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“On the one side, the hard-line aggies seem convinced that a bunch of know-nothing urbanites want to send them back to Stone Age farming techniques. On the other side, there’s a tendency by agricultural reformers to lump together all farms (or at least those that aren’t purely organic, hemp-clad mom-and-pop operations) as thoughtless ravagers of [...]
(Image source)
“[F]armers in 1941 wanted high-value grains like wheat and corn that they could sell off the farm, [but] they didn’t yet have the mined and manufactured fertilizers needed to get high yields from those crops. Instead, they colected nutrients from large areas of land using low-value crops like grass and alfalfa, fed them to [...]
Another glimpse into the past, this time to the fundos of Chile in 1949.
“Almost all of Chile’s arable land is in single great land holdings of 5,000 to 50,000 acres, in vivid contrast to the small farms of North America where the owner and his family do most of the work.”
True perhaps in 1949, but [...]
Made in 1948, this film discusses the post-war program to develop “The Chicken of Tomorrow”– the chickens we buy in stores today. I doubt they realized at the time that the chicken industry would be completely changed, based on mono-crops raised in confined spaces. Already, the methods displayed in the film show chickens confined, unable to [...]
Made in 1951, this short film produced by the Farm Journal reminds us how different agriculture was just 50 years ago. It shows the bias of its time: that electricity would solve all our problems when in fact gas is much more efficient for heating. Bigger was presumed to be better. And I’m amazed at [...]
(Cindy47452 photo.)
(Robert Bloomfield, Good Tidings, or News from the Farm, 1804.)
(Wiki photo.)
Living where we do, we need to have a rifle behind the door. One day, a pack of wild dogs showed up, headed for our goats. And coyotes occasionally come too close. These are real threats we never had to deal with when we lived in the city. If we’re going to keep animals, [...]
(LEISA Network photo.).
“At the outset, then, its often best to ‘borrow’ land, to steward the land of some holiday home owners, to gently lease some pastures from an extensive land-owner, ‘beg borrow or steal’ if you have to, or do it as a sideline.”
This is just one pearl of wisdom from the Greenhorns Guide for [...]
Ken Meter discusses the dilemma of high land prices preventing new farnmers from entering the industry.
According to one source, in 2003 Americans bought $450 billion in retail food. Of this, $40 billion (less than 9%) went to the farmers that grew the food. Compare that with the portion that Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club (the two largest food retailers) got: $80 billion.
The average retail sales per retail employee was $127,000. The [...]