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Comment by nineplay | Hacker News Reader

I think he's glossing over the obvious. A friend of mine was just reminiscing about growing up in her family's dairy farm.

Every Saturday morning, every Sunday morning, every Christmas you get up to take care of the cows. Feel sick? You've got to get up and take care of the cows. Want to go on vacation? Can't, there's no one you can leave the cows with. It's a hard life - maybe a satisfying life in some ways but there are a lot of sacrifices.

The author points out that only one of his brothers wanted to take over the dairy. He doesn't point out that without that one brother with the insane work ethic the farm would have shut down years ago. It's not a sustainable business model.

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I'm pretty sure the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in any of the "family" small scale dairy farms is a little more important than how hard the work is.

And hard back-breaking work is not unique to farming. Plenty of restaurants or other small businesses basically run off owners and family giving dozens of hours of labor every week "for free"

The author didn't want to work on the farm regardless of profit. 2 out of 3 of his brother didn't want to work on the farm regardless of profit.

My friend would never go back to a farming life, nor would any of her siblings or cousins. It's just too much work in a world where there are a lot of fun things to do with your spare time. My friend mentors 4H students, but she also takes off on scuba-diving trips several times a year.

The proximate cause of the failing farm was that it's impossible to turn a profit!

They had a family member willing to do the hard work! "hard work" had absolutely nothing to do with this particular farm failing.

This isn't rocket science guys, I don't know why people insist on conjuring up phantoms to argue with.

> I'm pretty sure the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in any of the "family" small scale dairy farms is a little more important than how hard the work is.

Why exactly is that important? I could not turn a profit running a family plastic casting business in the U.S. either. It's just not something that can be done competitively on a small scale. Seems like milk production isn't either. That's sad for people who want to do that as a profession. It's also sad that writing doesn't pay enough to employ everyone who wants to be writers, painting everyone who would rather paint, etc. Why is that a policy problem (besides the need to ensure these people have a soft landing in a destination profession that is economically viable)?

Because large agribusiness conglomerates extract their profits largely by creating negative externalities through pollution and underpriced illegal labor? That was kinda the whole point of the article. Government exists to create policy regulating externalities, and they're failing to do their job here.

Pollution is a negative externality, I agree. Paying illegal immigrants to work in the U.S. is illegal, but it is not a negative externality. I'm also not convinced that small farms are better about either of these things than big ones are.

The article included reports shows that the larger farms are responsible for more pollution, because the sort of techniques you use to handle the waste for 1,000+ cows are radically different than the ones you'd use to handle a small business herd. Search for the phrase "manure lagoon"

The same amount of milk needs to be produced either way. I'm skeptical that ten farms with 100 cows each will cause less manure than one farm with 1000 cows. It all has to be dealt with one way or another.

Sure it is.

The profit goes to the lawbreakers, the loss goes to the citizens of this country who can't do that job at a decent wage.

It's a classic negative externality.

> The profit goes to the lawbreakers, the loss goes to the citizens of this country who can't do that job at a decent wage.

By that definition, every transaction where someone accepts a low wage causes a negative externality against someone who would accept a higher one. This does not match my understanding of externalities.

Sure, that's true, but even in the world where large agribusiness was perfectly regulated, economies of scale would still favor them over small-time milk producers.

The article is about the "death of my family's farm". Not about whatever you think policy problems are.

If you read the article, the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in a small family farm is more important than how hard the work is.

I'm really not sure at all why you want to turn this into a political argument.

I don't want to turn it into a political argument. It was my understanding that we were already having a political discussion, which I entered into.

For one thing, the article itself is overtly political -- which is fine and expected, because farming is politically fraught in much of the world.

For another, when you said "important" in your parent post, I had understood you to mean "important" in the sense of being generically important, like to society. I did not understand that you were referring solely to the importance of the issue from the perspective of the author of the article.

If you were trying to avoid a political discussion, then sorry. My mistake. Feel free to ignore my response to you.

You seem to equate hard work ethic with sustainability, this is false. You obviously have never experienced the joys of winters with nothing todo except read, learn, cook and play, because you worked insanely hard on the farm for 6-8 months of the growing season (being your own boss, but who cares about that).

At risk of stating the obvious, dairy cows do not have a growing season. Cows are a 365 days-a-year commitment.

My grandfather had a dairy barn, I'm aware of this. The community around it rebuilt it when it was burned, looked after it when he travelled across the country etc. Was it hard? Certainly. To suggest his (and his families) life was somehow less joyous than a 9-5 hacking l33t code all year is insanity.

The writer of the articles was very clear that _he_ found farming less joyous than "9-5 hacking l33t code". Your argument is more with him than with me.

The writer's other two siblings also found more "joyous" things to do. It isn't for everyone, and that is going to continue to be the reason that they can't survive against Big Ag.

Right. I don't have an argument with the writer, its a wonderful article, spot on. Yes my families work was largely pre-big ag. Nothing is for everyone. The trigger that looped me in here was the "not sustainable because hard work", I drifted to tangents too quickly.

> I drifted to tangents too quickly

My too my friend, me too.

