If anyone thinks farming is for simpletons, come fucking try it. Bring your tickets in heavy duty mechanics, welding, fitting, instrumentation, and millwrighting. An accounting degree with minors in veterinary science, commerce, soil biology, animal science and mychorrizhal studies will be an asset. Also, you’re going to need a CDL and the ability to operate about 30 types of heavy equipment without dying because there aren’t a lot of safeties on anything. If you’re slow, you’re dead.
Now take all that and add a credit score sufficient to borrow about $2 million for operating line, inputs, salaries, land rent, equipment maintenance and leasing and custom work. Then come talk to me about talents.
On the accounting, I’ve done taxes for a few cattle ranches. They do their bookkeeping with literal pencil and paper. The handwriting can be difficult to read, but lemme tell ya, they are always accurate to the penny and absolutely no nonsense. Far better than most of the urban small businesses out there.
Well, I end up at year-end balancing all the forward grain contracts and put/call options against actual sales, with dockage and off-cheque charges for the various commissions, and have to figure out crop insurance receipts and outlays against their audit and my sales. Then you need to reconcile the cattle sales at auction with all the shrinkage, auction fees and cattle commission charges. Because chem gets ordered but not all is used, I’ll often have to build a ledger showing where the refunds come from, and that will set off a cascade of reversals for various incentive programs and grant money we get to reduce nitrogen usage that all have to be explained. Don’t even get me started on the various environmental grant programs we are a part of in order to try to build a sustainable land base.
I’ve tried to just let this stuff go straight to the accountant, and it was an utter shitshow, and these accountants have worked with farms in our area and size for decades. And I completely understand, because I deal with these things all year and I still end up scratching my head how a lot of these companies build statements, and catch them in errors just because I’m so used to dealing with this stuff.
Check out “Clarksons Farm”. I’ve only watched the first few episodes but it’s a comical look at “real” farm life (that is, the less glamorous side…but it’s still reality TV).
The “Clarkson” is Jeremy Clarkson. From Top Gear. He bought a farm. And has absolutely no idea what to do with it. But he hired a couple seasoned farmers who know the area exceptionally well to help him out.
I tried growing a bed of veggies during the pandemic and miserably failed lol. I’m someone who has been growing 100+ houseplants for years so I’m not a novice.
I have deep respect for farmers, not just because of the talent and hard work but also because of the courage it takes to do it (like your life can be ruined if there isn’t enough rain one year).
I have been growing beds of veggies for years and I don’t have a fucking PhD in whatever the fuck dude said above. Large scale farming is a whole lot different than a backyard garden. Behold the fruits of my labors as a simpleton
Yep. And throwing away food isn’t totally a bad thing (though they could do better things with it, ultimately giving it away has rippling effects in the economy of food, the portion of people willing to hold out for less-fresh free food increases, lowering the demand for fresh food and thus raising its price).
The point is, it’s far better to have a surplus of food than a deficit, or even “just enough”. You don’t want a well-placed cold-snap, a drought, wildfires, fungus, insects, bird flu, barges stuck in a canal, or who knows what else happens in a grow season to be the difference between most the country being “fed” or “not fed”.
We don’t even really toss out much of the food we grow, it gets turned into grain for cattle 99% of the time. Stalks/roots of the plants get turned into feed for pigs/cows. Our system while it could be better is still very efficient.
No we do not. 85+% of the grain/food they eat is leftovers from what we grow to eat. They eat what you cannot. Stems/stalks/roots. They also drink non-potable water.
There is a reason a 50lb bag of sweet feed is $10 and drops to around $6 for bulk purchase.
Calling it leftovers is being a bit generous. It’s not waste. If there was food that was being eaten, then that means there’s not a surplus. There’s absolutely a surplus.
The best stuff goes to the humans, the bruised blemished and discolored stuff goes to the animals who are indifferent. If they weren’t eating the food, there would be less food grown.
80% of all commercial soy goes to livestock, and we are clear cutting the Amazon to grow it.
Something like 70% of the alfalfa grown in California is for dairy cows.
People like to ridicule the lowly almond for how much water it consumes to make milk…it still takes significantly less water to make a gallon of almond milk than it does to make a gallon of dairy milk. And almonds are one of the most inefficient non-dairy milks (lots of water and little significant nutritional value, compared to soy which takes less water and gives significantly more bioavailable protein and aminos). The big reason why people complain about the almonds is because it’s grown in dryer parts of California…but almost all the alfalfa grown is done in the literal desert, and most of that is exported.
