The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/these-intimate-photos-capture-a-family-farms-bittersweet-final-years-180982139/

by ilamont • 3 years ago

220 207 3 years ago

smithsonianmag.com

kasey_junk2• 3 years ago

It’s important to remember that this was a specific policy decision. Earl Butz[1] famously said to our farmers “Get big or get out”.

I don’t have the background or inclination to prove it but my conviction is the death of the small town, and the ancillary costs like the meth and opioid epidemics can be traced directly to the “fence row to fence row” approach he pushed forward and still exists today.

[later] thanks nickt for pointing out I left off the footnote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz

nickt• 3 years ago

[1] Earl Butz - Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (1971 - 1976) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

How much farming do you need if you cut out biofuels and some feed corn for industrial scale meat production? Lots of poor ag policy decisions over the last century, but also I think a a bit of make work in certain circumstances.

When speaking to opponents of utility scale solar on vast tracts of farmland, you see this when they’re upset about the land no longer being used to farm, but the farmer can make more from solar or wind than farming. Lots of emotion from tradition and history to make peace with. Change is the only constant, and everything dies eventually.

msla2• 3 years ago

The death of the small town seems like it was fore-ordained by simple economics. In big cities, you can afford to have businesses like restaurants that aren't Sysco retail outlets, movie theaters that show more than the five most popular films on Earth at the moment, libraries that have books beyond romance novels, bestsellers, and out-of-date nonfiction.

Moreover, cities are the economic drivers, even in the agricultural world:

https://www.zompist.com/jacobs.html

But don't cities arise from and depend on agriculture? No: all economic progress originates in cities, [Jane] Jacobs tells us; and cheekily adds that all agricultural progress originates in cities. Great advances, such as mechanical reapers and electricity, were invented and adopted in or near cities before being applied to agricultural regions farther out. Productivity improvements in agriculture always begin near the cities and spread out.
What we think of as purely rural activities often began in the cities. In premodern Europe, the quintessential cottage industry was weaving; but before cloth was woven in cottages the art was rediscovered and practiced in cities. Dark Ages peasants lived on gruel; the art of breadmaking was recovered first in cities (and based on city-grown bread; a medieval city had its own fields). In our own rural areas there are vast ranches where animals are fattened before slaughter; they are transplants from the city stockyards of Kansas City and Chicago.
Driving the nail in the coffin of the spontaneous generation of cities from farmland, Jacobs describes the inability of Ireland to turn itself around after the disastrous famines of the 1840s:
> There were no ports to receive relief food... There were no mills for grinding relief grain. There were no mechanics or tools and equipment to build mills. There were no ovens for baking bread. There were no ways to spread information about how to grow crops other than potatoes. There was no way to distribute the seeds of other crops, nor to supply the farm tools that were indispensable for a change of crops...
> To be sure, the Irish had reached this pass because they were held in an iron economic and social subjection. But the very core of that subjection-- and the reason why it was so effective and had rendered them so helpless-- was the systematic suppression of city industry, the same suppression in principle that the English had unsuccessfully tried to enforce upon industry in the little cities of the American colonies.
Closer to home, here's a report from one Henry Grady, speaking in 1880 about a funeral in Pickens Co. Georgia, some years before.
> The grave was dug through solid marble, but the marble headstone came from Vermont. It was in a pine wilderness but the pine coffin came from Cincinnati. An iron mountain over-shadowed it but the coffin nails and the screws and the shovel came from Pittsburgh. With hard wood and metal abounding, the corpse was hauled on a wagon from South Bend, Indiana. A hickory grove grew near by, but the pick and shovel handles came from New York. The cotton shirt on the dead man came from Cincinnati, the coat and breeches from Chicago, the shoes from Boston; the folded hands were encased in white gloves from New York... That country, so rich in undeveloped resources, furnished nothing for the funeral except the corpse and the hole in the ground and would probably have imported both of those if it could have done so.
Grady is eloquently describing the circumstances of a passive economic region: despite all its resources, it makes nothing.

So blaming it all on Nixon, which has an obvious appeal I admit, is a bit ahistorical.

kasey_junk2• 3 years ago

Again, I have no business commenting on this as I have no idea what I’m talking about. But it’s striking driving through WI and MI vs IN, IL and IA.

In the former, where the agriculture is dominated by less commodity agriculture (dairy & fruit) small towns exist and thrive. In the latter dominated by the most commoditized crops in the world (feed corn & soy) they don’t.

throwway120385• 3 years ago

I understand that these quotes are poignant symbols of how dependent rural areas are on cities, but you can't expect to base an argument about economic change on some quotes that you liked from books.

frogblast• 3 years ago

Did he make that true via policy changes, or was it an astute observation of what was going to be true given economic realities?

m463• 3 years ago

This is sort of sad, because - 350 years!

