"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 04 May 2006 13:24:50 -0400, katy
said:

Academic? There's plenty of valid literature out there regarding
small agribusiness (the family farm) and how worthwhile it would be
to pursue maintaining and increasing small farms.

Katy, I grew up in farming country. Even in the 50s the 174 acre farm he
posits as the maximum size would never have been economically viable when
compared to those around it. There's a reason why the size of farms has
grown.

And that reason is lack of labor. We all know that slaves once provided it on
big plantations. Our dirty little secret is that one's own kids provided it on
"family farms". Every generation the farmer wore out several wives producing a
dozen or more kids who did the same work as slaves on 'massa's plantation for
the same wage. Every generation the eldest inherited the farm, married one of
the girls next door (or his half-sister) and began his own crop of slaves. These
displaced the farmer's siblings who ended up in city sweat shops where a few
lived to be as old as 30. That's one reason average life expectancy was so low.
Now we rely on machines instead.

No matter how nostalgic one wishes to wax, the case for the small family
farm is based on emotion, not economics.

And misguided emotion at that. Check out some old family graveyards. You'll
find a father then his son then his son, and so on. In between each one you'll
find 3 or 4 wives plus some kids, worked to death. Then wonder what happened to
the dozen or so kids each generation who are not buried there. I'll take a
tractor and combine over that any day! Folks who yearn for the family farm have
never put up hay grin.

Vito wrote:
"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 04 May 2006 13:24:50 -0400, katy
said:

Academic? There's plenty of valid literature out there regarding
small agribusiness (the family farm) and how worthwhile it would be
to pursue maintaining and increasing small farms.
Katy, I grew up in farming country. Even in the 50s the 174 acre farm he
posits as the maximum size would never have been economically viable when
compared to those around it. There's a reason why the size of farms has
grown.

And that reason is lack of labor. We all know that slaves once provided it on
big plantations. Our dirty little secret is that one's own kids provided it on
"family farms". Every generation the farmer wore out several wives producing a
dozen or more kids who did the same work as slaves on 'massa's plantation for
the same wage. Every generation the eldest inherited the farm, married one of
the girls next door (or his half-sister) and began his own crop of slaves. These
displaced the farmer's siblings who ended up in city sweat shops where a few
lived to be as old as 30. That's one reason average life expectancy was so low.
Now we rely on machines instead.
No matter how nostalgic one wishes to wax, the case for the small family
farm is based on emotion, not economics.

And misguided emotion at that. Check out some old family graveyards. You'll
find a father then his son then his son, and so on. In between each one you'll
find 3 or 4 wives plus some kids, worked to death. Then wonder what happened to
the dozen or so kids each generation who are not buried there. I'll take a
tractor and combine over that any day! Folks who yearn for the family farm have
never put up hay grin.



Most often the wives died of puepheral fever (childbed fever) and
the children of measles, mumps, etc. You have a very jaded view of
family farm life. My family farmed. No one died of slave labor.
My paternal grandmother not only raised 5 kids (4 college graduates)
but also was the church organist. The kids were required to work,
sure. Did it do them any har,? Guess not, since they were a;l
successful in later life and had an excellent work ethic. Their life
was hard. We grew up hearing the stories about the Depression. The
saving grace was that they were farmers, so at least had food on
their table and a roof over their head. On the other side, my
maternal grandfather came from a plantation in Missouri. They freed
their slaves when the Emancipation Proclamation was published. The
farm is still being farmed (dairy and wheat) and the family
graveyard stills stands in tribute to my ancestors. Your
interpretation of the family farm smacks of revisionism.

"katy" wrote
Most often the wives died of puepheral fever (childbed fever) and
the children of measles, mumps, etc. You have a very jaded view of
family farm life.

Geeze, you got so worked up your typo rate increased. We are talking apples and
oranges.

Go back before your grandfather - to the heyday of the "family farm" in the
early and mid 1800s before machinery reduced the need for labor. Yes, most often
wives died in childbirth, died to produce the crop of laborers needed to make a
"family farm" a viable economic unit. The kids who died on the farm were the
lucky ones. Their siblings were forced off the family farm by their nieces and
nephews who took their places doing the chores without pay. They ended up dying
young in big city sweat shops and opium dens over a "pipe dream".

