confession of a small time farmer in america
What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living
People say we're "rich in other ways," but that doesn't fix the ugly fact that most farms are unsustainable
A businessman once advised me never to admit my business was struggling. No one wants to climb aboard a sinking ship, know what I mean? he’d said. At the time, I agreed. I believed if a business was failing it was because the entrepreneur was not skilled enough, not savvy enough, not hardworking enough. If my farm didn’t turn enough profit, it was my own fault.
Whenever a customer asked how things were going, I replied, Great. I thought about the sinking ship, and never said, Well, we’re making ends meet, but we work 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and pay ourselves only what we need to cover food and household expenses: $100 per week. I didn’t tell anyone how, over the course of the last three years since Ryan and I had started our farm, I’d drained most of my savings. I didn’t admit that the only thing keeping the farm afloat was income Ryan and I earned through other means — Ryan working as a carpenter and I as a baker. I didn’t say that despite the improvements we made to the land— the hundreds of yards of compost we spread, the thousand dollars we spent annually on cover crop seed to increase soil fertility, every weed pulled — we gained no equity because we didn’t own the land. I didn’t say I felt like I was trying to fill a bathtub when the drain was open.
One afternoon, a fellow farmer came over for a visit. He asked how we were doing, and this time I told the truth. The farmer told me he’d been farming for nearly a decade and last year he made the most profit yet: $4,000. I spewed out a slurry of concerns, told the farmer how I’d done the numbers every way and the future wasn’t looking much more profitable. The farmer just nodded, as if I was telling him what I’d eaten for breakfast that morning and not revealing the shameful secret of my failing business. The more we talked the more I began to wonder about other farmers I knew.
I wondered how many small farmers actually made a living. Before I set out trying to answer this question, I had to define what constitutes “a living.” I decided making a living meant three things: 1) The farmer had to pay herself a weekly wage that equaled what a person working full-time would make on minimum wage, which in my town would be $360 per week. 2) The farmer had to abide by labor laws, meaning no unpaid workers or interns doing essential farm tasks. 3) The farmer had to earn her income from farming, which meant nonprofit farms that survived on grants and donations didn’t count; neither did farms that sustained themselves on outside income sources.
I talked to all the farmers I knew, considered farms I or my partner had worked at in the past, farms I’d visited, friends’ farms. Most farmers I talked to worked outside jobs to keep their farms above water, others skirted by on an income they calculated to be $4 per hours, and most depended on interns, volunteers or WWOOFers for labor. I did not encounter a single farmer who met my requirements.
Then I looked into national statistics. According to USDA data from 2012, intermediate-size farms like mine, which gross more than $10,000 but less than $250,000, obtain only 10 percent of their household income from the farm, and 90 percent from an off-farm source. Smaller farms actually lost money farming and earned 109 percent of their household income from off-farm sources. Only the largest farms, which represent just 10 percent of farming households in the country and most of which received large government subsidies, earned the majority of their income from farm sources. So, 90 percent of farmers in this country rely on an outside job, or a spouse’s outside job, or some independent form of wealth, for their primary income.
One day late into my second season owning the farm, a customer walked in while I stood behind the counter spraying down bins of muddy carrots. The man asked how things were going. Financially, I mean. He held a head of lettuce in the crook of his arm, a bundle of pink radishes dangled from his hand.
I looked at the man and instead of replying with my usual “great,” I said, We’re getting by. He nodded, Well, you may not be making lots of money, but you’re rich in other ways. I opened my mouth to reply, but the man had already turned away and was gazing dreamy-eyed out at my fields, each row buttered in late-afternoon sun. I turned back to the heap of carrots, not sure what I would have said anyway.
I wanted to ask the man which “other ways” did he mean, exactly. But I knew what he meant. I heard this kind of thing all the time: You must love what you do, or not much profit in farming, but what a great lifestyle, or, well, you’re not in it for the money, right? Customers repeated these aphorisms warmly in an attempt to offer me some consolation or encouragement. But watching this man gaze out at my fields, I couldn’t help wondering if it was the customer who was the one being consoled.
Surely many farmers enjoy what they do, as I often find pleasure in my daily tasks, but ultimately farming is work, an occupation, a means of making a living that must fulfill the basic function of a job: to provide an income. Does the notion that farming is lovable work excuse the fact that the entire industry relies on underpaid labor? Does it somehow make it OK that in 2014 it’s forecast to be $–1,682? I had to wonder if this notion works only to assuage a collective discomfort provoked by an unsettling fact, a fact that should enrage us, that should disgrace us as a society: the fact that the much celebrated American small farmer can’t even make a living.
A few weeks later I gave a presentation at a local high school. The teacher had asked me to talk to her food systems class about being an organic farmer. After I finished my talk the teacher turned to her class. So, she asked, how many of you think you might consider a career in agriculture after high school?
Not a single student raised a hand.
The teacher surveyed the air above her students’ heads for a few moments as if scanning the ocean for whales, as if any minute a hand might spring up. None did. Then she looked to me and offered a sympathetic half-smile, half-grimace, as if the tally had come in and I’d just lost an election.
I shrugged. She didn’t have to apologize to me, I hadn’t expected the students to want to become farmers. I guess I didn’t make it look too appealing, I said. And I didn’t — I didn’t romanticize the early mornings out in the field or extol the health benefits of physical labor. I’d told the truth: I grew 10 acres of organic vegetables, worked upward of 60 hours a week during the height of the season, and my total income last year was $2,451. Most of the kids probably earned more that this with a summer job. I told them how most jobs in organic agriculture were either “internships” where workers received food or housing instead of a salary, or were as underpaid and exploitive as jobs on conventional farms where workers were hired seasonally, earned minimum wage or less, and received no benefits.
Driving home from the high school I wondered if perhaps I should’ve placed a more positive light on farming. As the average age of the American farmer neared 65, I knew young farmers were badly needed in this country. Would it have hurt if I’d mentioned the evening the great white egret landed just a yard away from me in the field? How the bird’s body stood taller than mine as I crouched between rows of collard greens, how its neck moved like a snake, slithering upward so it could peer down at me. And when the egret unfolded two white wings and lifted into the sky, a breath of wind pushed against my cheek.
Or I could’ve described the joy of pausing in the field during a summer morning harvest to slice open a watermelon, how the fruit’s pink flesh remains slightly cool inside its thick rind despite the heat of the day, how I hollow out the melon with a spoon from my pocket and eat an entire half.
Of course the lifestyle of a farmer had its perks, but it didn’t seem this was the point. Surely there were plenty of professions that offered moments of joy and satisfaction, surely the doctor, the wildlife biologist, the chef, or mechanic, at times enjoys her work. But no one expected these people to take this satisfaction as pay.
When a student asked if my farm was sustainable, I told her that I was certified organic, I managed my soil fertility through crop rotations and compost applications, I didn’t use synthetic pesticides, I conserved water. But no, I’d said, I didn’t think my farm was sustainable. Like all the other farms I knew, my farm relied on uncompensated labor and self-exploitation. My farm was not sustainable because I knew the years my partner and I could continue to work without a viable income were numbered.
