The Most Endearing, Heartfelt Pages I've Read about Farming
From Joel Salatin's book The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer pages 245-260.
"To attract good farmers, they must be paid. They must be professionals. They must earn a white collar salary. Lots of them don't deserve a penny. Bad farmers should go out of business. Nobody should buy from bad farmers. They should either be terminated or cut out of the market. Some people think I put too much emphasis on the business side of farming, or on making a profit farming.
What's wrong with profit? It's the lifeblood of business. It's the life blood of sustainability. How sustainable is an unprofitable farm? And I think if you want to farm, you should be able to do it. And you should expect to make a white collar salary. I don't apologize for making money. It's not the only goal, or even the greatest goal, but we'll get a lot better farmers incentivizing them with a white collar salary than we will trying to incentivize them with a vow of poverty.
As a culture, we need to dig down deep into our collective psyche and ask ourselves: " What vocation can we least do without? What's our most important career?" Is it accounting? Is it heart surgery? Is it teaching? How about software development? Im certainly not trying to trivialize every other vocation. But I think until we realize how few really good farmers we have, and how valuable they are, we will not have good land stewardship, good food, or healthy economies.
An economy can only be as healthy as its farmers. Farmers drive the lion's share of landscape stewardship. Ultimately, if the landscape ecology fails, the economy will fail. Farmers drive food quality. Ultimately, if health fails, the economy will fail. The reason I'm beating this issue is because I find myself fighting the "just a farmer" mentality. I get on an airplane and the seatmate smiles and asks: "What do you do?"
"Oh, I'm just a farmer." Please forgive me, Lord, for answering that way. No, no, no, a thousand times no. How about this instead: "I'm a professional land healer super nutrition food purveyor landscape architect nurturer." I guarantee you that will get a response: "Come again?"
I've spent some time here carping on non-farmers...oops, co-producers trying to create white collar farmers. The other side of the coin is how farmers perceive themselves. Do I even respect myself? Do I wish I had done something else? Too many farmers do. The reason I don't chop prices down to poverty status is because I respect myself. It's not prideful to say that I deserve to earn a decent salary.
That's just down home self respect. I'm not a trashy farmer, and therefore I don't deserve a trashy salary. How we view ourselves actually creates the person we become. If I don't think I deserve a decent salary for being an exceptionally good farmer, guess what? I'll probably never get a decent salary. A decent salary begins with my perception of me. That's the way any vocation is.
My Dad always joked about how ministers were always called to bigger churches. Ever notice that? Most say God calls them to their place of ministry. But isn't it interesting that God always calls them to bigger pulpits? Why doesn't God ever call a successful minister down to a struggling, flailing group that's as poor as a church mouse? It could be greed. It could be self-indulgence. And it could be that God appreciates incentive too.
I never want to be wealthy, and I love giving money away. But I don't know another vocation where people are expected to work the number of hours that farmers work, without getting paid for it. We routinely put in 90 hour weeks. What would a white collar salary putting in that kind of time be worth? Forget salary, how about just a wage earner -- with that amount of overtime? And yet if a farmer would happen to drive around in a Mercedes Benz, people would think he didn't deserve it.
Farmers should aspire to make a good living on their land. They should even go on a vacation. Maybe even buy an expensive cowboy hat. Unfortunately, farmers typically feel like they've betrayed their vocation if they splurge on some self-indulgence. If you're a good farmer, healing land, nurturing eaters, you jolly well deserve to be pampered by society. And I say shame on our society for failing to do so. We have exactly the kind of farming and food that we deserve. By withdrawing white collar professional status from vocation, we've cheapened nobility and adulterated sacredness.
I will never apologize for believing good farmers should be compensated well. Wouldn't we have a much better culture if excellent farmers received as much as excellent heart surgeons? What if we had such good farmers that heart surgeons became obsolete? What if we had such good farmers that we didn't need school nurses anymore? What if we had such good farmers we didn't need chemical companies anymore? What if we had such good farmers we didn't need feedlots, CAFOs, and pesticides anymore? If all the wealth going to CEO's of those detrimental or remediation businesses had been channeled into good farmers, what a different society we would have.
