Bypassing the Man

Unfortunately, the largest CSA in America has 13,000 families.

To service an entire city (such as New York), any shipping cost would offset the savings. It would also offer many more issues, as you are employing more people. The CSA would then need an administrative staff, and possibly a marketing team too as the other CSA's are now competing for the customer's business. There's going to be some legal issues, so attorneys are going to need to be on retainer or on staff. And, since the CSA is "democratic" for price negotiations and democracy with that large of a group is not feasible, it's going to have to be a "republic" style. We're going to need representatives to keep the CSA honest, and they are going to need compensation.

Suddenly, this beautiful CSA is Amazon, and it is hated by hippies everywhere.

 

Thank you. CSA's don't have the logistical capabilities to service itself like Walmart.


Everyone knows why Walmart ships produce from outside the local region, right? Not to kill the local farmer.


Plants grow better in certain climates. Crazy, right? It makes more sense to ship a load of watermelons from FL than to flush a ton of fertilizer into the ground and try to grow them in colder regions. So on one hand you're polluting the air with diesel fumes, on the other hand you're pumping fertilizer into the water stream. So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Sometimes, not always, the cheapest method is also the most efficient.

 

For the record, I meant for those to be two separate points (transportation and urban lifestyle). I acknowledge what you say about suburbia being the transportation difficulty.

And having lived in New York and shopped at various markets (and in DC, for that matter), I'm aware of the advantages. My point is that these markets work precisely because only a certain fraction of the city is using them. If you had to figure out drop-points/delivery for 10 million people, the logistical difficulty of this task absolutely skyrockets, well beyond the organizational capacity of most of these organizations.

The only thing you've said that I heartily disagree with is why a lower proportion of the American population are farmers. It has little to do with seed prices, and much more to do with the industrial revolution and the past two centuries of economic growth in the United States. I come from a family of farmers. My father grew up on a farm, as did his 60-80 cousins in the area (Yes, 60-80. You read that right. He had 19 aunts and uncles, and therefore lost count of cousins). So I'm not completely talking out of my ass.

First, the real reason for the decline in farming occupation share is mechanization. I've met relatives (very few, admittedly, and most of them this age are now dead) who remember the day when you plowed fields with a horse. When you need to employ that sort of labor, the output per person is very low. In the colonial era, we had a high agrarian population because it was the only way to create enough food. But when you add the sorts of mechanical innovations that we've had over the past 150 years, productivity skyrockets. Whereas one person used to be able to make enough food to feed 10 people, he can now create enough to feed 100. We need far fewer farmers today than we did in the past.

Secondly, the reality is that farming is a very difficult and low yield occupation. The idea that city dwellers of other professions are awaiting the opportunity to flock to farming is amusing, but ridiculous. "This whole lawyer thing is tedious. I'm moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches!" Sure, you may meet the occasional person who says that sort of thing, but it's rare and the type of people who say it usually make very poor farmers (I know a few people who tried it. It went poorly). The fact is that being a farmer is not an envious job in modern society. While there are some aesthetic quirks that are nice, it has a lower standard of living than most modern professions.

If I were to tell my father or any of my older relatives that I wanted to become a farmer, they would slap the shit out of me and tell me to shut up and take a city job, where you make real money and don't have a backbreaking lifestyle.

My dad spent the first 20 years of his life working on a small farm, like everyone else in his family. He then proceeded get a couple of degrees in engineering, become an expert in computers back when most people didn't know what a computer was, and left. He loves his upbringing and thinks about moving back to the country now that he's retired. But he got the fuck out of dodge when he was 20, because he realized that when you're talking about reality more than romance, farming as a profession has very little in common with Walden.

We don't have fewer farmers because of dastardly corporations thwarting the agrarian urges of the populace. We have fewer because the overwhelming number of people would rather not be farmers, all things considered.

 

To do a Nettdata style doublepost:

To be fair, most local food advocates aren't this naive. Their argument is that in this situation, it makes more sense to make a concerted effort to eat those foods that are seasonally and geographically appropriate, rather than going down to Safeway to find ripe watermelon. They believe that the sort of lifestyle that demands ripe samples of whatever fruit you want, all the time, is wasteful and unsustainable.

