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Michael Olson’s Food Chain Radio Show #1292
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GUESTS: Beth Hoffman, Author Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America / John Hogeland, Fifth Generation Farmer Whipoorwill Creek Farm, Lovilla, Iowa
Many of us dream about leaving the city and becoming a farmer. Before you make that leap, consider the following from the book MetroFarm: The Guide to Growing for the City, by yours truly, Michael Olson:
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Many of us dream about leaving the city and becoming a farmer.
Though agriculture is practiced by gardeners and farmers alike, the similarity ends there. Farmers must develop a proficiency in an additional technology– that of converting green plants into green money.
Gardening is an avocation. As Sir Francis Bacon said, it provides us with ‘the greatest refreshment.’ It also supplements our food supply, adds color to our lives and is an excellent way to spend Sunday afternoon. Because gardening is so refreshing, we tend to project the feeling onto the business of farming. This is not a realistic projection.
Farming is a vocation. People farm so they can purchase food for their table, a roof over their head and clothes for their back. As a vocation, farming has an intensity of character unlike gardening. If the need is there, farmers work Sunday morning before breakfast, and if the need is still there, they work Sunday evening long after the dinner dishes have been removed from the kitchen table.
You may have the technological proficiency to be a rose gardener. Your roses may be so perfectly shaped, brilliantly hued, and delicately scented that people will travel for miles to see them on display with blue ribbons at the county fair. But this ability alone is not sufficient to enable you to prosper as a rose farmer. You must compete with other rose farmers for the consumer dollars.
And win!
For those who are dreaming the dream of leaving the city to take up farming, it will pay to listen to those who have. Beth Hoffman and John Hogeland have!
Leave Comment Below: Can becoming a farmer make dollars and sense?
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“Together, we can eat our way to economic security and personal freedom, and it won’t cost a dime and it will be so easy it will make you blush!”
Michael Olson’s Three Laws of the Food Chain
#1 Agriculture is the foundation upon which we build all our sand castles.
#2 The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in that food.
#3 Cheap food isn’t! READ MORE
