Understanding Small Farms
From homesteaders to production ag
It’s winter in Minnesota, and for some farmers that means it’s conference, farm show and festival-”fest”-season. I’m going to highlight two conversations, or just snippets of conversations, from a couple of meetings lately which may help people understand the breadth of the farming landscape in the US.
Small Farms
This newsletter is about a small farm of 100 acres called Prime Avenue Farm. The descriptor “small” isn’t really very helpful. There are some successful vegetable growers who make a living on just a few acres. It’s a bare living. They’re not selling wholesale to Green Giant or Seneca Foods. They market their produce wholesale through food cooperatives, or at retail farmers markets or with a subscription service. (This is the community supported agriculture, or CSA, model, where customers get a box of vegetables each week during the growing season.) Moving up in size, with forty acres, you might be able to graze enough cattle and other livestock to bring meat to a farmers market. That’s also a bare living. You can grow your operation to provide a bit better than a bare living if you have a couple of hundred acres and can find different distribution mechanisms. You still have a small farm, however. Maybe you have a thousand acres where you grow row crops, which, here in the midwest, means corn and beans. Yep, still a small farm.
Smaller still are those people who don’t aspire to make a living from farming but are farm-adjacent. Most of the homesteaders fit this description. Maybe they have a few goats and chickens and a big vegetable garden. Interestingly, people on both ends of the political spectrum may take up homesteading. Here are some clues. If they talk about wholesomeness of food and also environmentalism, they lean left. If they talk about the wholesomeness of food and also self-sufficiency and isolating their homes from some coming apocalypse, they might lean right. I’ve met both sides and I like them all.
Many small farmers, and even some people who manage medium-sized farms, have off-farm jobs that actually pay the bills. Farming is just their second job, or family tradition, or hobby. Just because farming isn’t their only source of income doesn’t mean they aren’t accomplished. I know hobbyists with very small acreage who have more knowledge than many established experts about the specialty crop or livestock they produce.
Production Ag
I was recently at a conference of the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota. The attendees include homesteaders, extension agents, some small farmers and a lot of other people who are farm-adjacent. There were arguably few larger farmers present, but that won’t matter for the point I’m about to make. Like a lot of conferences, the breakout sessions often feature a panel discussion on some topic. As one panel introduced themselves, I was struck that while all were experts, their operations were vastly different in size. The farmers had different goals and motivations. The first guy had around 50 acres on which he grazed cattle and grew a specialty crop. The second guy had 30 acres, but grew the specialty crop on just a quarter acre. The third guy was a university professor of agriculture who took up the specialty crop as a sideline, and grew it in his yard. The last guy introduced himself by saying, “I’m in production agriculture.” And we all knew what that meant.
Saying you’re in production agriculture is making an economic declaration. It means, “when all is said and done, I have to make a return on my investment in land and equipment, and a substantial portion, if not all, of my income comes from farming.” Even more than that, it’s saying, “no matter what I grow or how, making money motivates me.” Now, there are vegetable farmers who run big CSAs who grow a lot of food for people and make an OK living. Their work is aligned with their values. No matter how many CSA subscribers they have, I’ve never heard one of them say they’re in production agriculture.
However, production agriculture isn’t about size. That last guy on the panel who made the declaration is a small farmer. He grows more of the specialty crop than anyone else, but it’s still no more than a few acres. He also raises corn and beans on several hundred (less than a thousand) acres. Since that’s sub-scale for a row crop farm, he worked to get his land and crops organically certified. That’s a different style of production with a different cost structure, different implements (a sprayer might not be as important as some mechanical means to eliminate weeds) and somewhat different markets. There are organic farmers who chose that style of farming solely out of economic necessity. It’s a choice of one kind of work versus another to compete in an industry with thin margins.
Homesteaders
On the other end of the spectrum, homesteaders turn up all over the place. But they usually understand the difference between what they do and farming. I was on a call with breeders of a specialty variety of livestock recently. Everyone on the call was a member of the breed association, discussing reproduction, health and generally how to further the breed. Very few if any of them raised the breed commercially. Eventually, the conversation drifted off topic, and several of the participants, who were new to the breed, new to homesteading and new to farming, started complaining about not being able to get government subsidies for their activities.
It’s pretty common for farmers of all shapes and sizes to get a little something from the United States Department of Agriculture. Corn, bean, cotton and some grain farmers get subsidized crop insurance. For some farmers, the USDA paid for part of a livestock barn, or an implement that promotes farming with cover crops. Maybe the USDA paid for part of a high tunnel greenhouse to extend a CSA farmer’s vegetable production capabilities, or a fence to help a cow-calf operation rotationally graze.. Some of the grants come through the Natural Resource Conservation Service, or NRCS, to promote practices that lead to less negative environmental outcomes than sometimes happen with farming. In order to get support, a farmer has a lot of contact with NRCS or Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) agents.
The people on the breed association call were complaining that their local NRCS representatives weren’t responsive to their requests for funding. What they didn’t seem to understand was that government funding for agriculture must focus on agriculture. Just because you have a few goats and would like a better fencing system for them doesn’t mean the government will or should help you with it. You need to be in the business of selling some product of the farm in a way that’s economically meaningful. But the hobbyists at the breed association were sure there was some plot to discriminate against them, treating them unfairly.
Summary
There are a lot of farming associations, university extension services and government groups that help farmers of all shapes and sizes. The information these groups publish or otherwise spread may be intended for someone in production agriculture, but a lot of it trickles down (or up, depending on your thoughts on the lifestyle of a working farmer) to homesteaders. It’s tempting to divide farmers up by size, but it’s more important to ask about their goals with farming.