont (3 dudes, ~80 acres), and is pretty much impossible for us to make money by simply growing crops or raising animals. Small farms in this era really need to develop value-added products to stay afloat. In our case, we have our meats processed into "cured" meat products and we are building a distillery to process our fruits and grain into brandy and whiskey. What sort of aspects of the small farm experience are you interested in? I can tell stories about dealing with livestock and going to equipment auctions, or I can tell you semi legal child labor and USDA regulations.
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Sep 14, 2014 06:23
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The general expression in Australia is 'get big or get specalised'.
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Sep 14, 2014 12:49
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I work for one of the major ag equipment manufacturers in the world in advanced farming systems, so feel free to shoot with any questions about the new tech side of farming. I also spring from small dairy farm stock. Neither of my parents still farm, and my uncle sold my dad's side family farm, but my mom's side are still going strong. One set of sibligs went the "get specialized" route and have a specific cross breed of cow that is pasture-grazed for most of the year. The artisan cheese makers in their part of Wisconsin are all over that. They also have Australian style parlors, a more open type parlor, which was pretty cutting edge at the time. I also have another uncle here in wisco that does standard Holstein/parlor milking, family in Texas that does the same, and my "retired" grandfather who is tinkering with pasture grazed beef in Louisiana. Mid scale dairy farming is stressful as hell, and I don't envy their jobs. Time off is hard to find, your nights and weekends are shot during months out of the year, and you are at the mercy of milk prices, grain prices and weather. Edit: My sister sells crop insurance and my other aunt works in the ag commodities field, so I can get answers for questions about that stuff too. KitConstantine fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Sep 14, 2014 |
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Sep 14, 2014 21:15
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A few years back I worked on a vegetable farm in suburban central New Jersey. This was a smallish farm which mainly grew corn, tomatoes (Jersey tomatoes best tomatoes), and a few miscellaneous products like onions, garlic, flowers, and peppers. The owner inherited it from his father and is completely miserable. He has been wanting to sell it for years, but the local government classified it as historic protected farmland, so he can't sell it to developers, and nobody in the right mind wants to buy a farm. The main way the crop is sold is at the on site market, which probably brought in $500/day, and he also sold a lot of product at farmers markets around the area. The land is beautiful and some of the product, mainly the tomatoes and garlic, were incredible and some of the best food I've ever had. I did basic work like maintenance, upkeep, picking, and weeding. It was typically 10-12 hours a day and extremely physically demanding, and after I left the owner would return to spray pesticide, harvest soybeans, and much more. It is kind of a sad place and the worst job I've ever had but it was cash under the table and I learned a lot. The strong majority of our customers were average suburban folk who would stop by because it was different and special to get your food from a farm, even if a lot of the product we sold at the market was purchased from other farms first. They wanted to make it more integrated into the community with more festivals and community outreach but a mixture of crazy tight government regulation on such things and simply not enough time made that difficult. As for how it got to market? Either simply brining it from the fridge in the barn down 100 yards to the market, or packing up a truck and sending it to a bigger one across town, who would buy it wholesale. In retrospect the farm was kind of a giant nuisance to everyone and only kept alive out of tradition.
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Sep 15, 2014 19:22
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