Small farms in New York are experiencing a surprising boom | Hacker News Reader

Small farms in New York are experiencing a surprising boom

nytimes.com

127 pointselorant44 comments

Small, local, and diverse are antifragile qualities - farms with all their eggs in one basket are suffering, and those with optionality and flexibility are thriving. Like many things in life.

In the US there are three major meat producers that dominate the market and thus when they go down, so goes the meat. Europe on the other hand has lots and lots of smaller producers, often focused on the local area, and no one dominates. Right now in Europe there is no meat shortage. Distributed production is less likely to be disrupted. It's less cost effective (from a pure business perspective) but much more robust in the face of problems.

And on top of that, even without disruption it tends to provide more varied, better quality meat.

I am a Yankee (now in upstate New york) through and through but I love Southern style bbq pork where you buy a whole hog from the farmer down the road. Also I like lamb and other meats from the Halal supply chain.

I was talking to a neighbor who has a large garden this morning and she told me that she sold $2500 of tomatoes to a bistro last summer and those are definitely better than california or greenhouse tomatoes when in season.

I have been shouting this point (the preferability of distributed, redundant means of production) vs. ( large-hyperoptimized/hyperspecialized, maximally-centralized means of production) for years, but you might as well not even bother. All business/finance centric folk see is redundant waste in the face of a perfectly efficient minimal input consuming industrial monolith that falls down to a stiff breeze and brings everything else down with it.

This very contention played out during the country's founding in the constant friction between the Federalists and anti-Federalists which tended to line up with either a Jeffersonian economic approach vs. a Hamiltonian economic approach which I'm fairly sure had roots in the contrasting philosophies of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes... It probably goes back further, but that's as far as I've traced it.

> All business/finance centric folk see is redundant waste in the face of a perfectly efficient minimal input consuming industrial monolith that falls down to a stiff breeze and brings everything else down with it.

What do people look for when they pick an ETF to invest their retirement savings in?

They look for highest return, lowest fees. You get what you pay for.

Actually, if all these small farms are looking to expand, I'd love to invest in a few. I've been buying from these types of things all my life, when I can.

In many cases I agree that you get what you pay for, but low-fee passive funds actually tend to outperform higher-fee actively managed funds, even before taking fees into account.

That’s my point. People want returned, they don’t want to support distributed farming that results in robust distribution with redundancies. All of that reduces returns and costs more. So we get what we pay for.

Worth mentioning as well that the cost of meat in an EU grocery store is comparable to that in the US. However you aren't likely to find the super-cheap 'CostCo/WalMart' class of meat in the EU.

It wouldn't surprise me if the fast food industry in the US has basically driven the smaller producers out of business by giving the larger producers better efficiencies.

Minor nitpick: Costco does not sell cheap meat. They don’t sell cheap anything, really. They sell high quality products in bulk, which makes them less expensive than buying comparable quality products at other retailers. But there is a whole class of low quality products that you simply will not find at Costco.

That's a major nitpick! And accurate - Costco is the best way to source expensive high-quality meat as a mere individual consumer.

> you aren't likely to find the super-cheap 'CostCo/WalMart' class of meat in the EU

Part of that is probably that style of meat being regulated against. I don't personally eat meat, but I know that one of the concerns that people have with a potential US trade deal is the lowering of meat-safety standards.

Costco/Walmart is an inaccurate bucketing because they are completely different stores tailored to entirely opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum.

>Worth mentioning as well that the cost of meat in an EU grocery store is comparable to that in the US.

We did a three week tour of the UK last August and cooked most meals... the cost of meat at chains like Tesco, Sainsburys, and Waitrose was comparable with US national chains, but the quality was far superior. As you point out, I didn't see any mega packs of cheap chicken breasts or pork ribs. I felt too like the quality of fruits and vegetables was on par with our high-end stores for prices similar to our "typical" stores.

>It's less cost effective (from a pure business perspective)

Perhaps it's because we live in a rural area, but my kids and I talk about this a lot. For example... our area is a major onion producer. But guess what? In our major national chain grocery store right now you'll find onions from Vidalia, Georgia - trucked from the other side of the country.

Our area also produces a lot of wheat, that then gets shipped 4 and 5 hours away to two major cities with large commercial bakeries, who then put the loaves of bread on trucks and ship the bread back to our local stores. Now granted, those loaves of bread get sent to lots of other places too, so I'm not discounting that there may be an efficiency overall, but nonetheless there is a local irony... once upon a time every town in this area had a local butcher, baker, creamery, etc - and now instead we produce the raw produce here and it comes back to us as value-added good from elsewhere.

Local and diverse are in conflict. Local is actually a fragile quality because disasters tend to be localized. It's only really antifragile when politics get involved (think pissing matches over masks and respirators).

Small farms usually have multiple value / product streams, unlike specialized plants (e.g. a traditional chicken farm).

