Food - lockdowns are going to affect farmers if the lockdown continues

[2A2Dend]

On the Wetside, having a vegetable garden flourish, is comparable to putting a patient in the ICU.

 

[The Heretic]

I had been thinking (before I lost my job) that it might help the resale value of my property if I put a greenhouse/raised beds in a flat sunny spot I have next to my driveway. POs had a temp greenhouse there.

Now that I have the time I may do that. Maybe spend my stimulus check on that. Added benefit of growing some food just in case. I have to have something to protect what is grown from the deer/et. al. though - so the greenhouse and netting would be necessary.

 

[Mikej]

1) "Many are, but from I have also read, that the middle class and lower middle class on down, in Mexico proper, are hard working people too. So it isn't just about being in a desperate situation. I believe it is the culture and work ethic of the culture."
So true. I have known a lot of Hispanics, and Mexicans/Mexican Americans and they are industrious people. Anybody who buys in to the myth that Mexicans are lazy has probably never known any.
2) " Any Gardening tips anyone wants to share?"
*Raised beds and tires work real well, but you have to be clear on the concept.
Raised beds =< 4' wide so you can reach the center. Choose the location where it will get sun exposure. Amend the soil in the raised beds and continue to add compost fertilizer, etc, A/R. It helps a lot to have some way to cover the bed. A well-maintained bed can easily be kept weed free and productive indefinitely.
I say clear on the concept because one neighbor built a huge raised bed in the shade and lifted a tiller into it. The whole raison d' etre for raised beds is to reach all of it from a comfortable position and to maintain the soil. Lots of earthworms is s sign that you're doing it right.
Roto-tilling every year (I mention this because I see our neighbor doing it.) just ensures that you will have a luxuriant crop of weeds every year. A lot of weed seeds sprout when exposed to the sun, but he seems to enjoy running the tiller and resents advice, so I don't say anything.
*A stack of tires full of soil works well for stuff that grows in hills. A friend of my wife's said they look Hillbilly. That's fine with me. we are enjoying the sketti squash we grew in those Hillbilly tires. Works for potatoes too.
*If you are going to grow tomatoes they have to be protected from the rain. If you don't they will ripen just in time for the rain to bring on blight.
Note that Cherokee Purples actually taste like a tomato. Pick when the purple blush starts to spread and finish ripening on a window sill.
* In terms of gardening potential WA State sucks for a lot of crops. Know what grows here and what is a waste of time.
* If you waited until now you better get on it.

There's two lines of though here. I tilled my garden every year. Seeds do better in a loose soil. I've never really understood the "No Till" method. Tilling incorporates fertilizer, air and organic mater INTO the soil. I had access to copious quantities of yard waste in the form of grass clippings and leaves. Every late summer/ fall heaps of that debris would be spread around the spaces where crops had finished. All through the mowing season grass clipping would be use to heavily mulch summer crops to help regulate moisture and keep weeds down. Along with time spent with a loop hoe disturbing new weed growth. When spring came an it was time to till all the debris that was on top had mostly been consumed by the bacteria in the soil over winter.

I went from this...In late March


To this in late June


To this in late August.


In the neighborhood of 300# of potatoes and 40# of onions. I never weighed the tomatoes. And all manor of easy to grow, mostly bug free items. Such as mustard greens instead of collar/kale. I didn't care much for pesticides and only used glyphosate to control things on the fence lines. That was about 2200 square feet.

Growing a garden like this isn't a lot of work. It's a little work, a lot of the time.

 

[OldBroad44]

Sad news.. But seems strange they couldn't have resorted to freezing or canning.. I would have loved to have bought some FLorida Zucchinis rather than the rotting low quality Mexican zucchinis I see in most of the grocery stores here in Tennessee.

Processing plants usually have grower contracts. The growers grow the specified variety in the specified way and deliver it to the processing plant at specific days and times in the specified weeks. Processing plants need to control varieties and quality and run at full capacity during processing season, so make prior arrangements with growers. Frozen veggies may go from being picked to being frozen in just a few hours.