I think the other side of the coin is the places stagnation and outright decay have set in, like many inner cities or rustbelt regions that have not thrived. The opposite would be places like tokyo where everything is turned over rapidly and the new is ousted to be almost immediately replaced by the newer and newest.

thelastparadise• 3 years ago

It's interesting to see that the same thing has been happening on the other side of the Atlantic. I grew up in a farming community in County Clare, Ireland (~1980 - 1999) and many farms there have been abandoned due to the low returns from agriculture.

rgmerk• 3 years ago

The same thing has been happening pretty much everywhere in the world for a century.

samstave• 3 years ago

Thanks for introducing me to that concept, enjoyed that.

We need a new New Deal w/ UBI and just invest in ourselves.

bredren• 3 years ago

The length of its existence is interesting, but by todays standards, the farm may have been just as unsustainable as it was at its onset.

Notably, the Smithsonian article only asks about recent changes affecting the farm.

Slavery was common in Massachusetts through 1700s.

If the farm was made sustainable through slave labor in its first 100 years, it would have avoided the same concerns that the article says are doing it in now: dependable and low cost labor.

ROTMetro2• 3 years ago

My Scottish male ancestors were forcibly shipped to Massachusetts and made to do forced labour when they lost the civil war to the English. Because they were prisoners of war they were not allowed to bring their families with them.

dauertewigkeit• 3 years ago

From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming.

From a personal standpoint, the sensible thing to do is to scale it down to subsistence gardening for yourself and your family. That is what my family does. I remember, when I was still young, they still used to sell some produce. Nowadays it is entirely consumed by the family or gifted out. The benefit of this, is that you are free from economic demand. You grow whatever you please, because you want to have it at the dinner table.

zwieback3• 3 years ago

That and maybe specialty farms. Where I live you can't throw a rock without hitting a small farm or nursery that does very specific things and they seem to do okay in their niches.

randomdata6• 3 years ago

From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming.

So long as there is residual value in the "hand-me-down" equipment, there will be economic value in operating it. At the same time it is not economically sensible for large scale farming to continue to operate old and outdated equipment, so the smaller scale farm actually fills a useful role in the economy.

flangola7• 3 years ago

Are there really that many innovations in how to harvest a wheat field?

btilly2• 3 years ago

The economic value from operating it will generally not match the opportunity cost of not doing other things.

And those operating it will learn the cost of this the hard way when they fail to have access to the niceties of modern society that require exchanging what you've produced for something produced by others. Like, say, the computing device that you used to post your opinion.

canadiantim• 3 years ago

Depends on the type of small farm. Commodity crops? Sure there’s no sense in doing that small scale.

But a diversified direct to consumer small farm is actually significantly better than the commodity farm business model.

Not to mention commodity farm businesses are Very dependant on debt and the hurt is only beginning for these types of farms as interest rates continue to rise. Small direct to consumer farms? They’ll be thriving

Arn_Thor2• 3 years ago

You're right, from an economic standpoint, at least on the surface. But what of the social and ecological benefits of keeping alive small communities and small fields with diverse crops? The problems with large-scale monoculture farming are well known. A counter-argument is that food is too cheap. That obviously doesn't feel correct for someone struggling to pay the bills each month, but still... Workers are being squeezed on one end and small farmers are being squeezed on the other, and the gains go somewhere else entirely while small communities fall into despair and die out.

jkepler6• 3 years ago

Workers are being squeezed on one end and small farmers are being squeezed on the other, and the gains go somewhere else entirely while small communities fall into despair and die out.

This seems to have all started when we turned the dollar into a melting iceberg jn 1913 (created the Federal Reserve, which is basicaly a cabal of private banksters with a veneer of government), and it intensified when we decided to make dollars our primary national export product in 1971 (when Nixon closed the gold convertibility window for foreign central banks). Since then, workers are squeezed for working hard and trying to save for the future, but not understanding that if they're saying in dollars they'll never get ahead.

My guess specific to farming is that federal subsidies for corn and energy have driven prices up in ways that price smaller-scale farms out of the market.

checkyoursudo2• 3 years ago

I like gardening and have been a very small-scale gardener my whole life, but mostly flowers and a couple of tomato and bean plants. How much space would you need for a true subsistence garden? Like a family of 4, producing all your own produce (or you know the vast majority of it, excluding that which cannot grow in your conditions), plus giving a small percentage to friends and neighbors. A quick search does not seem to be super helpful.

orwin3• 3 years ago

Converting in US units, 10 to 12 acres should be enough? Maybe a bit more if you want well fed chickens (the trick is to let them go ham in your fields in between crops (my parents both farmed their peas this weekend and will probably plant salads behind next weekend, and in the meantime, the chickens enjoy the field). It's easier if you eat meat and know how to kill your chickens, as you can 'rotate' them out every 2-3 years, my mother's chickens have one egg a week max.

sgu9992• 3 years ago

From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming.

I don't think this is true everywhere. It likely requires the right supply chain to work, but here in France small family farms are doing fine for instance. They have to go sell their products to local markets on top of growing them, but it's a sustainable business.

roel_v• 3 years ago

Without subsidies none of those would survive, especially the French ones, who are notorious for their 'traditional' (i.e., inefficient) farming practices.

JackFr5• 3 years ago

This is not a struggling family farm. These are landowners who farm as a tax dodge or a hobby.