True, I recently bought a cow through a local initiative. Best meat I ever ate, the taste of the steak is unmatched.

In the EU meat that lays a half year frozen in the refrigerator is stilled called fresh. So when meat is imported frozen from Argentina filled with water and packaged for the supermarket it is sold as fresh meat. Going back to first principles with meat you realize the differences when you taste it, no need for a fancy sauce or spice rack.

https://www.koopeenkoe.nl/

you can't sell frozen meat as fresh meat because it is obviously frozen...

Virtually all grocery store beef arrives frozen and is thawed before being placed in the case.

I wonder how this compares with the situation in Amsterdam. I have no big numbers, but a lot of the better Amsterdam restaurants use small-scale[0] local organic produce, and since the lockdown, you can now order a box of random local produce that would normally have gone to those restaurants. They contain lots of interesting stuff (we order one every week), and they also made a special Mother's Day breakfast box.

Of course we also order delivery from those restaurants to help them stay in business. I have no idea how well they're doing, though.

[0] Small scale is probably relative. They're not massive factory farms, but they're well known and you find their products almost everywhere. They don't sell their own products at a stand at a market somewhere, so maybe they're medium-scale.

This works if you're close enough to the rich farmer's markets and suburban customers around NYC. Vermont cheese makers, which also once supplied the restaurants of New York and Boston, have had a different experience. This comes from an email newsletter published by someone on the Vermont Cheese Council (who urged recipients to spread the word, so I am sharing it here):

As restaurants in NYC and Boston started closing their doors, specialty cheese shops and wholesales distributers that sold artisan local cheeses started simultaneously seeing 50% drops in sales overnight. I started calling cheesemakers around Vermont to learn how the situation was impacting them. My job took a turn, shifting from trying to support best practices for makers in Vermont to trying to ensure that as many makers as can are able to get through the COVID-19 impact without shuttering their businesses.

I try to call a few cheesemakers every day to see how they are doing, and we’re facing a range of challenges. Some are trying to reduce cheese production, so that production doesn’t exceed demand. This means reducing incoming milk quantities, which means diverting milk produced by dairy animals to another buyer (since those animals keep producing milk every day!) or, in some cases, selling animals off. Others are facing stock issues: Limited aging spaces – meaning that if they continue to make cheese and can’t sell it, eventually their aging spaces will fill, and their animals will still continue to make milk … and they will be back to the previously expressed need to reduce incoming milk.

Alongside the production challenges, there are other issues. The gooey, runny, high moisture texture that makes camembert-style cheeses a delight to enjoy also comes with a short shelf life. These cheeses often need to be eaten fairly quickly when they are ripe, or they will quickly deteriorate in quality beyond where one would want to eat or sell them. For those makers who focus on making these softer cheeses – they have inventory that is sitting in aging cellars without its usual consumer audience.

... So to summarize the situation, it’s like this: Imagine we had a three lane highway going into NYC with cheese instead of cars, then two lanes closed down. We have … a massive cheese traffic jam. We (Vermont Cheese) would normally sell hundreds of thousands of pounds of cheese from our mid- and smaller-sized makers over the next four months…and currently we are selling around half (or perhaps less than that) compared to what we’d normally sell. On other words, we have a BIG cheese traffic jam – one that will grow to likely be hundreds of thousands of pounds of cheese if people don’t buy it – or if makers don’t stop making it (and again - the milking animals will keep producing milk ...).

Online sales can only go so far. Some people won't order online, and certain produce and dairy products are not suited to UPS deliveries, especially when the temperature rises. Unless more distant producers can make the long round trip to the NYC and/or work out wider grocery distribution, they're going to suffer.

As a solution, I would love to see more food supplies and restaurants selling larger bulk amounts at discount. That could bring in a new set of consumers, and reduce the number of trips/exposure.

A restaurant could sell 10 meals worth for 10 * original_price * 0.5 and make more per order plus use up more ingredients. Farms could sell cheese by 5lb packs, eggs by the dozen dozens, meat by 10lb packs, etc.

It's not worth the whole ordeal of going to a restaurant to get a small portion of food, pay the same price as a sit-down experience, and be hungry again in a few hours.

You're onto something. I've been wanting this for years, regardless of current conditions.

A lot of people meal prep for the entire week. Restaurants could fill in for that.

Something like https://www.eatclub.com/ but for home, and delivered in bulk.

Yes, exactly. Like catering, but also with the intention that maybe you're not going to eat it all at once, so something that stores well for a day or two in the fridge would be ideal.

In frugal times, going to a sit-down restaurant is insanely expensive compared to a good at-home meal. A typical sit-down restaurant is like $60 per person including tip/tax with an appetizer and drink. For that, I can eat all 20 meals for a week if I shop sales.

