The Beginning Farmer

I have always been interested in farming news. When many of my other peers in middle school and high school were listening to the latest and greatest rock radio station I usually had good ‘ol WHO 1040AM tuned in on my radio. And on weekdays from 11:30 AM until 1:00 PM I have always enjoyed listening to “The Big Show“, which is all about farming in Iowa and around the world. Now that I have grown up and am taking my own steps towards farming, and farming unconventionally, I have begun listening with a different perspective. A slightly more analytical and discerning perspective.

This past Friday was a perfect example. At the end of the show farm broadcaster emeritus Lee Kline (who has a great radio voice) was telling a story of a recent farm land auction that he had attended in central Iowa. There was something like 240 acres (I don’t remember exactly) up for auction that day, and quite a few people were in attendance. The story telling was great as always, but the price the land sold for was the most interesting for me. $6,000 per acre was the final winning price … that is $1,440,000 if you are scoring at home!

That is pretty scary number for someone like me who would like to add land and grow the farm, but it became more interesting (and possibly scarier) after I went home and checked the mail. It just so happens that we received a bulletin from the boarding school where we used to work. In this issue there was a short article about farmers donating commodities (grains) as financial donations for the school. The idea is that there is a better tax break for the farmer when it is done like that. Good information and I hope that some people take advantage of it because the school is a worthy cause.

But, it is the example that really got me thinking. The example says:

In 2006, Bud Peterson, a grain farmer, donated 1,000 bushels of corn to the local Christian School. Bud’s cost of production was $4,000, and the proceeds generated by the sale of the grain to the elevator by his favorite charity were $5,000.

Let me extrapolate a few numbers from that. Let’s just say that the average yield for this farmer (he was from Illinois) was 175 bushels per acre. That means that his donation came from 5.71 acres of land. Taking the $4,000 in production cost and dividing by the number of acres we see that it cost him $700.53 per acre for inputs (probably includes land, equipment, seed, chemicals, etc.). Now we can divide the $5,000 that was made on the sale by the number of acres to find that he would have made $875.66 per acre of corn. That gives him a total profit (if he hadn’t given it to charity) of $175.13 per acre.

It is going to take a lot of acres to make your living wages off of that … plus we really need to know if land payments were factored into the $4,000 of production costs. If they were not … well then there is a problem. Especially if the land cost $6,000 per acre!

I believe this is a perfect real life example of why we need to be looking at different methods and operations when it comes to farming. We need to make better use of our land and better use of our time!

Well, I’m two weeks into writing for the epicurious.com “epi-log”. It was a pretty cool opportunity that became available to me around a month ago and I decided to grab onto it and see what happens. If you missed my first post let me give you a quick description of the “epi-log”. Basically epicurious.com is the online home of Gourmet and Bon Appetit Magazines and the “epi-log” is their blog. Their staff writes for the blog and so do a handful of guest bloggers (mostly chefs, food lovers, and food writers). I fall into the category of “guest bloggers”, but not so much because I’m a chef (I do make a mean corn casserole though). They wanted a blogger with a farmers perspective … kind of me …

But, the reason I bring this up again (it has only been a little while since I first mentioned it) is because it has been an interesting experience. I have received some interesting comments and feedback on posts ranging from calving to the NAIS from people genuinely interested in understanding more about farming and the farmers who provide the food that they eat. It has been great to see non-farmers thoughts on some of the issues that farmers face and to just share some of the joys of farming.

The more I think about the people who are reading the “epi-log” the more I realize that these are the people that are potentially customers (maybe not mine, but possibly customers of their local farmers). These are people that love good food! They love to prepare it, they love to talk about it, they love to write about it, and they love to eat it (as do I). But, for whatever reason … maybe because of where they live or where they were born, possibly because there is an agricultural stigma, or even because farmers have become isolated from their customers … these readers and writers have not had too many opportunities to connect with their food providers.

