>What's wrong with that?? Farming families do more than eat. I grow alot of
>our own food, but I do not grow flax to beat into thread to weave into
>fabric to clothe my family. I doctor them as much as I can, but they draw
>the line when I offer to sew them up ; )). And college these days isn't
Ok, I understand. I was thinking in the context of Philippine farmers
who are driven to abandon food crops to fully shift to export and
other cash crops. I can see the problem with education and medical
care. Philippine farmers face a similar problem. Perhaps this argues
for government-provided services in these two areas?
>free. I must make a profit for things not provided on my farm. I grew up
>on farms. My grandparents all had them, and so did my father. All the
>farms were 6-10 acres, and totally supported the families. What they
>couldn't make on the farm, they sold excess crops to provide (read--earned a
>profit).
My posts about ecological sustainability and economic viability were
meant not to negate economic viability but to pose the question: why
do many organic farmers, despite a lot of surplus, not make enough
money?
One answer is that they are not good businessmen. So farmers blame
themselves. (Or inspectors blame organic farmers.)
I think the answer closer to reality is that farmers operate under an
economic context that is very biased against ecologically sustainable
(e.g. organic) farms, making it very difficult for them to be
economically viable. The answer therefore lies less in "becoming
better businessmen" (which pushes people to externalize costs and be
less ecologically sustainable and to be highly competitive instead of
more cooperative) and lies more in changing the economic context to
reverse its biases.
This is of course a long-term political project, but unless it is
undertaken, the context will continue to be a deadweight against
ecologically sustainable farms. Perhaps a number will attain
comfortable economic viability through heroic efforts (and maybe
occasionally sacrificing ecological sustainability), but it will
always be an uphill and unfair battle until the context changes.
>I'm quite weary of the dirty connotation the word "profit" has come to mean
>in "politically correct" circles. I'm a farmer, but also a business
>person who knows I won't be in business long if I don't turn a profit. I
Somebody else also mentioned that "profit" among farmers is different
from business profit. It seems farmers don't pay themselves any salary
at all when computing "profit" while businesses deduct salaries before
computing profits. So a lot of farmers may think they are making a
profit (gross income minus expenses) but if they paid themselves a
regular salary and counted this as expense, they actually didn't make
a profit at all. So perhaps fewer farmers make a profit than usually
thought?
>don't accept govt. subsidies, and at the end of the year if my bank balance
>is low--the buck stops right here--I only have myself to blame. But I also
The unfair context hides itself very well then.
Roberto Verzola
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@cals.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@cals.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 03 2000 - 12:00:36 EDT