 

[Oregonhunter5]

Both sides of my family were dairy farmers. And crops.
The big thing is farmers by average don't get audited like most businesses.
Everybody loves the farmer. I sure do! But it's UN-American to say what I'm saying. But it's the facts.

 

[The Heretic]

 

[SUPER X]

A farmers profit might be in fringe benefits, like Large shop , nice trucks, and place to target practice with no travel or fee. Quality of life . And first pick of crop

 

[The Heretic]

A farmers profit might be in fringe benefits, like Large shop , nice trucks, and place to target practice with no travel or fee. Quality of life . And first pick of crop

In my experience, I have some of that, but have to say it is a LOT of work and I am getting too old to carry on. I have a quality of life without having to do the farming. I decided after the last harvest, it was just too much work at my age, not to mention having a day job on top of it, working in the morning, cleaning up, going to my day job, then coming home and working into the dark, sleeping in my truck watching the fires so I don't burn down the mountain - worrying about the slash pile fires getting out of control, not sleeping well, working on the weekends, going to the ER for burns. That was just minor part time farming compared to what most farmers do every year.

My family sold our farm in part because no one in my generation wanted to continue with being a farmer and my grandparents were gone and parent's generation was too old to continue after almost 80 years of farming.

 

[The Heretic]

I would also point out, that my timber harvest was more or less a wash profit wise. After taxes and expenses about 20% of the income was a "profit" - on paper. However, the assessed value of my land went down by the same amount of the gross income from the timber harvest. Yes, I paid 80% of the value when I bought it, but over the 7 years I owned the property, I also paid significant property taxes, which cuts into the 'profit'.

When I go to sell the property in a year or two, the sale price will reflect the fact that I removed about a fifth of the value of the property when I logged half of the acreage. It might even go for less than that - but I am going by the currently assessed value (two different sources; my lender, and the county) - I may get another formal assessment this year when I sell an acre to my neighbor (for unrelated reasons).

About 80% of that income is gone; 2018 and especially 2019 were hard years expense wise for me. I was in the hospital several times for heart problems and the tests/etc. were not cheap. Then there were family medical/dental costs which were expensive. Then there was the whole fiasco with the Audi, and repair costs for the other kid's car, which eventually had to be sold because it was wore out, then there were the maintenance costs for my car, and all the preps I bought.

I would have not made it budget wise if I had not sold that timber and I knew that going in, I just didn't know how much that timber sale would allow me to survive all those costs.

 

[Pete F]

Me too. I got $ 3,500 for a steer in 1975. Blew me away.

I can top that. 1500 pound Black Angus steer, Reserve Grand Champion. $2.50 a pound to Albertsons, 1972 - $3,750. I didn't get Grand Champion, but I wasn't a girl crying my eyes out. All of the bidders were drinking. One of the sponsors, that I got my steer from, snuck in several bottles of booze to help grease the wheels. The sale started with the lowest graded steer, so by the time they got to me, they were plowed. I had the highest $ take.

I was my High School's President of the FFA for two years and District Treasurer, won all sorts of awards and some college money. We had a Ford 5000 tractor that I made money with during the spring and summer. It was a 15 speed automatic and could do 45 mph on the road .

 

[revjen45]

MikeJ-
Let me point out that you are actively engaged in improving the soil and don't allow weeds to freely propagate. The neighbor who served as the case-in-point just ran the tiller over the same ground every year without doing anything else, thus churning last year's debris into the soil as food for more weeds in addition to giving a new generation the sun and air they need to sprout.
You obviously have your guano packed in one sock. Unfortunately, he doesn't.

 

[Mikej]

MikeJ-
Let me point out that you are actively engaged in improving the soil and don't allow weeds to freely propagate. The neighbor who served as the case-in-point just ran the tiller over the same ground every year without doing anything else, thus churning last year's debris into the soil as food for more weeds in addition to giving a new generation the sun and air they need to sprout.
You obviously have your guano packed in one sock. Unfortunately, he doesn't.