My hope is that in writing about my joys, concerns, hardships, day-to-day chores, and all that is farming they will be able to find a connection with farmers in their area … wherever their area is! So, make sure you go and check out the “epi-log”. Read through the posts (they have some great thoughts and topics) and make sure to check out the recipe section (if you like to eat good food).

And finally, spread the word (not about the blog, but you can if you want) about the need for a connection between farmers and the people that eat the food the farmers raise and grow!

**The above picture was from the “photo shoot” we did when we were trying to get a picture for my bio. As you can tell from the picture it is very easy to make fun of me from time to time because I do silly things like that! Oh, and in case you are wondering I have gloves on because it is COLD, not because I’m afraid of chickens. I’ve had about five people comment on that when they saw the picture!**

**You can check out my by looking on the left column of the “epi-log”. If you want a direct link to my posts you can always click the red link on the right side of this blog.**

“Work should be satisfying and enjoyable to us, then doing less or how hard it is will not be on our mind,” writes Bud Williams in this months issue of “The Stockman Grassfarmer”. That is sound advice to live by, but I would say that most people believe that it is not attainable. The argument that most people have is that there are just too many jobs in this world that people plain don’t want to do. Maybe that is true, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that it isn’t true.

A few years back I attended a seminar about finding your strengths and then working within your strengths so that you will be most effective in what you do. It was a great week of study and personal reflection and I believe that it has really helped me in my youth ministry (that was the reason I went), but the leader for the week had also lead these courses all over the country at Fortune 500 companies and even for hotel workers. I think one thing that I took away from the week is that there are people passionate about doing many things that I would think isn’t that exciting. One of the main problems is that as a society we stigmatize those jobs so that the best candidates do not want to take them. And yes, in his travels and presentations we met plenty of people that loved what they did when it came to cleaning toilets and picking up after people!

So, the idea is that when you work within your strengths you will have more joy in the work you do, be more productive for yourself or your boss, and strive to learn and grow in what you do. That growth may even lead to a change in your strengths that could shift or change what you desire to do. Mr. Williams writes in the article, and I agree, that the problem is that we have so many things that we could possibly want. Having the money isn’t the problem because we will work ourselves silly at jobs we hate so we can get the things we want! The problem is that once we get those things we want then we either don’t have time to use them or we find something else to want.

What if we enjoyed what we did so much that we didn’t feel the need to escape all the time and get away from the work? What if we were satisfied with doing a job and doing it well because we truly enjoyed what we did? Well, those are both possibly (and I don’t think it is just a pipe dream) but our society has placed so much importance on wanting things that we can’t see that our wants are actually leading to our sadness or depression.

Here are a couple more quotes that I think need to be drilled into our thoughts and our minds:

“So many people have wants and goals that conflict with what they are doing or what they have. I have one goal, that is to try to do better today than yesterday, and to want what I have. Then life is always good and work is interesting and fun.”

“Life can be simple and work can be interesting and enjoyable, or we can want too much and life gets complicated and work gets hard.”

What does this have to do with farming? Well, don’t farm just because you think it is the only thing you can do! Don’t farm because you want to get away from people or the busyness! Don’t farm just because you like the smell of fresh air! Farm because you enjoy the work, you love interacting with people and providing them with wholesome food, and because you desire to become a better farmer each day.

Farming is hard, long, dirty, and stressful work. But, if you enjoy it then it is not work at all.

According to an article I read in the February 13, 2008 issue of the “Iowa Farm Bureau Spokesman” if you are an average American you have already earned enough money by the beginning of February to pay for all your food for the entire year. According to the statistics you spend around 9.9% of your disposable income on food. As I read through the article I had a couple of thoughts … The first thing that popped into my mind was, “wow, that is nice that we are such an affluent country that we can do this so quickly”. Then I thought, “hmmm, is this something to be proud of?”

