Courtesy of Danielle Langloism, Wikipedia CCLDirt-Poor
Here at All Things Goat, we regularly read more than a hundred blogs dedicated to small rural, suburban and even urban farming.
These farmers have extraordinary stories, a superb work ethic and care passionately about their farms, their crops and their animals, yet many of them are living in poverty.
Some talk openly of it in their blogs. Others hint at desperation. Some just disappear, telling their readers it’s too heartbreaking for them to continue to write about life on their farms.
Novella Carpenter, an urban farmer in Oakland, Calif., and the author of Farm City, has been living off the land with little in her bank account for a long time. She talks about juggling the details of poverty and urban farming in this piece for SF Gate.com.
Looking at a USDA report on farm finance, she has a shiver of recognition: So-called U.S. residential/lifestyle farms (of which there are an estimated 837,000) have a profit margin of negative 35 percent. Low sales U.S. farms (which number about 400,000) are at negative 36 percent.
The stats remind Carpenter of a joke about a farmer who wins the lottery. Asked what he’s going to do with the money, he says, “I reckon I’ll keep farming until the money runs out.”
Eds Note: Novella blogs at Ghost Town Farm
[...] Note: To learn more about Carpenter, her urban farm and her writing, click here and here to read previous posts on All Things [...]