Well, I know there are the "NO TILL" folks too. I've seen 'em, all organic to the nth. I thought you were touting the no till thing. The couple of plots I've seen doing that didn't get a lot out of their soil in the way of crops. Rock hard ground and wimpy plants. There's a medium somewhere between "Organic" as a strict religion and factory farming. I was in the middle somewhere.

 

[CoastRange57]

When we still had our sports turf business, I got into compost teas and biological bacteria. We used them on problem fields to reduce thatch and soil issues and after several applications we stabilized the fields from an agronomic standpoint. I was making my own compost teas and using ground spray application equipment to apply them.

It worked with synthetic fertilizers quite well and allowed the grass plants to naturally manufacture and process the inputs from the synthetic fertilizers. I just put a pillow case in my 5 gallon bucket to seep out the compost mixture I will be using on the potatoes and onions I planted today.

 

[CoastRange57]

My family sold our farm in part because no one in my generation wanted to continue with being a farmer and my grandparents were gone and parent's generation was too old to continue after almost 80 years of farming.

Farming is like any other business. It is economy of scale. It is getting harder and harder for a family farm to operate. The term family farm is relative anyway. I know family farms that are a primary owner and a part time employee or two. I know family farms that are supporting two generations, but had to get big to do it. 3,500 or more acres of combined dry land and irrigated crops, with 6 or more employees.

A friend farms about 1200 acres, him and his son, all dry land crops on owned and rented ground. The son is not real enthralled about what it is going to take for him to carry on this farm, both in cash flow, and work. He could make a living at it, pay his old man rent on the ground and figure it all out when his dad croaks. Just like his dad had to before him.

Huge equipment payments, tractors are 100K, combines are 250K, lines of credit to finance crop inputs until you get paid. Increasing government regulations. They are a ton of farmers in their 60's now that are ready to hang it up. But more of them do not have a second generation to pass it on too, and if they do, the cash requirements make it very hard to establish. This often will lead to liquidation , and the farmer renting out his owned ground and letting his rented ground go back to the owners or others.

Enter the larger corporation farms where they can hire managers, have equipment fleets, and have economy of scale in production. Fact of the times. I have seen farming go from a time in the late 60's when a farmer could raise a family of six on 300 acres with a variety of crop and livestock productions. Not going to happen any more.

 

[The Heretic]

Yup - our family was only about 200 acres total. At the end it was all filbert orchards and the land was leased to other farmers. We sold a 50 acre plot to the Ponzis for their winery, and the rest is still filberts and sold or leased out by the non-farmer owners (they bought the plots for the houses - you can't divide up the plots around here, and you can only build a house on the plot if it isn't suitable for farming/forestry or it has $80K/yr in farm income per plot last I heard).

Most of the filbert orchards around here are leased to one or two larger outfits that do all of the farming. Then there is the outfit that does apples. The rest are small family farms of a couple hundred acres or less.

My dad's farm (separate from the family farm) was leased out for decades - we only farmed it for about 5 years before my dad decided it was just too much work to hold a day job and travel 50 miles each way to farm it on the weekend. Then he sold it to tree nursery and that is what it is now - landscaping plants, which a lot of acreage (too much IMO) is in the n. Willamette valley.

 

[CoastRange57]

Then he sold it to tree nursery and that is what it is now - landscaping plants, which a lot of acreage (too much IMO) is in the n. Willamette valley.

The nursery business has its valleys and peaks. Pre 2008 there were nurseries on any piece of ground you could put a greenhouse on. We had been in the nursery business since about 2000, and were doing about 150K a year. Not enough to live on but a good secondary revenue stream to support others. We specialized in wetland mitigation plant material and did really well. But the market was saturated with growers and many of us felt that a shake out was needed to bring some sanity back to the marketplace.

In mid 2008 we had only sold about 45% of our yearly crop. We had to put 30K into the crop for 2009 as well as maintain the hold over at a cost of 7K. We decided to skip the 2009 crop, dump the remaining 2008 crop which was about 35K at cost.