Let me through out a few more statistics from the article. It says, “consumers have to work 52 days a year to pay for health care, 62 days a year to pay for housing costs and 77 days a year to pay their federal income taxes.” But, they only need to work about 35 days to feed their family for the year. The conclusion of the Farm Bureau is that this is a good thing and only proves how great American farmers are at being efficient in raising livestock and growing grain.

The first question that pops into my head is this … How many days from those 77 days it takes to pay our taxes are needed to subsidize the farming and food industry? I think we need to factor that in if we are going to get a true representation. Here is another question … How much of the food produced in this country is consumed by this country, and how much do we import? I truly don’t know the answer to that one, but would be interested in hearing if anyone knows.

On the surface this seems so great. Our food is cheap and thus we have more money to spend on other junk! But, is cheap affordable preservative and hormone packed food a good thing? Would be be better off as a country if it took say 15% or 20% of our disposable income to feed our family for the year? Would they be getting higher quality food and then in turn be more healthy?

This is what Iowa Farm Bureau President Craig Lang has to say, “They also need to know that a $4 box of corn flakes has a nickel’s worth of corn. But a lot of work goes into making that nickel’s worth, and Iowa farmers are proud to be responsible growers and do their part in feeding the nation and a growing world population.” So, CORN flakes only take a nickel’s worth of CORN? It’s going to take a lot of corn flakes to sustain farming families across the country!

I’ll end with this. According to the statistics in the article, “of every dollar spent for your food item at the grocery store, 38 cents is for labor; 24 cents is for packaging, transportation and advertising; and 19 cents is was spent by the farmer on input costs”. That totals up to 81 cents of which only 19 cents are left for profit. That profit needs to be divided by the grocery store, the food manufacturer, and then the farmer. How much do you think your farm neighbor receives in the deal? And we are proud of this…

What would the US be like if a large portion of the population began purchasing their food directly from the farmer … cutting out the middlemen and getting a higher quality product …

Chapter 7 of Ron Macher’s book, “Making Your Small Farm Profitable” is on what I believe is one of the most important aspects of small-scale farming. Marketing! I’m not saying that just anyone with experience and ability in marketing can become a great small scale farmer, because farming takes a vast amount of scientific, commonsense, mechanical, and intuitive knowledge. In fact, I have said it many times before so I will say it again, farming is an art! But, when it comes to being a profitable farmer (especially when you farm on a small scale and don’t receive government subsidies) marketing is a very large piece of the puzzle.

With all of that in mind I read this chapter with quite a bit of interest and it didn’t disappoint. I won’t go as far as saying that the chapter contained a bunch of new knowledge that I hadn’t heard of or thought about before, but Mr. Macher presented the information in a very readable and understandable way.

One of the things that really struck home with me were his, “Eight Steps to Identifying the Market”. Nothing in those eight steps is very revolutionary, but sometimes it is good to look at a task with a process and goals in mind. I believe that is especially true when it comes to something that you are unfamiliar with or you are not quite certain that you can even do well. For most farmers marketing is one of those things. Many people decide to farm because they love the solitude, or the open spaces, or even the ability to be alone and their own boss. But, if you want to have a profitable small scale farm you need to get out there and market … to people!

Here is a very brief overview of his eight steps:

• Get maps of your area.
• Find your self and draw circles with a radius of 25, 50, and 100 miles
• Figure out how many people live within those circles and realize that most customers will come from inside the 50 mile circle. (This is basically two of the steps combined into one)
• Research what other alternative or small-scale farms are in the area, and what they are selling.
• Scope out the local grocery stores in some of the larger areas. What do they carry, can they purchase stuff local?
• Now that you have gathered all of that information go over it with a fine tooth comb. What crops or livestock are missing? Is there anything that is being brought into the area because of high demand that you could produce?
• Finally, “find out who your customers are”. Are there ethnic groups, a population of people concerned about organic, or even people that are just looking for stuff the way it used to be (Sugar Creek Farm blog just mentioned that 2/17).