By the time you speak of, machinery had replaced the big family and made family
farms inefficient. Until then the size of a farm without slaves was limited by
the number of kids the farmer had to do his work. One man with a spade can only
tend a garden. One man with draft animals and 15 kids can farm 160 acres or
more (the basis of 'townships') but he'll kill 3 wives to get them. OTOH, with
two tractors, a planter and a combine, plus a mower and bailer, and no kids, I
raised enough corn and alfalfa to feed 800 feeder calves while working a full
time 40hr/week job to boot. Had I worked the farm exclusively, I could have
farmed four times the acreage or more. That's the modern economic farm unit.
The "family farm" cannot compete with it any more than a smith can compete with
a factory.

But that made me a "farmer" in name only - I spent more time maintaining
machinery and feeding cattle than planting and harvesting. And I certainly
wasn't a "family farmer" (My wife & daughter wanted no part of it!). No, I
"share cropped" the cattle part of the operation on 270 acres, buying weaned
calves and feeding them out to slaughter, and leased I several similar farms
from folks like your grandparents to grow grain and fodder for them. I don't say
none exist but I don't know any "family farmers" nowadays except the Amish.

So, while your grandparents may not have had quite as efficient and modern
equipment as I, they didn't need 15 (or 5) kids to make a viable economic unit.
So their (and my) operations were more akin to factory farms than to the family
farms of the 19th century. They (and I) didn't have a family farm, they were
merely a family living on a farm. Many families doing that today own the land
but hire "custom pickers" to plant and harvest their crops. It's easy to be
nostalgic for such an existence. But they are no more "family farmers" than a
factory owner is a blacksmith. If he is, it's a hobby.

Yes they were lucky to have the farm. Many overmortgaged theirs in the
preceeding inflationary boom to buy more land and machinery. Then with deflation
they had a farm worth far less than the mortgage and an income less than the
payment. So the bank forclosed and the farm sat fallow while people starved.

Nice little story, Vito. You're making your life story the basis for
everyone? My grandfather farmed with Percheron teams. On;y tractor
they ever owned was a Gravely hand tractor for the vegetable garden.
And BTW, it wasn't only farm wives and farm children dying back
before the turn of the century, it was everybody. Farming had
nothing to do with it, the lack of medical knowledge, antiseptic
processes, and disease was responsible. And I do know family farmers
in Michigan. They are not a lost breed.

"katy" wrote in message
...
Nice little story, Vito. You're making your life story the basis for
everyone? My grandfather farmed with Percheron teams. On;y tractor
they ever owned was a Gravely hand tractor for the vegetable garden.
And BTW, it wasn't only farm wives and farm children dying back
before the turn of the century, it was everybody. Farming had
nothing to do with it, the lack of medical knowledge, antiseptic
processes, and disease was responsible. And I do know family farmers
in Michigan. They are not a lost breed.

Glad to hear it ... it's just that I call them hobby farmers. Nothing wrong
with that either.

I can't speak for Michigan but throughout the mid atlantic and the west land is
so valuable that the "farmer" could easily make more income by selling it and
investing the cash. The man I "share cropped" the cattle spread was a good
example. He'd made a bundle in politics during ww2 and bought a farm. He
claimed that the appreciation on the land was more than his half of the profits
on the farming operation, and I have no reason to doubt that. We had 6-800
feeder calves and 120 cows on pasture plus 80-120 steers in a feed lot at any
given time. I'd get there by 5am and feed hay, grain and silage then go to my
job. He'd get up and around about 9am and fiddle around in his garden. When I
got back about 6pm he'd come give me advise while I fed again then ground grain
for next morning, getting to bed around 11. I would have been the life of Riley
if I hadn't had to work too but I made more money on my day job. The old
farmer, and the folks I leased farms from for a few dollars/yr (gave them a big
tax break) all refinanced annually and live on the lands' appreciation. We all
lived on farms but were we farmers?? Now, had I owned enough land to live well
off the appreciation (Several $million worth) , and farmed it as well I could
have done OK.