I think there's a certain arrogance in telling the market that its demand is wrong, but you are short-changing them as to the quality of their arguments here.

 

This is funny. I think y'all are missing the point- CSAs aren't supposed to be large corporate-like entities. They're intended to be small. The CSA with 13,000 families in it is way too fucking large (and frankly, I'm shocked that it works at all). The point of all of this localvore food community movement stuff is to create armfuls of small food markets, co-ops, and CSAs as an alternative to the small handful of large chain grocery stores that we have now. With small purchasing groups, none of the theoretical problems y'all have put forth would ever be an issue.

Again, this isn't a likely scenario. You're picturing a large corporation-like CSA trying to figure out transportation semantics for an entire urban city, and this isn't at all what CSAs are about. I completely understand where your misconception is coming from- it's almost impossible to imagine an alternative to big business nowadays. In fact, when I mention CSAs, it's amusing as hell that the automatic assumption is that these small businesses would want to grow to the size of the grocery store chains that they're trying to oust. It's quite the opposite, though- many of these local food communities are aware of the benefits that come along with being a part of a community, and growing beyond that decreases the value of their product/business model/profits.

Samesies! I'm not completely talking out of my ass either. I know that the reason most of my family decided to quit the business was because it was becoming increasingly difficult to make a profit unless they basically took out several loans each season for enough seeds, labor, etc. in order to sell in bulk to grocery stores nation-wide...which would barely cover their living expenses until next season. And they owned their own land, too- I can't imagine how many farmers have been pushed out of the business simply because they can't afford to harvest in enough bulk to meet overhead costs of operation, labor costs, AND land rental fees.

I'm not romanticizing farming. It's fucking difficult work and I sure as fuck would never want to do it. In fact, I'd suck cock for money before I'd professionally farm. But that said, more people could make a decent wage at it if it weren't heavily constricted by the need to produce in excessive bulk in order to make any profit.

 

If everybody stopped shopping at grocery stores people would lead better and healthy lives, end of story. I would choose expense over dying 25 years early so I avoid grocery stores as much as possible (but let's face it, pretty much none of us can completely avoid them). Chain grocery stores pure evil, especially in America where more than half the products in them make people sick, who then turn to medication which makes them even MORE sick. Pre-packaged, shrink-wrapped and boxed food is fucking garbage and it is killing people slowly left and right.

 

Now, I'm a fatalist and a realist (aka a fucking downer) about all this stuff. A long time ago I realised that, collectively, we're fucked so I just up and drank the Kool-Aid.

There's a reason that corporations exist. Humans are largely social animals and gained the understanding somewhere around 5 minutes past the dawn of man that if you band together you have a better chance of surviving and prospering. A corporation is just a example of that happening in a business/profit sense. Until humanity evolves into a solitary unit species, that's not exactly going to change.

Corporations make sense. I'm not saying they're good or bad (that call comes down to the individual corporation as judged against a subjective set of criteria). They're a way to spread the cost of production over a large base and maximise profit, thereby allowing greater growth and survival opportunity. Their ethics and morals are only a reflection and extension of whether the people in charge are douchebags or angels. If you will, they're like an exoskeleton of the psyche (yes, I realise how fucked up that sounds). So, instead of making life a misery for their neighbours by allowing their dog to crap on their lawn, stealing their newspaper and playing Jungle at 3am, they're knocking down rainforest, oiling up wildlife and raping mineral rights. That's a massive oversimplification, but dicks are dicks no matter where they are. Some of them just hide it better, allowing it to come out under the protection of anonymity or 'corporate' armour.

If they didn't exist, I don't think we'd have the society we have today. I'm not necessarily saying that's a good thing. I wouldn't consider myself qualified to make that decision. However, large scale means of production have made massive differences in the way in which we live. Farmers markets and the like are all well and good, but they can't support masses of people. If the population were in small amounts then go for it. The thing a lot of people don't, or won't, realise is that the very existence of corporations is what allows these things to exist in society as it is today. Sure, they could exist out in the wilds and do; we're not there and that doesn't relate (the very fact that you're capable of reading this on an electronic medium means you're still part of the "grid").

