Just around the corner

Used to be "it's who you know", now 'it's who wants to know you'.

Prophesy: Small farmers will have growing opportunities to become self-determinate, important, and profitable. The ranks of successful horsefarmers will grow at greater and greater rates. Government and large corporations will back out of agriculture. Various conditions including exorbitant fuel prices will encourage and/or force a building of local self reliance. There will be a rebirth and revitalization of small rural towns.

There's good news afoot for those of us who are and who want to be small independent family farmers, for those of us horsefarmers and loggers who have struggled to make ends meet. There are new opportunities for us to be rewarded handsomely for how we work, what we produce and who we are. It won't come as a government program or a gift or a prize. Ironically the good news comes from changes in the business sector. It will come as a result of steps we take because of new business directions. It'll come when people want to know who we are. And now, for many of us, it's in our hands. We can affect who wants to know us, and thereby who wants and needs our products and services. It will affect the demand justification factor for what we charge for our products and services. Truth be known we've had the option, the opportunity, the power, the justification and the demand all along. We've just not been able to see over the top of the wall of propaganda.

The urban centers are the only places to get direct fresh access to the sophisticated mass transit systems, the exotic delicatessens, the vibrant arts, the best magazines, the fresh baked handmade breads, the snappy folksy radio programs, the cavernous old-time bookstores, the coolest farmer's markets, the hand-dyed fabrics, the pamphleteering politicos and evangelists, the bike racks, the aroma-therapists, the noetic scientists, and the performances of Cirque d' Soleil. But really that was never true. It has just seemed that way. We are learning that the best bakeries are in small towns in Texas, Delaware, and Michigan. The best magazines come from small towns in Vermont, Wisconsin and Oregon. And we are learning that the best sandwiches, sculptures, radio, used books, fabrics, preachings, alternative medicines and street theaters are being created and gathered in small communities all over the world from North Carolina to Paraguay to Manitoba to the Langedouc to Wales to South Africa to Mississippi . That leaves mass transit as just about the only thing you have to go to a metropolis to find.

Large corporations have consistently found it unprofitable to have outlets and distribution in remote rural settings. When the push towards local self-reliance takes hold, over the next three years, it will be independents who'll put in the bakeries, the stores, the churches, the schools, the bookstores, the delis, the radio programs, the clinics. Creative skilled people will flow out into the countryside in waves looking to identify with community and family. And each of those new businesses will need local supplies and services from the community. They'll need and want grains, eggs, fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products along with construction, blacksmithing and mechanicing services. There won't be enough farmers and tradespeople to supply the demand so more will have to move in and they in turn will need disc harrows, draft animals, seed, help, churches, schools, bookstores, art and local radio broadcasts.

We, as farmers, are stewards for the land and the livestock in our charge. We are scientists and artisans and agrarians and farmers and as such valuable almost beyond measure. Valuable to ourselves, our families, our communities and the world. What we do and what we produce is worth every bit as much as the energy people buy, the housing they purchase, the tennis shoes they feel they must have. What we do and what we produce is worth MORE than the electronic toys, than the health insurance, the health club memberships, the automobiles, the therapy bills. What we do is definitely worth as much as what free lance 'consultants' charge, what real estate agents take, what school administrators make, what radio talk show hosts take in, what computer programmers charge.

"Wait a minute, I raise chickens, are you saying that I should get for one of my chickens what little Jimmy's mom spent on those new tennis shoes? That's ridiculous!"
"Yeah, and I plow with my Suffolk Draft Horses. Are you saying that...?"

Yep. In a way that's what I and the future are saying. Truth is changes are well under way towards new forms of parity (or relative value). We have not been getting enough for the food we produce AND the professionals (?) listed above have been getting too much for their work. The tennis shoes are over priced to the same degree that your chicken is underpriced. I don't see this as an inequality to be attacked by government. It is imbalance that the market place is already rushing to change.

Very soon, if not today, you can double or treble what you ask for your farm produce by letting the ultimate consumer know who you are, where you are, what you have, and how it was grown. Today they don't know who we are, they don't know where we are and how to reach us, they certainly don't know what we have to sell and share, and they know less than nothing about how we grow, produce and process what we have for sale. If we can help them discover all these answers our difficulties will then lie in satisfying a demand for our product that is far greater than supply.

To set the ball rolling we need simply to take charge of the outcome, to take hold of the steering wheel of the vehicle that is our farm, our farm dream, our life choices. And one way we take charge is to practise different ways to research our options. We learn to ask for different opinions, for different pricing options, for different marketing options, and most important for new ways to connect with customers and suppliers and competing farmers.

