AND 2 BACK
Disclaimer: Greetings from the half of the country that's swimming, as opposed to the half that is baking. This is one of those diaries that deals with personal and philosophic issues (to get a bit meta) so if you are only interested in how to get a democratic slate elected, you might want to invest your time elsewhere. If you are more interested in life as she is lived and eating in the not so distant future then continue on dear reader.
As we all know this year has seen some major bad weather, at least as far as agriculture is concerned. An unusually wet spring and summer in the northeast, and drought conditions in the midwest and texas. Stock killing heat across much of the nation. The situation seems to have moderated somewhat in august, and recent reports on corn have caused a reduction in prices, which SHOULD mean that the powers that be believe that the harvest will be fair. My read based on anecdotal reports and reports from individual states is -15% on corn, -30% on soybean, and -20% on wheat nationwide. In the northeast -10 to 15% on silage fodder crops, -40% on dry fodder crops (smaller farms tend to be more dependent on the dry fodder crops which makes this news particularly bad).All of the above is based on the 2004 reference year. I have no idea what this spells out for corn to ethanol production, but I have never thought that a viable option for energy independence in any event. This of course leads me into the topic I really want to talk about, as you may have guessed from the title. Why does the USDA publish numbers only in terms of dollars? When did food, health care, and education become commodities; become about potential profits, or more properly about maximizing profits; rather than being an essential part of our culture and our lives? I don't have an answer, although we have been wrestling with this question on a personal level on our own farm for a couple of weeks now. Like many people, we went into our chosen endeavor not because we wanted to be rich, but because we wanted to grow food (or educate, or heal choose your own ending to the sentence). THIS IS (but shouldn't be) the quickest path to failure in our current reality. We came to this realization after examining our finances for our farm, and looking at our plans for the next year (we are already 3 years behind on our 5 year plan, in year four). If we keep up just concentrating on food production we will be out of business sometime next year (which means losing the house). We concentrated on REAL sustainability, rather than economic sustainability. Paradoxically the only way out we see is to take a big risky bet (with some hedges). Starting last week we closed down the dairy and creamery, and started drying up the goats. This gives us an extra 3-400 dollars per month, but more importantly it frees up 3-4 man hours/day for other activities. We estimate that it will cost us $15,000 (and a few hundred man hours) to increase our flock up to the point of producing 70 dz eggs per day, without giving up any quality, and meeting all state requirements. This is the risky element...doing this will allow the farm income to pay the mortgage and loans and taxes, but will require every cent of income and the money saved for taxes etc be spent, and foregoing health and dental care for another 9 months to a year. Our hedge is a possible contract position which will require me to live in NYC 30% of the time. In mid january the goat dairy will go into full production, with all updates suggested or requested by the state. Next spring we will start up the root cellar share program, a modified CSA to produce long keeping vegetable and pickling vegetables, but a csa with a twist...the buy in is labor, not money. We are proceeding with the earth banked solar/wood heated greenhouses.We are shelving (for a while) plans to set up electric generation/fuel production facilities on the farm, and other efforts to decrease our co2/methane footprint. In summary, it's going to be a rough winter folks, but we aren't giving up our dreams till they pull them from our cold dead fingers...and kudos orange for following your dream.