Hacker News Reader

A fair number of people are doing this in small CSA operations, etc.

The main issue isn't can you do it, but can you make anything like a living wage doing it. Lots of variables in that equation.

View on HN

*In San Francisco. My friend lives exactly the lift GP describes, but in the Hudson River Valley, in a beautiful Victorian house (with roommates). He's also incredibly jacked now. It's totally possible.

The people I know are averaging $100k/acre a year doing intensive farming and CSA, which doesn't seem bad to me. Examples would be Jean Martin Fortier style farming techniques.

Some people obviously do ok at this. Others work hard for a decade and end up bankrupt.

I'm certainly not suggesting it's impossible, but it clearly isn't easy.

People you know of, not people you know. If you knew him, you would know he doesn't actually farm, his money comes from selling overpriced lettuce to expensive restaurants. And that the entire market in Montreal is saturated just from his operation. A single person can make a living that way in each market of a few million people. That does not provide a path for 99.99% of the people who would like to get into farming. We can have about 10 people doing that in all of Canada. There's a lot more than 10 people who would like to be farmers, and most of them would like to actually be farmers not lettuce salesmen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com