Following these steps won’t help you market your farms meat or produce, but it will help you choose things that are in demand which makes marketing easier. Also, this isn’t in the book, but don’t forget to remember your passions. You will find marketing much easier if you are passionate about what you are trying to market!

The rest of the article is full of information and real-life stories about niche markets, value added stuff, pricing, advertising, and even where or how to sell your products. It’s a pretty good chapter, and the deeper I get into this book I think it is a great practical guide to making the small farm pay. It won’t give you the passion of a Joel Salatin or Gene Logsdon book. It may not give you all the nuts and bolts like a Carol Ekarius or Allan Nation book. But, it is full of down to earth steps, principles, and advice.

I must admit that I am appreciating the issues of the “Farm Bureau Spokesman” that my father-in-law has been saving for me. They have provided a lot of thought provoking reading … some of it good and some of it bad. This week I’m going to post about a couple of articles I read in the February 13, 2008 issue of the Spokesman. I want to kick it off with some thoughts on the front page article titled, “Iowa’s young farmers take on new set of challenges”.

Much of the article deals with the recent “Iowa Farm Bureau Young Farmer Conference” that was recently held in our state capital. I was pretty excited to read that over 200 young farmers under the age of 35 attended this conference, and I also decided maybe I should join the Farm Bureau so I can attend a conference like this! The conference gave young farmers the opportunity to hear from experts on farm business planning and also allowed the to network with other young farmers across the state.

I know that I said I was excited to hear that so many were attending, but to be completely honest I was also a little discouraged. When I read that number I just figure it means that there are 200 farmers out there that are ahead of me in the game and maybe there won’t be room for me. So, the article got me thinking about how big the market is for the type of farming that I desire to do.

We are fortunate that we live within 45 minutes of the biggest city in Iowa, but it is also a city with multiple thriving farmer’s markets and local restaurants that have offering locally grown and raised food. So, is there room for another grassfed beef, pastured poultry and egg, pastured pig, and downright diverse small scale farm in our area? That is the question that was on my mind as I read this article.

In the article they highlighted three families. One family raised niche pork that they then sold to Niman Ranch for distribution. They don’t raise their pigs in a confinement building, but they probably don’t raise them out on pasture or in the woodlot either. Another family mentioned in the article runs a wean-to-finish hog farm. The final family that was written about isn’t evening farming yet, but they have aspirations to begin soon (hmmm… that sounds familiar). So, is there room for me?

First of all I’m not sure how many of the farmers at the Farm Bureau conference would be in competition with a direct market farm, so maybe I’m just over reacting. Also, I feel strongly that the market for direct from the farm meat and produce is only going to keep growing as instances like this weeks USDA beef recall and other ag-related catastrophes happen. Most importantly though, I think I need to spend some time researching exactly what is missing in the markets around us. What are people needing? Is there room for more eggs or chicken? Can I combine a seed stock Dexter operation with a Dexter beef operation?

These are the sorts of things on my alarmist mind after reading the article… How much room for growth do you think there is in the direct from the farmer world? I would love to hear your thoughts!

On a side note there was one other thing that really hit me after reading the article. Check out this quote from young farmer Val Plagge, “I’d say for most the people here, land availability is the biggest issue. You’re going to hear that from every person.” So true … so true … Because of the Ethanol industry in Iowa land is becoming more and more difficult to come buy, especially for a beginning farmer starting out with nothing. In fact land is even becoming difficult to rent. One younger farmer they interviewed mentioned that he has seen people offering $400 for cash rent … per acre! That is off the chart and immediately prices out young farmers. So, the land issue is something I can identify with!

So, do your children ever eat school lunches? How about school lunches that contain beef? Or maybe your family has eaten a hamburger from a fast food joint? Well, if you answered yes to any of those questions then you or your children have been eating beef that has been recalled by the USDA!