For those on the thread who keep pointing out that this is not in Boston and the real estate isn’t worth that much, I would counter that it’s difficult to believe that a family who’s held real estate in Massachusetts for 350 years is not doing ok.

chrisrohlf2• 3 years ago

These are landowners who farm as a tax dodge

This is exactly what it is here in NJ. They’re called ‘fake farmers’ here, and a quick google search will show you they cost the state tens of millions in lost tax revenue per year. Its all the usual suspects too, you know, the kind of celebrities that lecture you on giving and their politics. Those quaint farm stands are just a ruse to keep their tax bills to a minimum on >5 acres if expensive land in wealthy counties.

flerovium• 3 years ago

Is that true?

Small farms benefit from greater attention and incentives of their owners.

zwieback3• 3 years ago

It's hard to support the idea of inefficient farming just out of pure nostalgia but I think there's something else lost when these small family farms die out. I imagine large commercial farms aren't going to experiment as much or adapt to changing conditions.

SoftTalker• 3 years ago

They aren't going to take any chances on growing unusual crops, perhaps. But big farm operations are constantly experimenting to improve yields and reduce expenses.

zwieback3• 3 years ago

Yes, definitely. Working on a mature product in a big corporation I'm very familiar with the concept of continuous optimization and it can actually be quite interesting.

That's how I see the division: small companies invent and experiment, large ones scale and optimize, both are critical.

Maursault3• 3 years ago

the 17-acre Willard Farm

This is a very small farm even for family farm-sizes. Article does not mention if it was once larger, but I have a suspicion that it was.

“Today, the cost of producing anything is way out of line,” Paul tells Harasimowicz. “A dollar gets spent almost before you earn it because of the cost of pesticides, diesel fuel, labor, insurance—everything has gone up. You can only get so much for a tomato.”

At 17 acres, the farm would not be able to take advantage of economies of scale the way a one man show of, say, 530 acres would. My friend, a farmer that left his family farm (of about 5000 acres now) after decades to become an accountant (due to the toxic behavior of the uneducated and entitled next generation, Millennials fwiw, not insolvency) was just talking to me about smaller 1000 acre farms around his family's farm that "were basically one-man shows," that they would hire seasonal help only during harvest, and the reason they were not wealthy (they're not unsuccessful though) had nothing to do with farming, per se, instead poor crop choices and bad timing in planting.

Infernal• 3 years ago

The author states that a nearby historical building was on what used to be Willard land. It’s likely that what remains is a very small fragment of the original whole.

Maursault3• 3 years ago

That was my feeling, but thanks for spotting the evidence.

tsunamifury2• 3 years ago

I really want to know why entitled and toxic millennials forced your friend off his farm and into accounting…

fundad2• 3 years ago

That's easy, he hated being a boss and probably underpaid the farmhands.

jacobsenscott• 3 years ago

Ever since the EPA banned the "toxic uneducated millennial"icides they've really started to overrun the corn and soybean fields. Grouchy boomers and gen x'ers can drive them away organically by telling tales of how they worked 8 or even 10 hours nearly every day, but these deterrents are getting harder and harder to find in the heartland - they are migrating to Florida and Arizona.

Maursault3• 3 years ago

His nephew feels the farm belongs to him, saw my friend, one of the three actual legitimate heirs, as a threat. It was not just toxicity, it was escalating violence. Though my friend is the strongest man I know and could literally tie his skinny nephew into a double knot, and I could tell you stories of his ridiculous physicality that I personally witnessed, he is a pacifist, nonviolent, quite gentle for someone with farm hands. His nephew barely has a HS education, though I would consider him extremely financially successful, as is everyone with a share in the business thanks to the farm's success. But he is young, thinks he knows everything but doesn't know anything, drives a $100K pickup and thinks a lot of himself, as success can have that effect. He drives a planter, and that is all he knows. He doesn't have any education in the sciences that would lend themselves to farming, such as agronomy, genetics, biology, ecology, meteorology, business, economics or engineering. I'd be very surprised if he knew algebra. My friend has a mechanical engineering degree from a high ranking engineering university, and he worked on that farm for 40 years under his grandfather, then his father. For the last 2 decades, though not a mechanic, he's fixed the broken equipment, which broke down all the time, and kept it running, saving the farm untold amounts for this alone, and ran the front office, and also handled sales, as well as driving a combine, harvester, delivering product with ten wheelers, or whatever else he needed to do. I don't think his brothers recognized his value, and I don't understand how they're getting along without him. He knew what he was leaving behind, actually got a fair settlement, but accounting, and it is controlling actually, is easy money to him compared to farming.

Farming is extremely lucrative, but there are far easier ways to make money. And if his nephew ever does get control of the farm, it will not last, because he is an uneducated moron that is mentally ill and abusive. That he is a Millennial is incidental. He's young, but also identifiably a narcissist, and I should have just said that and left what generation American he was out of it. I believe the children are our future. Millennials, as sensitive as they can be at times (if hn comments are any indicator), and maybe it is just that they get too much unjustified criticism, are going to save the world, I have no doubt about that. And I am and should be grateful to them.

mikewarot• 3 years ago

There goes another possible experiment in regenerative agriculture, the only sustainable way for our great-grandchildren to avoid mass starvation.