To use the farmers market example, think about this: how did you hear about it? How did you get there? How did they get there? Where was it held? How did you pay? I would almost guarantee that somewhere along the line, the work of a corporation was directly responsible for allowing the transaction to happen. Anyone who puffs themselves up about 'sticking it to the man' in that sort of situation is just delusional.

We have people here in Australia that we call ferals. Basically, they're hippy, vegan, tree-hugging, socialist, demonstrating, Greenie, eco-warrior, earth-loving peace-mongers. Some of them live in tents, have dreaklocks, wear hemp and let their children run around naked. Very stereotypical of me, but you get the picture. They're anti-establishment in the extreme. They'd protest the opening of a door, if it was made from non-sustainable rainforest old growth forest.

They're fucking kidding themselves. They'll study at university. They'll own, or bum a lift in, a car or truck. They'll use recycled materials to build their shanties. They'll follow roads to get to where they're going. They'll take social security payments and government handouts. They'll live in a country where some heathen horde isn't invading and subjecting them to rape and pillage. All brought to you by, or enabled by, big corporations. It's akin to cussing out McDonalds while chowing down on a Big Mac.

And the nice little communes and collectives they have running for mung beans or whatever? Prototypical corporations. Nice work, hippie scum. Want to be truly off the grid? Strip naked, walk out the door and keep walking until you hit somewhere that no one but you has discovered. Don't come back.

 

I've seen them promote local farming as a "green" alternative. Wouldn't you consider that a misleading statement?



I'm playing devil's advocate here because I love the local markets. But they're a niche market for a reason. It's inefficient and the majority of people would rather save money than eat premium produce.

 

I've never understood the anti-corporation, Luddite mentality many people have here.

If it weren't for these "evil corporations", most people in the US here would be starving, have a life expectancy of 40-50 years, wear old filthy, clothes, live in cramped shacks, and have none of the entertainment, comfort, and opportunity they possess in the Western world.

For an example of a country without corporations, look no further than Indonesia or most of Africa. Yeah. Great standard of living, right?

These same corporations pay your or your parents a salary that would make them a fucking king in most every other country in the world, while doing 40 hours of non-strenuous work a week with lunch breaks and vacations. Talk about evil bastards alright!

It's one of those things that makes less sense the more you think about it; companies (because that's what "corporations" really are) are responsible for the US becoming as powerful and influential as it has, and for its very high standard of living, which most of the rest of the world envies. At the same time, they're about a thousand times less corrupt than any garden variety warlord or government official in a third world nation.

Yet, most people who grow fat and satisfied off its largess are the same ones angrily shaking their fists at it.

Go live somewhere else then; there will be a starving immigrant ecstatic and thankful to take your place.

"Half the products in American grocery stores make people sick"? Really? Have you even shopped in an American grocery store in your life, dude? And please enlighten me what these nefarious "products" are?

Look, we know you're a rabid liberal who thinks the US is evil and awful in every way, but you sound like a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist with the post above. What you wrote is unsubstantiated bullshit, plain and simple.

 

Maybe in your families situation they couldnt make money off it, but don't make that a generalized statement because your wrong. Ive lived and worked on farms my whole life, and in that time Ive come across some extremely rich farmers. Your families problem is they didnt own enough land to have a cash crop operation. My bestfriends family owns a cash crop operation of about 5000 acres and they can't spend all the money they make. Another good friend owns chicken quota, which right now is the most efficient and has the highest payout of any farming operation, and I know for a fact after they pay their expenses they have an extra $10 000 in the bank every month. Same thing goes with organic dairy production: low workload, high return.

The shit that tanked in the past few years has been pig production and beef cow production. I know a few sow farmers that killed off their pigs because it was cheaper to kill them then feed them because the price per pound was so low, and thats for an operation of 400 sows. You have to take the good with the bad when it comes to farming. Essentially to be wealthy you have to be in debt up to your tits. The more money the bank gives you, the more quota or land or equiptment you can buy which inturn puts more money in your pocket.

