15/02/2023
Love this. It’s funny how our culture has drifted towards believing that only the folks farming on an industrial scale (which our farming great-grandparents wouldn’t even recognize!) are actual farmers.
Friends I’m getting on my high horse and gonna have a rant. I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now and decided I was tired of just stewing about it. I promise, I’ll post cute farm pics after this to make up for my preaching! 😂
I am tired of seeing people say “we need more farmers” and then putting small growers down because they don’t see them as “real” farmers. According to the dictionary a farmer is “one who manages a farm”. The definition of a farm is “an area of land used for raising crops and/or animals”. There’s nothing in the dictionary about size.
If you raise a hundred head of beef on 200 hundred acres…you’re a farmer.
If you’re raising 25 acres of hay…you’re a farmer.
If you’ve got some goats and chickens and a big garden on 5 acres…you’re a farmer.
If you’ve got some raised beds in your backyard and a couple rabbits…you’re a farmer.
If your back porch has a couple buckets with tomatoes and peppers growing in them…you’re a farmer.
If you have a couple quail hens for eggs hidden in the garage of your townhouse so the HOA doesn’t find them…you’re a farmer.
If you have a small pot of basil growing in your kitchen window in your apartment in the city…YOU’RE A FARMER.
I’m tired of this opinion that only big farmers are “real” farmers. This is elitism pure and simple, and it’s silly.
We aren’t fighting against each other for a place in the market. There is the room and the need for farmers of ALL sizes. We really need as many diverse farms as possible. At this time I cannot grow all the feed I need for my animals. I need that farmer who is growing the 25 acres of hay to supply my animals with their feed. But guess what, if that farmer’s time and land are tied up 100% in hay, they may be happy to purchase some rabbit meat from me. And even if the hay farmer doesn’t buy my meat, somebody else will! And essentially I will have been the middle man in getting that hay from the hay farmer to say a customer in town in the form of the rabbit that ate the hay.
Besides the fact that it’s just plain rude for big farmers to exclude smaller farmers, it’s just bad for business. You think the person growing veggies in their backyard wants to buy a steak from you to go with their homegrown salad after you made them feel inadequate? Doubt it. 🤷🏻♀️ But if they actually feel part of the farming community, I bet they’ll post on social media a picture of the beautiful salad they proudly grew beside the nice juicy steak they bought from a *fellow farmer*. Free advertising AND community building!
I am aware that the needs of small farmers aren’t the same as that of large scale farmers, so a small farmer may not understand things like the stress of finding enough hay during a drought or worrying about the price of commodity crops. But large farmers may not understand the heartache of small farmers. If you have 50 apple trees in your orchard, and a storm takes out one, of course it’s gonna suck, but you’re prolly not gonna sit down and sob about it. However, if you’re a backyard farmer with just one tree and you nurtured it from a seed that you got from your great granny’s tree…you’re going to be absolutely devastated. And, even if the storm takes out all 50 trees on the bigger farm, there’s a chance there’s crop loss insurance or a government program you might be able to get some relief from. That small farmer isn’t getting anything for their tree. Plus, big farmers get bulk discounts on purchases, small farmers, unless they team up with others, they pay full retail price. Yes, the challenges are different based on the size of the farm, but the amount of stress from the challenge is the EXACT same to the farmer, no matter if they’re a big or small farm.
One final thing before I go take the cute pics that I now owe y’all, and this is directed at the small farmers. If the word “homesteader” means something important to you, and you love it, use it! But, if you’re using it because you don’t feel like you have the right to call yourself a farmer…stop. You’re a farmer too. If you want to be sure people know you’re a small operation, feel free to call yourself an urban farmer, micro farmer, mini farmer, whatever! But you’re still a freakin farmer. You have just as much right to the title as the big guys. And there’s a spot for you! Small farmers fill niches that the large scale farmers simply can’t even if they wanted to. We all have a place and we should be supporting each other instead of dividing ourselves based on something silly like the size of the land we are farming.
Ok, that’s it. I’ll go take bunny and chick pics now after subjecting y’all to that 💁🏻♀️😂