Industrial farming depends on oil as a chemical input, because the soil has been sterilized and turned into dirt in most places by ammonia based fertilizers. The process of tilling the land resulted in most of the remaining dirt being eroded over the past century.

We're going to run out of oil. I know that's a minority opinion here, but the facts will bear it out over time. Without that oil to turn into fertilizer, the only other chance is to have ruminants actively managed on a regenerative farm growing both meat and produce. Doing so would build soil, capturing and fixing large amounts of carbon in the process, improving drought resistance (through improved ability to hold water without runoff, and reduced ground temperature and evaporation due to cover crops).

cm2012• 3 years ago

Scientists will figure it out. Much more likely than everyone switching to artisan, labor intensive farms.

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

Or, like many things, the labor intensive parts will be automated by ever more autonomous farm devices allowing more biologic processes to grow food and less chemical intervention. The cost an autonomous drone that uses electricity to zap pests and weeds, charged off panels in the fields, over time will be significantly less than applying mass amounts of synthetic chemicals over a large surface area. The biological processes that yield soil are very efficient and essentially free at extreme scales, so long as the labor isn’t so expensive. And I think most people are wagering on automation taking over an awful lot of tasks. There have been plenty of HN postings of companies proving the basic techniques out, which work but are too expensive today. That will change. I think this is more likely than vertical farming or that we can continue to blast the environment with chemicals that interfere with fundamental biological processes at extreme scales.

nordsieck• 3 years ago

Without that oil to turn into fertilizer, the only other chance is to have ruminants actively managed on a regenerative farm growing both meat and produce.

False dilema.

There are probably more options, but one that immediately comes to mind is that we could synthesize petroleum from the atmosphere.

It'd probably be the only sensible way to do long-range air travel in your scenario anyhow.

colechristensen4• 3 years ago

Oil isn't "turned into fertilizer".

Methane is used as a source of hydrogen to fix atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, but it's entirely possible but slightly more expensive to use hydrogen from splitting water. When natural gas prices go up, it'll be cheaper to use electrolysis on water so that's what will be used, no starvation involved.

You don't know what you're talking about.

The generational BS about not being able to do agriculture any more in n decades doesn't have any merit, it's just a bubble of doomers who have no idea what they're talking about convince each other that the world is going to end.

dekhn2• 3 years ago

I believe the H from the oil (literally the hydrogen atom) is incorporated chemically into the resulting ammonia, which would be consistent with saying "oil is turned into fertilizer" in most worlds that I move through.

whatshisface• 3 years ago

The biggest fertilizer is ammonia. It's made from nitrogen that comes from the air and hydrogen that comes from methane. Conveniently, methane can be burnt to create the high temperature environment in which the reaction must take place. The other major fertilizer is potash. It is mined, but can also be extracted from underground brines, both natural and those produced from water pumped into deep wells and brought back up.

If you took away the methane, you could heat the reactor electrically and produce hydrogen from water. It would be more expensive and use more energy, but it would work. Although potassium is a nonrenewable resource it is not likely to run out any time soon.

pfdietz2• 3 years ago

Potassium can also be obtained from seawater.

The limiting element is phosphorus. It cannot be substituted for and phosphate ores will not last forever. Eventually, it will have to be extracted from very low grade rocks at a concentration just above 0.1%. This probably sets a lower limit on how much rock global civilization will have to process each year. Phosphorus recycling will likely become more profitable.

cyberax2• 3 years ago

Industrial farming depends on oil as a chemical input, because the soil has been sterilized and turned into dirt in most places by ammonia based fertilizers. The process of tilling the land resulted in most of the remaining dirt being eroded over the past century.

What a piece of nonsense bullshit.

1. Ammonia can be produced without any oil. Natural gas (not oil per se) is simply used as an easy way to produce hydrogen and the heat energy needed.

2. Nitrogen fertilizers do not "sterilize" the soil. Not even close to it. They in fact can cause bacterial overgrowth, as nitrogen is often the limiting nutrient for anything. Soil with fertilizer is extremely fertile for both agricultural plants and for microbial life.

3. Nitrogen fertilizers are _essential_ to survival. Without them, quite literally billions will starve.

4. "Soil depletion" is typically caused by the lack of micronutrients such as potassium, and can be managed by (you guessed it!) adding fertilizers. Some other causes such as salt accumulation due to irrigation are more complicated.

Without that oil to turn into fertilizer, the only other chance is to have ruminants actively managed on a regenerative farm growing both meat and produce.

Sigh. People should REALLY learn how the nitrogen cycle works.

colechristensen4• 3 years ago

The future of land management is going to be cultivating, curating, and generally taking care of the living, mostly fungal, part of the soil which will displace some or all of the straight up chemical additions instead enhancing the natural symbioses between root, fungus, and bacteria on an industrial scale... but until then chemical additions are fine. The issue going forward is going to be cost not an existential threat.

biorach6• 3 years ago

the soil has been sterilized and turned into dirt in most places by ammonia based fertilizers.