The market has rebounded at bit over the last 10 years, but the buying patterns of the public with a trend to smaller yards in new development has lead to big decreases in production and types of plant materials, along with the same trend in most agricultural products where the farmer / producer don't get paid sh*t for the crop, and the big boxes make all the money.

I imagine that this recession we are entering will shake out more growers soon. With hand labor being a big part of the nursery business, that is going to affect production. A lot of nurseries in the valley that have the ability and ground size are getting out of nursery production and putting in hazelnuts and blue berries. Both are crops that can be farmed by a family size operation with highly automated machinery and a few family members, on smaller acreages of 400 acres or less.

 

[coltemp]

Farming is great but here is where had people planned a little more, stocking up on Freeze dried before the panic you wouldn't be in a rush to put that garden in.
There are still tings to be had and they are starting to come back. I buy in bulk and save. Prices are up about 30% but you can still get bulk freid dreid veggies and fruit (or at least some of them). The nice thing is they keep for a long while. Can be repackaged and kept for even longer. Need not refrigeration.

If you want cans there are several sources but they are hard to come buy and expensive. For bulk I get stuff from Northbaytrading.com The more you buy the better the price per oz.

 

[The Heretic]

Farming is great but here is where had people planned a little more, stocking up on Freeze dried before the panic you wouldn't be in a rush to put that garden in.
There are still tings to be had and they are starting to come back. I buy in bulk and save. Prices are up about 30% but you can still get bulk freid dreid veggies and fruit (or at least some of them). The nice thing is they keep for a long while. Can be repackaged and kept for even longer. Need not refrigeration.

If you want cans there are several sources but they are hard to come buy and expensive. For bulk I get stuff from Northbaytrading.com The more you buy the better the price per oz.

I have FD food stacked up. Both meals and cans. But even in bulk it is expensive.

Canned shelf stable food is a lot less expensive and much of it can be eaten unheated out of the can without hydration if necessary - especially fruit. Canned food lasts a lot longer than most people think if it is stored properly - in a house with moderate temps unopened. The one year 'best buy' date is just a default date they put on the can because it is required by law and simpler/easier to just default to one year. Some canned food can be stored for ten years without problems. Moreover, if you rotate it, there should not be a problem with how long it lasts, and you could have a year's worth of food on hand.

The main problems are that it is somewhat bulky and you generally do not want to store it where the temps could get below freezing for very long as the can may burst - the latter is usually not a problem for most people as they store that food inside their living quarters (assuming they can keep those rooms above freezing).

You want to start raising your own food well before hand for several reasons.

1) For most people they can't or don't raise enough or with enough variety to have a good varied diet.

2) Some things, like fruit, require more than a year for the fruit bearing plant to become productive. This is true of many berries, apples, etc. - generally you are not going to be able to plant an apple or peach tree and have it bear fruit that year. Usually not the next year either.

3) You do not want to depend on your existing food stores that much, as you want to have at least some of those stores as backups should weather or other problems interfere with your crops or sources of meat/etc.

E.G., my apple tree blew over this winter - it is my only apple tree, planted long before I bought this property. It is old and diseased - I only kept it for the deer (who love it, as do the raccoons/etc.). I could probably keep it, but I want to put a greenhouse in a place that would block the sunlight from reaching it and it isn't a good producer (it has the scab blight, but that doesn't affect the apples for eating, only for selling).

 

[ATCclears]

Canadian friends warning me on this happening in the Motherland.

COVID-19 to have 'immediate and drastic' impact on Canadian meat supply: industry group

Some of North America’s largest meat producers have been forced to close their plants or reduce production amid the spread of the novel coronavirus, prompting industry leaders to warn of ‘immediate and drastic’ effects on Canada’s supply chain.

www.ctvnews.ca

 

[Dungannon]

Climate change: US megadrought 'already under way'

A drought as bad as any in recorded history may be under way in the US.

www.bbc.com