Back to the land: are young farmers the new starving artists? | A growing movement of millennials are seeking out a more agrarian life, but the reality is not always as simple as they hoped
Back to the land: are young farmers the new starving artists? | A growing movement of millennials are seeking out a more agrarian life, but the reality is not always as simple as they hoped
A small but growing movement of millennials are seeking out a more agrarian life but the reality of life on the land is not always as simple as they hoped
You're viewing a single thread.
I think the primary difference, at least in the hobby farmers I know who are young, idealistic, and just getting started, is that they aren’t expecting to scale the operation beyond some arbitrary point - beyond which, it stops being fulfilling and starts being a giant pain in the ass. Conversely, the dairy farmer I know who has the largest operation in the county is a stand up dude, who avoids cutting corners but is getting squeezed big time by small artisanal operations with street cred and big, industrial operations with margins. The middle, where there used to be a huge swath of family farms, is a bloodbath of debt and suffering.
I imagine most of these new hippies are trying to stay small.
FYI medium sized dairies are being squeezed out by the government back oligopolies in milk processesing that completely control the milk prices.
Many of them also do not have enough land base to feed their animals and manage the waste. The cost remedy this is prohibitive due to mega corporate investment firms buying up land at extremely high prices.