The reason I can't and won't sell chickens for 89cents a pound is because it insults my profession and the earthworms under my stewardship. I refuse to join the cheap food dumb farmer cultural agenda. The fact that the industrial food system does sell it for that, and pats itself on the back for doing so, simply illustrates the lack of respect in the whole system. That farmers voluntarily rush to participate, to join in with such a disrespectful system simply shows their duplicity. Truly thinking, innovative, entrepreneurial farmers would not fall for the industrial temptation.
I enjoy holding my head high as a farmer. Not just a farmer. A farmer in the Jeffersonian model. Businessman, professional, man of letters and lover of discourse. Why am I so unusual? I should be normal. Completely normal. If I hadn't thought I could make a good living on this farm, all the altruism and ecology and beauty would not have drawn me here. I'd like to think I'm no mercenary, but all of us have a price. My price for farming was the ability to make a decent living.
Dad was an accountant and had a lot of farmer clients. I never knew who most of them were, and he certainly never divulged names with stories. But he would routinely lament the general poor economics of the way they handled their farms. On our farm, he went the opposite direction he saw most of them going. Small or no machinery. Portable instead of stationary buildings. Pasture-based rather than grain based. Perennials instead of annuals. Seasonal instead of year-round. Carbon cycling instead of wholesale commodity marketing. All of this, of course, was total lunatic thinking.
Seeing how hard farmers worked for such little pay had a profound effect on him. When he and I would talk about options for me, if it didn't return a decent amount, he would grin and say: "You might as well do nothing for nothing as something for nothing."
Believe it or not, many farmers would be more profitable if they quit and did nothing. If you're showing a loss every year, you'll come much closer to profitability if you shut down and go to zero. It might not be positive, but at least it's not negative.
Cutting expenses is important. But at some point you have to generate income. And believing that a decent income is not only proper but possible is absolutely key to attracting the best and brightest to farming. Our culture has designated A and B students as non-farmers and C, D, and F students as farmers long enough that the dream doesn't even exist in the minds of sharp kids. Imagine if our kids were building symbiotic, synergistic ecology-healing farms in their minds like we encourage them to build spaceships or computers? What a different world we'd live in.
Although astronauts aren't drawn to that vocation for the money, if it doomed them to a life of poverty, it would be hard to make their vision shine. The life of an astronaut isn't shabby. A good farmer should live as prosperously.
Countless times, people have said to me, "I always wanted to farm, but I didn't think it was possible to make a living. If I had only known it could be done, I would have taken Grandpa's farm. But now it's gone. The family sold it a few years ago." You can see the lower lip tremble. Moist eyes. Faraway look. What could have been. What could have been.
How else can you explain all the 50-year olds jumping into farming? Burned out in their Dilbert cubicle. Tired of working for someone else. Desperate to grow something, build something tangible. My guess is that this desire was there when they were 10, 13, 16, 19. But it could never surface. It had to be pushed down. Because farming was just not a valid vocation. The wasted creativity our culture has suffered due to this perception borders on criminal. We've wasted sharp minds that could focus on land healing. We've wasted farm business acumen that could have focused on profitability.
We've squandered now a couple of generations by not cultivating a farming can-do spirit. Those best and brightest minds have developed video games, fiber optics, and heart stents. Would we not be a richer culture if at least some of those minds had been encouraged and applauded into farming? Not corporate agribusiness, but farming. My, my, what we might have by now! It's a national disgrace and economic/ecological travesty that we've denied ourselves these minds because we taught, embraced, and assumed the notion that farming is beneath the dignity and mentality of the best and brightest.
I have a bulging file full of testimonials from farmers who say: "We didn't think it was possible. But when we found out about these systems, we began farming and it's working. We'll be full-time by next year." Every time I get those letters and see the pictures of bright-eyed beaming children next to their plants and livestock, I get all teary-eyed. I can't think of a more laudable legacy than to leave our culture a legion of best and brightest farmers.
That's certainly better than a legacy of empire building in foreign countries. Or a legacy of bailouts. Or a legacy of government takeover.
I've heard that if your vision can be accomplished in your lifetime, it's too small. Few things excite me as much as meeting sharp young people who want to be farmers. I see it as a reversal of a trend, and a linchpin in the healing of our country. May thousands and thousands of sharp, clever young people join this profitable vocation: lunatic farming. It's noble. It's sacred. It's a great living. It's wonderful scenery. It's a great place to raise kids.
