EJ-lancaster Firming, Saturday, April 21,1&84
Small family farms may not be
very profitable, but there sure are
a lot of people who would like to
have one. I’m talking about young
men and women who would like to
operate their own farming units,
perhaps starting a sharecropper or
renter, and eventually becoming
owners. It’s part of the great
American dream, and even though
it’s infinitely more difficult to get
started than it was a generation or
two ago, it’s still being done. And
it’s being done often enough to
provide encouragement for some
would-be farmers.
In the pre-World War II period a
young man with a strong hack and
a good team of mules could get a
■start. He would become a
sharecropper, work hard, build his
reputation, save his money, and
eventually move on to his own
place.
Glenn Hawkins was that kind of
a guy. He sharecropped my
grandfather’s farm back in
Missouri after the old man got too
tired to manage it. That was back
in the thirties. Glenn came to the
place with an old truckful of fur
niture and a team of horses. Ten
years later he made a down
payment on the adjoining farm and
retired a few years ago a fairly
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Farm
Talk
Jerry Webb
Delaware Extension
wealthy man. Not only had he bee
a successful farmer, but he hap
pened to have purchased a farm on
the edge of a small city. That farm
eventually became worth at least a
million dollars.
Those kind of rags-to-riches
opportunities don’t come along
every day, but they are out there.
Once in a while I see an ad in one
of the farm publications where
someone is looking for a young
man to work into an existing
operation. Typically it's an older
dairyman wanting to slow down
and gradually work a younger
person into the. business.
Sometimes there’s been a death or
disabling accident or illness and a
replacement is being recruited. In
many of these situations the
owners are even willing to supply
financing.
I know that every farmer ap
proaching retirement age doesn't
have an heir apparent to the farm
business. The right young man or
woman with potential should be
able to find these opportunities.
Like everything else, farm
financing is difficult to obtain, but
that’s not to say that the business
of fanning has to be handed over to
the conglomerates or the Wall
Street investors. Family farms can
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Myerstown, PA
GINNY
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Co-Owner of
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irges) To:
continue if their operators or
potential operators are hard
working, trustworthy, and a little
creative in their approach to
getting started or to hanging in
there.
I see stories all the time in the
farm press about farmers who are
making it on a few acres. They’re
' diversifying, intensifying, double
and triple cropping, combining
1 hogs and strawberries, dairy cows
and alfalfa, chickens and fruit
trees, and all sorts of strange
combinations to get the maximum
dollar return from their in
vestment.
The potential fanner who wants
to grow com and soybeans is
probably looking at the most
difficult way of all to get into
farming. He’s looking to start at a
level that requires an investment
and a risk far beyond most young
people’s abilities.
If the desire to farm is limited
only to com and soybeans, then I
would say the young man or
woman seeking entry is in for a
difficult time. But if that beginner
is willing to do some other things
like dairy cows, fresh vegetables,
pick-your-own fruit trees, hogs, or
maybe even sheep, then there is
some hope for getting started and
some chance of success.
It used to be that almost all
farmers diversified. That old
saying about all the eggs in one
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basket applied particularly well to
farmers. And those who weathered
the difficult years of the thirties
were very reluctant to limit their
activities to one or two crops.
Instead, they had some of
everything. So when beef prices
were down, maybe the hogs would
cover their loss. Or when wheat
was in surplus com would pay the
bills.
Some farmery stick very
doggedly to that philosophy,
claiming even yet that diversity
has allowed them to grow and
prosper. Other farmers have opted
for specialization. In this area in
particular, that has meant com
and soybeans and lots of acres. It
has also meant clinging to the hope
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that good years would outweigh the
bad ones.
Some farmers who made big
expansion moves in the early to
mid-seventies know very well the
lesson from that kind of optimism.
What looked like the beginning of a
great agricultural boom triggered
expansion and caused record farm
machinery sales. But that boom
soon turned to bust, and those
same farmers found themselves
riding those new tractors to
Washington in an effort to get them
paid for.
A farmer need look no further
than recent livestock prices to see
the advantage of diversified
production.
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