This is not always the case. I recall learning during my youth that in Victoria, Australia, the heat cycles and pregnancies of the entire herd were synchronised to that it lead to a period of 6 to 8 weeks where no milking occurred at all.

That's not to say that there was nothing to do on the farm, or it was time to take a holiday, just that the cows did not need milking during that time period, so perhaps it was easier to relax a little.

There are also "contract milkers" who can be brought in for short stints of time, allowing the owners to take time off. Of course there is a cost to this, but I guess that just needs to be budgeted into the overall cost of the "holiday."

The poster upstream suggested there were 6-8 months of downtime with nothing to do. We've gone down to 6-8 weeks with no milking. There's still feeding and watering and of course monitoring a herd of now-pregnant cows with all the possible health complications that come from that.

I'm also relaying my friend's experience, not just speculating. In her circumstances, there was daily maintenance and no vacations. Perhaps her family didn't budget well enough.

A friend of mine is a farmer -- typical Wisconsin corn & beans. Those winters are spent finding other income sources. Some of his activities: Driving the big snow plows. Short haul truck driving on country roads in the dark. Repairing his ancient equipment. Being a local dealer for something or other. Same with any time slot that he can fill during the growing season.

An issue he faces is that he pays more for seeds and fertilizer than the big farms, and gets paid less for his crop. Many of the "obvious" ideas to produce specialized crops (organic, popcorn, soybeans for tofu) turn out to be boondoggles that lose money.

I'm not too sad for him -- his land is worth millions, he'll do OK. But the other thing is, he and I are the same age, and he looks about 20 years older. Part of it is that he's driven to do this. It's in his blood. He talks about "feeding the world" and so forth.

Being your own boss, yes. Turns out being a "farmer" looks a lot different if you own the farm, than if you don't.

> he looks about 20 years older

OTOH, my grandfather, who worked his own farm until he was deep into his 80s, is just about to celebrate 102. Up until a couple years ago he was still taking stairs two at a time, and winning corn shucking contests. Would he have made it so far, or in such good shape, if he had spent his life at a desk?

> he looks about 20 years older

On the other hand, he might live longer as a result of the hard work.

Does he look older just because he’s spent so much time in the sun? The sun will make you look like a raisin with excessive exposure.

I can't speak categorically, but I grew up around farmers (dairy, pigs, & crops) I've never known a farmer who took the winter off. Winters would be spent repairing and upgrading equipment, and prepping for the upcoming season, not just lazing around.

Winter is when my father only works 40 hours/week on the farm.

I always joke with people that farming is a great half time job, just pick which 12 hours you want to work. I also think the only people that want to start farming are those that have never done it.

Haha, right. I run into people on reddit all the time who idealize life on a farm. Right up until I remind them that even if it's -20F and blowing snow horizontally and you're sick with the flu, you still have to go out and take care of the animals.

Also, according to the BLS, one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in the country. If met plenty of farmers that have missing pieces.

what a strange point. "the obvious" is not that there's concentration of power but that farming is hard? what about small farms where many people are happy to continue working because they find it fulfilling?

The "obvious" is that operating a family farm as a profitable business is hard. Harder than three of the four adult children in the article are willing to work.

That doesn't mean there aren't people who want to do it, that means that a lot of family farms are going out of business because there aren't enough people who want to do it, regardless of external pressures.

that conclusion doesn't necessarily follow though. the proposed thesis by the article author is difficulty of having enough cattle to break even. you need to make enough to grow your operation, which is difficult given that you rely on external factors like creameries. the only reason you only have your family's labour to rely on could also be the difficulty of scaling up.

I think the article writer is glossing over the difficulty of keeping a farm in business without the external factors. My experience, growing up in an farming area, is that the kids of farmers are relieved when the farm is sold to a big conglomerate.

If the author cared so much about the farm, nothing stopped him from going back and dedicating his life to keeping it running.

apologies if i'm coming across condescending or am missing your point but i'm having difficulty comprehending how the author staying on the farm would've fixed anything about the trend towards monopolization fuelled by corporate subsidies and other forms of preferential treatment coupled with those larger actors facing limited responsibility for any of the consequences to surrounding communities and environment?

Anyone who enjoys their job should work for free? How are they meant to pay bills? What are you saying?

im providing a counter-example to the OP's point, and saying that people choosing not to remain farmers is not a sufficient explanation for decline in the number of small farms. the author clearly proposes many other reasons. see other responses to the message.

Bread and games rarely make for good business-models. A lack of bread makes for food riots, so even the most dysfunctional states keep that resource over-flowing and artificially under price pressures.

In germany you are not even allowed by law, to convert surplus grain into energy by burning it. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getreideverbrennung#Deutschlan...

For fermenting it you need a expensive license. Nobody is even pretending that this is a free market and even the most hardcore Neo-libertarians do not call for it regarding food.

The price fluctuations visible are usually the pearl-diving. All market participants dive for the pearls, aka the lowest possible price and hold their breath. Those who cant keep up, float to the top and are devoured by those who are still alive. Every round there are fewer and fewer small participants. Rinse and repeat, until only a few monopolistic giants are able to establish a price cartel.

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