Enjoying this life and encouraging the best and brightest to join in is the sheer ecstasy of being a lunatic farmer."
"To attract good farmers, they must be paid. They must be professionals. They must earn a white collar salary. Lots of them don't deserve a penny. Bad farmers should go out of business. Nobody should buy from bad farmers. They should either be terminated or cut out of the market. Some people think I put too much emphasis on the business side of farming, or on making a profit farming.
What's wrong with profit? It's the lifeblood of business. It's the life blood of sustainability. How sustainable is an unprofitable farm? And I think if you want to farm, you should be able to do it. And you should expect to make a white collar salary. I don't apologize for making money. It's not the only goal, or even the greatest goal, but we'll get a lot better farmers incentivizing them with a white collar salary than we will trying to incentivize them with a vow of poverty.
As a culture, we need to dig down deep into our collective psyche and ask ourselves: " What vocation can we least do without? What's our most important career?" Is it accounting? Is it heart surgery? Is it teaching? How about software development? Im certainly not trying to trivialize every other vocation. But I think until we realize how few really good farmers we have, and how valuable they are, we will not have good land stewardship, good food, or healthy economies.
An economy can only be as healthy as its farmers. Farmers drive the lion's share of landscape stewardship. Ultimately, if the landscape ecology fails, the economy will fail. Farmers drive food quality. Ultimately, if health fails, the economy will fail. The reason I'm beating this issue is because I find myself fighting the "just a farmer" mentality. I get on an airplane and the seatmate smiles and asks: "What do you do?"
"Oh, I'm just a farmer." Please forgive me, Lord, for answering that way. No, no, no, a thousand times no. How about this instead: "I'm a professional land healer super nutrition food purveyor landscape architect nurturer." I guarantee you that will get a response: "Come again?"
I've spent some time here carping on non-farmers...oops, co-producers trying to create white collar farmers. The other side of the coin is how farmers perceive themselves. Do I even respect myself? Do I wish I had done something else? Too many farmers do. The reason I don't chop prices down to poverty status is because I respect myself. It's not prideful to say that I deserve to earn a decent salary.
That's just down home self respect. I'm not a trashy farmer, and therefore I don't deserve a trashy salary. How we view ourselves actually creates the person we become. If I don't think I deserve a decent salary for being an exceptionally good farmer, guess what? I'll probably never get a decent salary. A decent salary begins with my perception of me. That's the way any vocation is.
My Dad always joked about how ministers were always called to bigger churches. Ever notice that? Most say God calls them to their place of ministry. But isn't it interesting that God always calls them to bigger pulpits? Why doesn't God ever call a successful minister down to a struggling, flailing group that's as poor as a church mouse? It could be greed. It could be self-indulgence. And it could be that God appreciates incentive too.
I never want to be wealthy, and I love giving money away. But I don't know another vocation where people are expected to work the number of hours that farmers work, without getting paid for it. We routinely put in 90 hour weeks. What would a white collar salary putting in that kind of time be worth? Forget salary, how about just a wage earner -- with that amount of overtime? And yet if a farmer would happen to drive around in a Mercedes Benz, people would think he didn't deserve it.
Farmers should aspire to make a good living on their land. They should even go on a vacation. Maybe even buy an expensive cowboy hat. Unfortunately, farmers typically feel like they've betrayed their vocation if they splurge on some self-indulgence. If you're a good farmer, healing land, nurturing eaters, you jolly well deserve to be pampered by society. And I say shame on our society for failing to do so. We have exactly the kind of farming and food that we deserve. By withdrawing white collar professional status from vocation, we've cheapened nobility and adulterated sacredness.
I will never apologize for believing good farmers should be compensated well. Wouldn't we have a much better culture if excellent farmers received as much as excellent heart surgeons? What if we had such good farmers that heart surgeons became obsolete? What if we had such good farmers that we didn't need school nurses anymore? What if we had such good farmers we didn't need chemical companies anymore? What if we had such good farmers we didn't need feedlots, CAFOs, and pesticides anymore? If all the wealth going to CEO's of those detrimental or remediation businesses had been channeled into good farmers, what a different society we would have.