That's a massive, massive exaggeration.

jmyeet2• 3 years ago

Here's what I find funny: many of the people who extoll the virtues of capitalism also bemoan the death of small businesses and family farms. Or at least they pay it lip service.

Why is this funny? Because small businesses and family farms are inherently more socialist than capitalist. Why? Because it is closer to owning the means of production and capturing the excess value of labor by those who are, well, laboring. These are socialist principles.

Many (including in these comments) will repeat the propaganda that small farms (or businesses) can't survive. Yet farmer's markets, which many people like, can offer better prices and products than those that come out of agribusiness and go through distribution chains to end up on supermarket shelves. Again, the value has simply shifted to many layers of capital owners instead of the farmers.

This is a myth because it's been artificially created. Agribusiness is predatory in nature. Things like seeds are now a subscriptio model. Modern farm equipment often can't be repaired. It requires another predatory subscription. Yet, those large agricultural conglomerates also operate their own farms and don't have to pay those predatory prices.

randomdata6• 3 years ago

Why is this funny? Because small businesses and family farms are inherently more socialist than capitalist. Why? Because it is closer to owning the means of production and capturing the excess value of labor by those who are, well, laboring. These are socialist principles.

But why is it funny? You're not wrong that family farms are socialist in nature. Farmers have traditionally, at least here in Canada, even been socialist in political view. Our socialized healthcare system, for example, was a product of the work of farmers. The NDP, our closest answer to a socialist party, was born out of the older United Farmers party.

Bemoaning the death of that socialist legacy is like bemoaning the disposal of an Apple II, Commodore 64, or whatever legacy computer system is to your fancy. Being sad to see that history go isn't at odds with extolling the virtues of our modern technology, nor is it unusual to have a place in one's heart for the past while also embracing the present.

jkepler6• 3 years ago

I'm not sure how you can say that an owner-operated family farm is socialist. The family owns the capital in the farm, and profits from its use. That's pretty capitalistic.

What seems far more socialist is the crony capitalism of large agro-business that prices small, family-owned capitalist farmers out of the market by taking taxpayer-funded federal subsidies and using them to capture regulators and buy out their competition.

TheBigSalad2• 3 years ago

Capitalism isn't the reason this farm is closing. The owners are retiring and don't have anyone to take it over.

mindslight3• 3 years ago

Because it is closer to owning the means of production and capturing the excess value of labor by those who are, well, laboring

I would call this distributed capitalism. The farm owners can still run the farm however they like, keep the entire profit of the farm, invest in capital machinery over a long term that they have exclusive ownership of, etc. The outcome is indeed closer to socialism in that it's likely the owners will also be workers, and profits are spread around throughout society. I'd say the key difference is that distributed capital divides power bottom-up, whereas socialism is more of a reaction to the lack of it or the failings of it.

What we're suffering today is centralized capitalism, where that ownership has been concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. I look at the federal government giving many trillions of dollars to centralized Wall Street in the form of low interest loans over the past few decades, and can't help but think that is a significant cause of the centralization - especially in light of the waste that centralized management seems to create (otherwise you'd expect larger business structures to be outcompeted in many areas). These subsidies are also the cause of beancounter-centric monocultures, because in order to direct those loans (leverage) into specific concrete endeavors the financial outcome must be made extremely predictable.

jmyeet2• 3 years ago

This can best be framed (as Marx did) in terms of feudalism.

Feudalism as an economic system captured the surplus value of labor right up to the monarch. This was done through a number of layers, what you'd call vassal lords. In some places these structures exist today (eg the various duchies in the UK that still derive an income from their holdings to whatever royal or aristocrat is appointed to benefit from them). One might be tempted to call this distributed feudalism because of the existence of intermediate lords but it's one of those distinctions without a difference. The monarch will ultimately seek to extract as much value from his or her vassal lords as is possible. At times this was an explicit goal (eg Louis XIV keeping the nobility poor through Versailles).

"Distributed capitalism" is likewise a distinction without a difference. You can have smaller farms. These will be gobbled up Cargill or whoever, often coercively through predatory pricing of key products. The forces at work always seek to capture that surplus value of labor into a smaller and smaller group at the top.

You see the effects of this everywhere: massive consolidation in every sector. All of the food in the US is produced by like 6 conglomerates.

harshaw• 3 years ago

This farm is in Harvard MA - e.g the exurbs of Boston. Harvard is one of these communities that has large minimum lot sizes and restrictions on commercial property so it retains its rural feel. It's pretty, possibly not the best use of property in Boston these days, kinda snooty, and is certainly not a cheap place to run a family farm.

A couple towns south where I live there are many active small farms. They either specialize in CSAs or have farmstands that sell a mix of their own produce and imported (e.g California) produce. It certainly is possible to farm - but you have to adapt to the times I guess.

My family also has a large commercial dairy farm in upstate NY. Very different farm then when I was growing up. Went from milking 70 cows to 1100+. From what my cousin's say - the only way is to go big or go home.

fundad2• 3 years ago

That close to Boston, they have an 8-figure net worth.