We're at the threshold of significant change in how business is done. We are witnessing the very beginnings of the end of much of the vertically integrated industrial model. The democratization of information may change forever the way we work and who we are. Artistry, craftsmanship and cultural riches will no longer be the exclusive province of the elite. It will belong to any who choose it, who wish it, and who earn it. At no time in the recorded history of mankind has there been such a clear opportunity for the true worth and effectiveness of the individual to shine its full light.

As farmers we have often bemoaned the marketing reality that says we are at the mercy of what the buyers, brokers, and the processors would pay. But today, enormous volumes of raw product (including farm commodities) are being sought direct by the end consumer. Computers and the internet started the ball rolling and it now extends into the non-computer workaday world of many. There is a new assumption which holds that as a consumer I have a wider choice than ever before thought. Yes, I can purchase oranges direct from a small farm in southern California. Yes I can purchase unique varieties of Apples from small New England orchards. Yes I can find a one-of-a-kind cheese from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Yes I can get boiled peanuts from South Carolina and on and on. But far more exciting and earth shaking is the discovery that right around the corner are people who grow the most exquisite apricots and honey and pheasant and whole grains. Right around the corner! We must turn that picture around and try to see that what we have, who we are, how we work are all valuable and important to others. We need to hang out our shingles saying;

"eggs for sale"
"horsepowered potato patch"
"home of the better-built cultivator"
"teaching people to work horses"
"organic vegetables and biodynamic piano lessons"
"fish here"
"u-pick hogs"
"peaches your mother told you about"
"horseshoeing and homemade pies"
"wool spinning and freezer lamb"
"plow shares sharpened and mares bred"
"replacement heifers and walnuts" etc. etc.

Most of us are looking for hard and fast numbers, projections, and these often get us in trouble by either limiting our choices or giving a dangerous false goal. Yet these numbers can also be liberating. For example, rather than the industrial model of 400 to 1000 dollars per acre gross revenues, the small farmer will be able to realize 3,000 to 15,000 dollars per acre AVERAGE gross revenue through direct marketing, diversification, multi-cropping, and value added process. An intensively managed organic forty acre farm can and should realize upwards of 400,000 dollars a year gross. If you doubt that you won't be able to do that. If you believe that you are on your way, but belief is not enough. Its essential, but not enough. You need skills, knowledge, tools, access to land and planning. You must be able to draw up a plan, a whole set of dots representing those things you want to include and realize, and then connect those dots intelligently and with creativity. (Just as the Blanton and Duggan families have shown in the Winter 2000 issue.)

You must sell or trade your product. Many of us know what it means to do direct sales through U-pick, CSA's, roadside stands, classified advertisements, farmer's markets, deliveries to retail markets, consignments to auctions, etc. - wholesale marketing through production credit contracts with processors, through cooperatives, through brokers, etc. - and value-added processing whether of product(s) or presentation or ideas or experience. All of that constitutes approaches we might have taken or considered.

Perhaps, however, it might be useful to attempt to look at this marketing question from other sides, other viewpoints, other challenges, other needs. From the side of the ultimate consumer, from the side of the cooperative, from the side of the membership, from the side of the retailer, from the side of the processor, from the side of the community, from the side of the competition, from the side of the industry, from the side of all farm families, and from the side of the farm itself. They are all looking for what you have. And they aren't finding it.

We need to line up side by side and offer a clear and constant view of who we are, and what products we have, to everybody and anybody. And everyone benefits when that view of options is unclouded and comprehensive. Marketing as it has been practised to date requires that the brokers be the only ones who know the whole picture, that's how they maintain their power, leverage and high returns. But rest easy, its over. That's a dead form of business for today and tomorrow. The brokers, the buyers, the agents, we've dealt with in the past (good and bad ones) all need to be out looking for new jobs because they are moments away from obsolescence.

The future belongs to all of us.

It is exciting beyond even my fertile imagination. There is so much good news and swell opportunity for the small farm community. We at SFJ want to be a part of it. We are a part of it.

Twenty five wonderful years of SFJ and all just prologue for what is fast upon us. You should be pleased with how you helped make it happen. Kiss the ones you love once for me. LRM

Archives for Farm Politics:
Exerpts from the Monkeyshines Register

Lynn R. Miller is the editor/publisher/founder of SFJ and FR&a. He is the author of over 12 books which cover the subjects of small farming and/or animal powered agriculture.