The reason I can't and won't sell chickens for 89cents a pound is because it insults my profession and the earthworms under my stewardship. I refuse to join the cheap food dumb farmer cultural agenda. The fact that the industrial food system does sell it for that, and pats itself on the back for doing so, simply illustrates the lack of respect in the whole system. That farmers voluntarily rush to participate, to join in with such a disrespectful system simply shows their duplicity. Truly thinking, innovative, entrepreneurial farmers would not fall for the industrial temptation.
I enjoy holding my head high as a farmer. Not just a farmer. A farmer in the Jeffersonian model. Businessman, professional, man of letters and lover of discourse. Why am I so unusual? I should be normal. Completely normal. If I hadn't thought I could make a good living on this farm, all the altruism and ecology and beauty would not have drawn me here. I'd like to think I'm no mercenary, but all of us have a price. My price for farming was the ability to make a decent living.
Dad was an accountant and had a lot of farmer clients. I never knew who most of them were, and he certainly never divulged names with stories. But he would routinely lament the general poor economics of the way they handled their farms. On our farm, he went the opposite direction he saw most of them going. Small or no machinery. Portable instead of stationary buildings. Pasture-based rather than grain based. Perennials instead of annuals. Seasonal instead of year-round. Carbon cycling instead of wholesale commodity marketing. All of this, of course, was total lunatic thinking.
Seeing how hard farmers worked for such little pay had a profound effect on him. When he and I would talk about options for me, if it didn't return a decent amount, he would grin and say: "You might as well do nothing for nothing as something for nothing."
Believe it or not, many farmers would be more profitable if they quit and did nothing. If you're showing a loss every year, you'll come much closer to profitability if you shut down and go to zero. It might not be positive, but at least it's not negative.
Cutting expenses is important. But at some point you have to generate income. And believing that a decent income is not only proper but possible is absolutely key to attracting the best and brightest to farming. Our culture has designated A and B students as non-farmers and C, D, and F students as farmers long enough that the dream doesn't even exist in the minds of sharp kids. Imagine if our kids were building symbiotic, synergistic ecology-healing farms in their minds like we encourage them to build spaceships or computers? What a different world we'd live in.
Although astronauts aren't drawn to that vocation for the money, if it doomed them to a life of poverty, it would be hard to make their vision shine. The life of an astronaut isn't shabby. A good farmer should live as prosperously.
Countless times, people have said to me, "I always wanted to farm, but I didn't think it was possible to make a living. If I had only known it could be done, I would have taken Grandpa's farm. But now it's gone. The family sold it a few years ago." You can see the lower lip tremble. Moist eyes. Faraway look. What could have been. What could have been.
How else can you explain all the 50-year olds jumping into farming? Burned out in their Dilbert cubicle. Tired of working for someone else. Desperate to grow something, build something tangible. My guess is that this desire was there when they were 10, 13, 16, 19. But it could never surface. It had to be pushed down. Because farming was just not a valid vocation. The wasted creativity our culture has suffered due to this perception borders on criminal. We've wasted sharp minds that could focus on land healing. We've wasted farm business acumen that could have focused on profitability.
We've squandered now a couple of generations by not cultivating a farming can-do spirit. Those best and brightest minds have developed video games, fiber optics, and heart stents. Would we not be a richer culture if at least some of those minds had been encouraged and applauded into farming? Not corporate agribusiness, but farming. My, my, what we might have by now! It's a national disgrace and economic/ecological travesty that we've denied ourselves these minds because we taught, embraced, and assumed the notion that farming is beneath the dignity and mentality of the best and brightest.
I have a bulging file full of testimonials from farmers who say: "We didn't think it was possible. But when we found out about these systems, we began farming and it's working. We'll be full-time by next year." Every time I get those letters and see the pictures of bright-eyed beaming children next to their plants and livestock, I get all teary-eyed. I can't think of a more laudable legacy than to leave our culture a legion of best and brightest farmers.
That's certainly better than a legacy of empire building in foreign countries. Or a legacy of bailouts. Or a legacy of government takeover.
I've heard that if your vision can be accomplished in your lifetime, it's too small. Few things excite me as much as meeting sharp young people who want to be farmers. I see it as a reversal of a trend, and a linchpin in the healing of our country. May thousands and thousands of sharp, clever young people join this profitable vocation: lunatic farming. It's noble. It's sacred. It's a great living. It's wonderful scenery. It's a great place to raise kids.
Enjoying this life and encouraging the best and brightest to join in is the sheer ecstasy of being a lunatic farmer."
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