If anyone thinks farming is for simpletons, come fucking try it. Bring your tickets in heavy duty mechanics, welding, fitting, instrumentation, and millwrighting. An accounting degree with minors in veterinary science, commerce, soil biology, animal science and mychorrizhal studies will be an asset. Also, you’re going to need a CDL and the ability to operate about 30 types of heavy equipment without dying because there aren’t a lot of safeties on anything. If you’re slow, you’re dead.
Now take all that and add a credit score sufficient to borrow about $2 million for operating line, inputs, salaries, land rent, equipment maintenance and leasing and custom work. Then come talk to me about talents.
On the accounting, I’ve done taxes for a few cattle ranches. They do their bookkeeping with literal pencil and paper. The handwriting can be difficult to read, but lemme tell ya, they are always accurate to the penny and absolutely no nonsense. Far better than most of the urban small businesses out there.
Well, I end up at year-end balancing all the forward grain contracts and put/call options against actual sales, with dockage and off-cheque charges for the various commissions, and have to figure out crop insurance receipts and outlays against their audit and my sales. Then you need to reconcile the cattle sales at auction with all the shrinkage, auction fees and cattle commission charges. Because chem gets ordered but not all is used, I’ll often have to build a ledger showing where the refunds come from, and that will set off a cascade of reversals for various incentive programs and grant money we get to reduce nitrogen usage that all have to be explained. Don’t even get me started on the various environmental grant programs we are a part of in order to try to build a sustainable land base.
I’ve tried to just let this stuff go straight to the accountant, and it was an utter shitshow, and these accountants have worked with farms in our area and size for decades. And I completely understand, because I deal with these things all year and I still end up scratching my head how a lot of these companies build statements, and catch them in errors just because I’m so used to dealing with this stuff.
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Check out “Clarksons Farm”. I’ve only watched the first few episodes but it’s a comical look at “real” farm life (that is, the less glamorous side…but it’s still reality TV).
The “Clarkson” is Jeremy Clarkson. From Top Gear. He bought a farm. And has absolutely no idea what to do with it. But he hired a couple seasoned farmers who know the area exceptionally well to help him out.
I tried growing a bed of veggies during the pandemic and miserably failed lol. I’m someone who has been growing 100+ houseplants for years so I’m not a novice.
I have deep respect for farmers, not just because of the talent and hard work but also because of the courage it takes to do it (like your life can be ruined if there isn’t enough rain one year).
I have been growing beds of veggies for years and I don’t have a fucking PhD in whatever the fuck dude said above. Large scale farming is a whole lot different than a backyard garden. Behold the fruits of my labors as a simpleton
Part of the calculation and you have some buffer crops. At least here. Are still a lot of US farms monoculture?
And this is the argument I give people who complain that we give farmers subsidizes…food is cheap and plentiful for a reason.
Yep. And throwing away food isn’t totally a bad thing (though they could do better things with it, ultimately giving it away has rippling effects in the economy of food, the portion of people willing to hold out for less-fresh free food increases, lowering the demand for fresh food and thus raising its price).
The point is, it’s far better to have a surplus of food than a deficit, or even “just enough”. You don’t want a well-placed cold-snap, a drought, wildfires, fungus, insects, bird flu, barges stuck in a canal, or who knows what else happens in a grow season to be the difference between most the country being “fed” or “not fed”.
We don’t even really toss out much of the food we grow, it gets turned into grain for cattle 99% of the time. Stalks/roots of the plants get turned into feed for pigs/cows. Our system while it could be better is still very efficient.
Most of the food we grow goes to cattle (and other livestock. Mostly cattle tho). They consume far more than humans.
No we do not. 85+% of the grain/food they eat is leftovers from what we grow to eat. They eat what you cannot. Stems/stalks/roots. They also drink non-potable water.
There is a reason a 50lb bag of sweet feed is $10 and drops to around $6 for bulk purchase.
Calling it leftovers is being a bit generous. It’s not waste. If there was food that was being eaten, then that means there’s not a surplus. There’s absolutely a surplus.
The best stuff goes to the humans, the bruised blemished and discolored stuff goes to the animals who are indifferent. If they weren’t eating the food, there would be less food grown.
80% of all commercial soy goes to livestock, and we are clear cutting the Amazon to grow it.
Something like 70% of the alfalfa grown in California is for dairy cows.
People like to ridicule the lowly almond for how much water it consumes to make milk…it still takes significantly less water to make a gallon of almond milk than it does to make a gallon of dairy milk. And almonds are one of the most inefficient non-dairy milks (lots of water and little significant nutritional value, compared to soy which takes less water and gives significantly more bioavailable protein and aminos). The big reason why people complain about the almonds is because it’s grown in dryer parts of California…but almost all the alfalfa grown is done in the literal desert, and most of that is exported.