The first link I found on Google [https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2019/05/16/survey-shows-how-o...] says that almost half of Americans basically never dine out or do take out. Only 10% eat out in any form 4-6 times a week. So there's definitely space for something in between for the home consumer.

>A typical sit-down restaurant is like $60 per person including tip/tax with an appetizer and drink.

Where do you live? We typically pay $30-$40 for a particularly nice night out at our favorite restaurant. Cheaper stuff runs more in the $10-$25 range. And we're in Boston!

Seems a bit low. Isn't a drink already $7 a beer, or $12 a cocktail there? That's $10 and $15 with tax+tip respectively, leaving very little for the entree plus appetizer...

If you're going to expensive gastropubs, sure, but not if you're in a proper neighborhood hole in the wall.

Portland had this before the pandemic, maybe partly due to the size of the restauarant/food service industry here. Some examples include http://www.rinellaproduce.com/products.html and https://www.sheridanfruit.com/. They're wholesalers but have always been open to the public.

Our local restaurants also jumped quickly into selling meal and beverage kits alongside single takeout/delivery meals, and breweries expanded shipping options to serve individual homes. Meat and vegetable farms too, most of which already had the infrastructure through CSAs/farm shares.

Good to hear. Though I find it frustrating when stores don't list prices, like the Rinella Produce website. Prices are one of the most important if not the important factor when shopping! Don't make me call to ask how much 9 mangoes cost.

This is generally what I’ve been seeing and hearing. Places that typically sold to restaurants are struggling while others are unable to meet demand.

It’s just a failing of our supply chain systems. Lots of cheese is sold out on grocery stores in NYC.

> This works if you're close enough to the rich farmer's markets and suburban customers around NYC.

Absolutely, or if you already have some sort of distribution in place. Non-essential workers have more time on their hands to go to these markets. These markets tend to sell better in wealthier areas to begin with and their customers, faced with fewer options online and at the supermarket, are willing to pay extra. I wonder if the markets in Elmhurst are as flooded with people.

A co-op I used to work for has trouble keeping up with their demand but mostly because they focused on supermarket distribution. It seems that farms with a semblance of a retail presence or trusted brand are doing well (e.g. Central Milling, these stalls). I have little sympathy for certain farms that are suffering right now (e.g. CAFO's). I do worry for the now unemployed workers that are not present in this article, the animals, and those in processing.

Friends of ours own a cheese farm (as well as a dozen cheese shops in Amsterdam), and they're also struggling. They keep making cheese because the farmers supplying them cannot turn off their cows, but sales are in the gutter, especially since tourism has always been a big part of their business.

So they're just dumping their cheese now at extreme discounts, and are focusing more on their webshop (I'm not entirely sure they even had one before; the webshop could be entirely new), and they donate a lot of cheese to food banks.

They make some amazing, interesting cheeses, and with the discount, they're extremely affordable, so we're ordering cheese from them and sending them to people who could probably use some cheese in their life. It's a nice way to help two people at the same time.

If you know where to look, this crisis offers some great opportunities to learn about local companies and supply chains. Stuff that used to be business-to-business, or have other reliable customers, is now looking for new customers. Of course lots of people have enough trouble of their own to discover this. You need to be flexible to adjust to the crisis, but it's hard to be flexible when you're suffering. So reach out if you can.

> they're just dumping their cheese now at extreme discounts, and are focusing more on their webshop

How about a link to the web store? I'd buy some.

Good idea.

Their site: https://henriwillig.com/en/

Their webshop: https://cheeseshop.henriwillig.com/en/

They also ship abroad.

Maybe it's because I'm a cheap date, but those prices look rather upmarket.

My local cheese shop is certainly cheaper, but yeah, I guess these are luxury cheeses.

My local choose shop is unusually cheap, though. For quality cheese, I don't think these prices are that unusual. Though if that EUR 10 for plain Gouda includes that 40% discount, that would mean it's normally EUR 18 for .4 kg. That is pretty steep.

I think what's going on is people eat less cheese when they cook for themselves. They also use fewer garnish vegetables, fresh herbs, etc.

Absolutely, agricultural producers are struggling. But this email has a significant flaw - livestock do not just magically produce milk. It is a response to childbirth, and then continued milking. Stop milking, they stop producing.

Admittedly, they then need an entire breeding season to start again, so there clearly are logistical problems to worry about. But the idea of an unending milk supply simply isn't one of them.

A similar tale of woe, from a cheesemonger on the West Coast:

https://gordonzola.net/2020/04/02/diary-of-an-essential-work...

NPR also published an article [0] on the same topic this morning, which is not behind a paywall.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/05/10/852512047/as-food-supply-chai...

New York's dairy farmers are PAYING to dump their milk. Demand has slackened to the point that they are bottling it and giving it away and even paying waste water treatment plants to dispose of it.

"surprising"

Uh, is it though?

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