That must be why they can't hire help and want to hold onto the land to bequeath to their daughter.

sokoloff• 3 years ago

Harvard isn't particularly close to Boston. It's 25-30 miles outside of Boston and outside of even I-495, the outer loop highway encircling Boston. (Still River, where the farm is, is on the far end of Harvard.)

Article says they used to farm two fields they owned and three they leased and have backing away from some of the leased land. From a quick search (unverified/fact-checked), it looks like it's a <20 acres of owned farmland, which would fetch close to $3M in all likelihood. Add $1M for buildings and equipment and, assuming no debt, it's a modest 7-figure estate, seemingly split two ways. Many regular employees on this board have more in investments than each of the owners of this farm and didn't have to farm for 60 years to get there.

snarf21• 3 years ago

Agreed you have to go big or go retail. There is no other option. However, at some point 1K or 2K dairy cows hardly feels much like a "family farm" anymore.

panic• 3 years ago

I believe most big farms in the US are family farms. It's not synonymous with small scale.

mikrotikker3• 3 years ago

NZ dairy farming become very intensified. Less than 200 acres is not worth it I heard. The effect on our environment is not good.

1letterunixname2• 3 years ago

Meat and dairy ag are terrible for the following reasons:

- climate change - 15% of GHGs not counting total inputs of fuel and feed

- antibiotic resistance - antibiotics are used excessively to raise production, similar enough to the ones used in humans to evolve drug-resistant pathogens

- pandemics - many animals peeing and pooping together, in close proximity, create an "institutional" Petri dish effect plus regular cross-contamination with humans and random wildlife

- pollution - of water, air, and soil

tomcam• 3 years ago

Are they those awesome self-service milkers where the cow just walks up and gets milked automatically?

kwere3• 3 years ago

In italy, if you run a traditional farm + milk/meat animals, you need to have at least 2-3M $ in capital investments to be "safe", most smaller operations have to be run as "second jobs" bcs there isnt enough margins to sustain yourself as a single family, if you have to share with other family members its worse

crtified3• 3 years ago

Low wage industries struggle in high wage countries.

Globalization displaces natural local supply and demand outcomes.

The above two factors result in some very complex status quos.

For example, take the country of New Zealand, whose significant apple growing industry is largely for export purposes - ostensibly, sending good fresh highly-valued NZ apples to other countries, where they'll fetch max $.

Problem: apple workers are minimum wage jobs. Over recent decades, the minimum wage in NZ has risen by a great deal more than the price of apples has. Profitability slumped.

The powerful industry, rather than cede ground or change crops, instead loudly complained and politically lobbied to have special conditions put in place for their industry: since 2007, they can 'temporarily import' hundreds of foreign labourers from the islands of Tonga and similar - a special workforce of large muscled young men for whom any NZ wage is a fortune back home, and to whom the powerful orchardists and their cronies are like little gods.

The natural local market forces that-would-be are being manipulated for commercial purposes, with significant and complex environmental, economic, and cultural side effects.

Whose fault is it? What should we do instead?

golergka4• 3 years ago

Fault? The situation with apple producers you just described looks like a win-win situation both for consumers and immigrants. The only ones losing are New Zealand workers, but from all invoked groups, they're the only citizens who could theoretically vote out these politicians.

crtified3• 3 years ago

I acknowledge that win/loss is arguable. It invokes ethical cans of worms that I'm reluctant to open here. In theory, the dominant demographic at HN are from affluent countries, so the maxim that there are endless folk from poorer countries who'd be willing to come and do our work for a lot less - could apply to most of us, in similar fashion. Would we call that 'a win'? Highly subjective, obviously. And dependent upon other factors such as opportunity cost, the question 'is there something economically better we could be doing instead'?

I suppose my point could be construed as highlighting the significant factors of power and inertia in regulatory systems, as pertaining to environmental and economic setups.

Regarding your point about Voting Out - it assumes that the major political parties differ in their stance on this one matter. If both/all are subject to the same lobbying, then whichever is elected will see the status quo remain.

okillbite• 3 years ago

And those workers don't want to do those jobs, for that $, anyway. A friend of mine with a farm in Quebec, Canada says even if you can find folks to do the work and pay them well, they often aren't reliable. Better all round to use temporary workers

polishdude20• 3 years ago

It seems like it's "ride the wave with us or get left behind" kind of thing.

Etrnl_President• 3 years ago

In my experience, individual small farms tend to be "displaced" moreso by government, than by broad concepts like Globalization.

zokier• 3 years ago

for whom any NZ wage is a fortune back home

This is the problem to solve, and something I believe is becoming solved gradually even if very slowly; developing nations have been developing. But if we manage to eradicate this idea of "high wage countries", or at least reduce it so that the imbalance is not order(s) of magnitude, then that will alleviate many of the negative side-effects of globalization.

ed25519FUUU• 3 years ago

We can’t eliminate it on a city by city, or state by state basis. How would that inequality ever be eliminated on a country by country basis?

moonchrome• 3 years ago

From what I understand we would need an energy tech revolution because there's not enough resources to replicate current western lifestyle globally.