 

If done correctly? No. If you eat local produce that is in season, it would probably be more green (at least on the individual level. I'm not sure how qualified I really am to talk about the net effect if we all did this, and doubt many people on this board are really sufficiently qualified).

If you try to "eat local" without making the appropriate modifications to your diet, it obviously won't have the intended effect.

For the record, I don't generally go to those places and live that lifestyle, but that's largely because I'm a lazy and cheap college student.

If you think this is the reality of an average farm-owning family, you really ought to consult US Census data. Obviously there are many successful farmers, but the suggestion that "10K in the bank every month" is the norm is utterly laughable. And I hope you see why "Making money is easy if you own a TON of land" is a kind of odd argument.

 

As some of you know, I'm a farmer.

My farm business is a corporation.

Most of what Cowbell said was right on the money.
Farmers are bigger than they used to be. 50 years ago, you could drive around the country and see a farm place every half mile. Everyone had about 100-150 acres and had a bunch of animals. Now it's more spread out. The average grain farm in my area is 2000 acres. There is a 4,000 head dairy operation a mile from our operation. We're able to do more with less equipment now and technology is advancing rapidly. For example, I've got one of these:

Spoiler

It has RTK GPS and it steers itself.
Recognize, bitches.
Also, people are having less kids, so usually farmers only have one or two children (if any at all) who stick around to take over the farming operation.

I fucking laugh at the thought of people from the city moving to the country to start farming on their own.
Yeah? just like that?
You know land is up to $5000 per acre, right?
Even if you can afford it, you still need the fucking decades of experience it takes to operate a farm business. Keep in mind that a 2,000 acre operation has a 1.5 million dollar cash flow.
That, and moving into an area and trying to buy and/or rent land out from under other farmers doesn't go over too well.

Being a corporation makes our business work much more smoothly, and it lowers the risk. It also allows us to diversify our business as much as we want, while keeping everything under the umbrella of the corp. We have two other ag-related side businesses at the moment. We're able to move money can move back and forth between different parts of the business and help retain our working capital.

Farming can be a profitable business, but it's fucking risky. Especially with the volatile market that we have right now. You have to be a good business person to have a successful operation, and you have to have a very good understanding of how the market works. It's definitely not a job for those who can't handle a large amount of stress.

Farmers' markets are nice, and they have their place, but they definitely aren't the answer. There just isn't an infrastructure to supply enough of them to supply a large city, nor will there ever be. It takes a shitload of real estate to feed a city, and they aren't making more land.

Edit: Crown Royal, please tell me you're just joking around.

 

I'm not taking sides on this issue (and I'm far from a liberal) because it is obviously very complex, but a good portion of products do indeed have nasty shit in/on them.

A bag of oranges has pesticides, peanut butter has pesticides, hell a good portion of bread has additives which promote "freshness" which are possibly carcinogenic or have been linked to cancer. Ditto for the rest of food that is processed.

Edit: Edit, just so we're clear not everything in the store is bad for you, but there is a surprising amount of stuff which you wouldn't think of that is bad for you.

 

What's your point? There are extremely strict FDA regulations for every food you seen in a store, and there has yet to be an actual study (read: actual proof, outside of bullshit conspiracy theories) linking anything you listed above to a medical problem. I don't see why you use "pesticides" like a dirty word, either; they're far healthier than the alternative of having insects inside of, or taking a shit in your fruits and vegetables, which would REALLY make people sick.

Keep in mind these regulations are usually something like less than 6 parts per million/billion of a substance; an incredibly minute amount.

And the part about bread having carcinogenic additives is total and complete BS. Do you have any credible link for that, or did you just hear it at some party?

 

Have these people shown you their cash flow? I doubt it. Yeah, I turn a pretty big profit every month, but a huge, huge majority of that goes toward next years operating expenses. The biggest misconception people have of farmers is "big cash flow=fucking rich". That isn't true. There are a lot of successful farming operations out there, but not very many rich farmers.

No. Just, no. That is the opposite of the truth. You know you have to pay that money back, right?