I had read various accounts of animal mistreatment and other problems at the Westland/Hallmark Beef Co. in California, but last night the USDA recall of 143 million pounds of beef was as a front page headline on the Fox News website. You can click here to read the entire article and watch a video clip of the news report.

This news is pretty chilling in and of itself, but do you want to hear something even worse. According to the news report the recall includes beef going back to 2006! I don’t know about you, but I don’t think a recall for beef that is possibly two years old will do much good … of course knowing this industry maybe it is still in the food chain (I hope not).

Watch the video clip linked in the article if you can. But, if you connection is too slow then I’ll just let you in on what may be the most telling quote from the interview with their “health expert”. She says,

“there are multiple safeguards in place to secure the safety of our food in this country. Which is obviously a good thing. And one of those safety mechanisms pertains to cattle that have become, what, as Greg and you just mentioned before the break, non-ambulatory just prior to them undergoing slaughter. Now if that occurs, and sometimes it doesn’t occur because of something ominous like mad cow disease, sometimes it occurs because they break a leg or injury a tendon. It is, the are mandated to have a federal vetrinarian examine those animals. What was found was that in this location, cows were becoming non-ambulatory, they failed to undergo the proper veterinary inspection and examination and so the plant was shut down. Now it needs to be emphasized while of course we fear something like mad cow disease, the official name of which as known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, may be entering our food supply, there is no evidence that any of the meat from those downer cattle, their referred to, has entered in our food supply. But of course this is a very aggressive cautionary measure.”

Wow, I’m trying to figure out if that lady works for the USDA or the meat company… Allow me just a few seconds to break this down. First of all, I like how she says these safeguards are good things. Yep, they are such good things that they didn’t work for two years! If the consumers (whether they be individuals or institutions) had been around that processing plant there is no way they would have been in business, because nobody would have wanted that meat after seeing that place. Joel Salatin says it, and so do many others, “the consumer is the best regulation”.

Secondly, why does it take two years to figure out that a federal law about inspection is not being followed? I’m not even sure if I want to answer that question because I know that it would just sadden me. But, suffice to say that no matter how “good” the laws are we can never count on the government to protect us from food. Our eyes and our ears need to be the protection. We need to have relationships with the producers of the stuff that we count on for energy, health, and life!

And finally, since when is it no big deal when a cow is suffering through a broken leg or torn tendons? I am not and will never be a person that places the value of an animal above human life, but I do know that we are called to be good stewards of what God has given us. That is not good stewardship!

I could go on and on with this one, but I said I would take just a few moments. Make sure you read the article and watch the video if you can. Let me know what you think of this recall and what it says about agriculture in the U.S. in general…

The question of how much land is needed to farm/hobby farm/homestead came up in a post on the Homesteading Today forums came up this week. At the end of the original post (click here to read the thread) the poster asked, “How many acres would it take you to totally support your family with today’s economy in mind?” That is an interesting question and brought out some good answers on the post that you should read. But, it also got me thinking about land, farming, and sustainability.

One of the first things that popped into my mind is what exactly are you planning on “farming”. If you want to run a cow/calf herd and a cow/calf herd only then you are going to need a quite a bit of land. But, if you are going to have a market garden, some cut flowers, and a couple of berry patches you can probably make a living on something like fifteen acres. And, if you add value by making jams, selling flower arrangements, or something along those lines then you can add even more to your profit.

But, I’m not much of a vegetable eater so I would have hard time running a market garden. I wouldn’t know what is best, what tastes best, or even have a strong passion for what I’m doing. That made me think about how much land I would need to have a diverse operation that includes livestock, a small garden, berries, and maybe even some agri-tourism.