Assuming you aren't aiming to reduce standard of living in rich countries.

stcroixx• 3 years ago

Exactly like big tech in the US and their H1B carve out.

judge2020• 3 years ago

This is why farming subsidies exist - it's advantageous for both national security and economic security to have at least some crops grown within a nation's borders. Not so great if the nation specifically has a lower minimum wage for their agriculture workers, though.

concordDance• 3 years ago

Get rid of minimum wage and replace it with UBI. Avoids the market distorting effects of minimum wage without leaving people destitute.

jkepler6• 3 years ago

No! Creating more money doesn't create wealth. We need to cap the money supply, let working people save in money that isn't being stolen from them by design (central banks target rates of inflation), and trust that with the deflationary effects of technology, peoples' savings will gradually increase in purchasing power.

jkepler6• 3 years ago

Low-wage industries wouldn't necessarily be a problem of the currency's purchasing power was rising rather than falling. But in most "developed" economies, we're institutional used theft via central banks targeting inflation, rather than recognizing that technological advancements ought to bring about gradual price deflation.

We've accepted for far too long the lie that low inflation (i.e. theft at a slow enough rate that working people hopefully won't notice) is necessary for economic growth. That's not true, but it introduces all sorts of systemic injustice into our economic systems.

kwere3• 3 years ago

Thats looks more like dynamics of seasonal jobs in developed economies. People get stable jobs that provide income all year around and avoid hustling for low value odd jobs. The only ways to fill those positions are employing special class workers: unenployed welfare recipients, prisoners, students, foreign unskilled workers, etc... . Foreign unskilled workers usually are the easiest to get

jschveibinz• 3 years ago

I’ll suggest that farmland is even older, like thousands of years old, and it belonged to other people who lived there before Europeans showed up. So it’s important to keep that in the conversation.

linksnapzz• 3 years ago

The land has been above-water since the middle Triassic. So yes, much older than thousands. The most recent non-European owners didn't leave much in the way of title (they took possession of it by conquest); so it is important to keep that in the conversation.

itissid• 3 years ago

I was reading Matt Levine commenting on how the oil industry would have to figure out how to get "out" while making wild profits as recent as this year. It sounds poetic: the elements of man's destruction and food salvation are both rended from earth and yet both might end up being undoable, on almost the same time scales of technological evolution.

pentagrama• 3 years ago

If you feel moved by this story, I am going to recommend the Spanish movie Alcarràs.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcarr%C3%A0s_(film)

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av7xGRiXe0M

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

This 17-acre farm was enough to keep about eight humans alive if it had been the sole source of agricultural production to feed them.

That's the fundamental equation, and it generally assumes a vegan diet as well. Nobody has ever been able to reduce this value, it's related to the solar input and the ability of plants to capture carbon into a human-digestible energy source.

It'll be worse on Mars, of course, due to the reduced intensity of sunlight.

gknapp• 3 years ago

I'm not quite sure where you got that figure from, but some quick research cites numbers vary between 0.1 and 1.2 acres per person.

In any event, 17 acres could theoretically supply food for an enormous range from 15 to 170 people, depending on how intensively it's farmed.

[1] 4000 sq ft bio-intensive farming (http://www.growbiointensive.org/) [2] 0.44 acres permaculturism (https://permaculturism.com/how-much-land-does-it-take-to-fee...) [3] 1.2 from a 1994 study (and further discussion in this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1aozn1/how_much...)

somenameforme2• 3 years ago

China has around 330 million acres of farmland and, until relatively recently, they were a net food exporter with a population of 1.4 billion. That's around 4 people fed per acre, and that's not especially remarkable. Even urban homesteads are also able to match this. Here's [1] a heavily commercialized one that is/was operating on a fifth of an acre for a family of four.

And meat also provides an excellent nutrient:calorie ratio with extremely low upkeep. You can sustain around 50 free range chickens per acre, and they're ready for harvest in 6 weeks. That's more than a whole chicken per day, on a single acre. If you want to get real crazy you can also get into things like vertical farming/aquaponics [2] and more, where the densities are limited really only by cost. Though on the still very reasonable end, you can do things like potato boxes where you can get hundreds of pounds of potatoes in tens of square feet.

[1] https://www.urbanhomestead.org/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming

nly• 3 years ago

Rice is a rich source of carbs and isn't grown on what westerners would consider farmland

pcrh• 3 years ago

To add to others' comments, having animals increases a farm's productivity, since a lot of plant material is indigestible for humans. So they wouldn't have been vegan. Chickens and pigs are omnivourous and will eat all sorts. Ruminants such as cows or goats can convert inedible grass and other cellulose-rich material into milk and meat.

Incipient• 3 years ago

Family grown, wholesome produce is a great product, and definitely just better than mass produced. However, as furniture, building, etc has all shown...people just want cheaper and easier. Is the family farm just a victim of our move to mass production?

cujaneway• 3 years ago

The majority of people don't just want for cheaper goods, it's a necessity.

chevman• 3 years ago

If you find this story interesting, I would encourage you to travel to central and south america.

There are farms there with 1,000+ year traceable, verifiable histories.

Nicholas_C• 3 years ago

Source? Sounds interesting.

jessmartin• 3 years ago

Wendell. Appropriate name, given the situation. Wendell Berry has written beautifully on this subject, in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Highly recommended, if you want to dive into the nuance and heartbreak.

Suffice to say the situation is complex and irreducible and does not yield to armchair quarterbacking.

nn3• 3 years ago

So all the trillion+ of the farm bill are going somewhere else?

tlear• 3 years ago

There is a lot of discussion about prices, weather etc. but the key here is that their family died out. Being 80 and 74 and the only ones running the farm..

SenHeng• 3 years ago

The young don't want to farm. My neighbour is 84, his children in their 40s and 50s. They moved to a small regional town to work in factories. Same story for the several other farmers in this area.

He has offered to let me use the land for free. I moved here for the scenic views. I don't want to farm. There's over 10,000 square metres of farm land right outside my window growing weeds as I sit here in climate controlled comfort in a HM chair, typing away.

edit: math is hard

ricardo_nh• 3 years ago

The same is happening in many places in Europe: young people are leaving rural areas and the only ones left to tend the farms are the elderly who eventually give up and sell their land to a big company. There is a huge lack of incentives for young people to stay in the farming business, or just to live in the countryside

sgt3• 3 years ago

The question of what will become of the farm is a very complicated and painful one for Eleanor. They are an academic and a writer, and their family wants them to pursue their passions. Eleanor has no interest in farming themself, but they don’t want to see the farm disappear. They now live in New York State and miss home all the time. The family wants to hold on to the property, if at all possible, so they can live out their days here and leave it for Eleanor to do with it as they wish.

This is getting pretty old. Is it one person or several? Confusing readers just to be politically correct is not surprising coming from Smithsonian Magazine, but I just can't help rolling my eyes at this nonsense.

klodolph6• 3 years ago

These things only become familiar with continued usage. Give it time.

aintgonnatakeit• 3 years ago

It may become familiar, but it is no less confusing. I had to read that paragraph several times to understand who “they” were.

pmelendez• 3 years ago

This is getting pretty old.

Well the singular use of "They" is actually pretty old [1]. I don't think it is confusing readers as they did mention a name.

I just can't help rolling my eyes at this nonsense.

I get the frustration if you are not used to the usage of the pronoun in its singular form, but it is actually sensible

[1] https://www.scu.edu/media/offices/provost/writing-center/res...

dctoedt2• 3 years ago

Well the singular use of "They" is actually pretty old

The cardinal rule of writing is Serve the Reader — Don't Make Him/Her Do Needless Work. In modern parlance, "they" is an unobjectionable shortcut when you don't know who the person is, but it's just confusing to readers when it's about a known person. I'd be fine with a coined, gender-neutral singular pronoun, analogous to how feminists coined "Ms." decades ago and it's now practically universal.

sgt3• 3 years ago

The OED reference is very vague. We're not even sure in what context "they" was used 600 years ago. Care to elaborate?

ghaff6• 3 years ago

It's not a well-written paragraph because it deals with both Eleanor and the family and it's not immediately obvious what "they" is referring to in one or two spots.

That said, singular-they is pretty much the best alternative to dealing with a number of issues that copy editors have struggled with for years.

ghostbrainalpha• 3 years ago

Why can't we just make a new pronoun that is "they" but singular?

Like "Theya".

Theya is my friend. It's singular, non gendered, and then we can just get rid of every pronoun except "they" and "theya".

sholladay• 3 years ago

You couldn’t figure out it was singular after seeing “an academic and a writer” in reference to a single name? This doesn’t seem confusing at all.

Granted, I’ve seen some sentences that are more ambiguous. But most of the time, context makes it plainly obvious, as it does here. The benefit is that by using “they”, the writer is making fewer guesses or assumptions. So it’s a trade off - more ambiguity, fewer mistakes. I think it’s a win overall.

magicalhippo• 3 years ago

This doesn’t seem confusing at all.

It was to me. Since I only read the quote I assumed "they" referred to Eleanor and Eleanor's partner or some other person that was mentioned before the quoted section.

tmtvl• 3 years ago

While I like rms' suggestion of using person, per, and pers I can live with writers using singular they instead. It solves an issue English has (and many other languages also have) with lack of information.

MagicMoonlight• 3 years ago

The wall has always said that two legs are better than four

ThorsBane• 3 years ago

Could investing in more automation keep this legacy going? Also, huge thanks to Smithsonian Mag for writing a quality piece on something this important and beautiful. Very amazing legacy and photos and writing to capture. It causes me to consider a subscription or at least an account. More content like this in general would not be reproducible by AI for a long time yet - not until AI can walk and are indistinguishable from humans. The media organizations that scale into the future and take the existing market share are going to be the ones that invest in deep relationships with communities and bringing quality stories like this to light.

giantg2• 3 years ago

This really isn't anything new - costs and lack of scale forcing out small farmers has been going on forever.

The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

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