Of course it would really depend on the quality of land and soil in your area, but I live in the rather fertile soil of the Midwest so we will just stick with that as a basis. I’m thinking that I could sustain my family on 160 acres or maybe 120 acres if around 80 to 100 acres are pasture or tillable ground. We could use the woodlot to heat our house and do some selective harvesting of the best trees. On 80 acres of pasture I think we could raise a nice Dexter herd of at least 30 cows, a flock of sheep as big as 50 ewes, any number of heritage hogs running on the edges of the pasture and woodlot, heritage turkeys and pastured poultry following the cows and sheep, and of course some laying hens. I think we would be able to make enough hay off that number of acres to sustain the farm through the winter. If you add in some value added stuff like berries or a small garden I think you can make it work.

Now, that all sounds well and good except for one thing. I couldn’t even come close to affording 120 or 160 acres of land in Iowa! So, let’s tone it down a little and see what is possible…

What if a person had 40 acres (a common size of section in Iowa). If you had an acreage that size I would think about 15 acres would be a good size for the wood lot because one big piece of sustainability is the ability to heat your house instead of relying on the gas man or electrical company. So, that would leave you with 25 acres of pasture or tillable land. That doesn’t seem like very much, but let us think about what we could do with it. Possibly you could run a herd of 10 to 15 Dexter cows, 20 or so ewes, a smaller flock of heritage turkey, pastured laying hens and meat birds following the livestock, you still would have room for pigs in the woodlot and on the edges. Making hay becomes an issue, but I think you could get close to enough if you had the right type of pastures (it may take some seeding and pasture management). I think this would be a great size of place to have some sort of agri-tourism and on farm marketing of berries. You could even add value by selling meat by the cut instead of on the half or whole. A lot of value adding would have to be done, but it may be possible.

Now, here are the wild cards. First of all, I’m assuming the use of management intensive grazing in all of these scenarios, and possibly even ultra high stock density grazing. Secondly, one of the biggest keys to a sustainable farm is that you are using your farm to provide as much food for your family as possible. What is the point of raising food and having the land to raise food if you aren’t eating it yourself? But, that is what many modern farms are doing!

What do you think? How much land do you need to sustain a family in todays world?

Meat goats are something that I just haven’t put too much thought into to be perfectly honest. I have seen plenty of articles and posts about them in magazines and on the internet (especially on homesteading sites), but I just never really considered them a viable market for my potential customers. And, I guess I didn’t really look into them much because I don’t know anything about meat goats or goat meat.

I decided to raise beef because I like beef. We have chickens because we love eggs and chicken. We are adding pigs because … well, because you can’t be a real Iowa farm unless you have them. But, meat goats that originated in Africa? I just didn’t see that stuff in the Fareway meat case growing up.

With a growing immigrant population they may be something I have to consider. At least that is what I think now after reading an article by Dien Judge titled, “Iowa Farmers Adapt to Serve New Ethnic Markets”. According to the article many Iowans who are raising the Boer goats are selling them directly to the consumer in areas where there are larger populations of immigrants. There are also a few that are selling at local sale barns who in turn move them to a processing plant in Illinois. But, the quote in the article that really got me thinking was this, “Finch said that a market-ready meat goat will sell for approximately $1.10 per pound live weight, not a bad price for a livestock animal.” It looks like the live weight for butcher animals is right around 100 to 120 pounds so there is some money there, now I just need to research the inputs.

The article mentioned that in Iowa we even have an “Iowa Meat Goat Association” so I checked out their website right away. They have quite a bit of good information on their site. After reading through bits and pieces of the site it seems that goat meat is rather healthy compared to other meats, and it is very lean. I’m not sure what the market is like for selling to non-immigrants, but the health aspect may be appealing. In fact there are over 200 members of the Iowa Meat Goat Association, so I’m sure there are people that can help me answer that question.

For me the biggest question becomes this. What do goats eat? No, they do not eat everything! But, that is not what I’m talking about. I mean what do they finish on? Are they being fed and finished on a strictly grass based diet or are they being fed grain supplements? What do the consumers desire, do they want pasture finished meat goats? These are some questions that I need to answer, but goats now are officially part of the discussion.

If you have in thoughts or information on meat goats make sure to leave a comment and join in the discussion!