Okay - but for most types of agriculture, the minimum viable farm size is rather larger than it was a century or so ago.
Might we ask how large your sheep farm is, by current commercial (vs. hobby) standards?
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Well, I should say it was sheep —> artisan cheese, which is in my view one of the few paths to viability for a small sized farm. It’s definitely not big enough for producing a commodity profitably. And farming takes either generational wealth and experience OR being able to go big by forming a farming cooperative like Chris Newman. It’s probably not something most people can “escape” to.
Or, as any respectable farmer does it, it's though heavy subsidies and crop insurance fraud!
Yes, honest person that I am even I think “is the reason this isn’t working because I am not capable of gaming the system”. But all that money goes to farms orders of magnitude bigger anyway.
Have you seen this 1-acre Vermont farm?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT6O-4zbP6E
I'm not a farmer so I can't speak to how much of this is unreproducible, but it does seem very interesting. The paper pot transplanter blew my mind.
"We produced $250k worth of food last year. We sell most of it wholesale, so we don't get a terribly high price for it."
The title says they make $13k per week, which would be $676k... so $13k must be just during the weeks they produce. And it seems to be based on the grocery-store price of that food, rather than the actual wholesale price that they're able to sell it for.
I wanted to watch at least enough to understand how the title is misleading. If two people could make $13k/week on an acre there would be a hell of a lot more people doing it.
It's still cool though, they've clearly worked hard and made great use of their land.
YouTube always makes those things look more feasible than they are in reality.
First of all I doubt the 250K a year number just looking at the amount of produce in the field. Second of all, by the time all the expenses and distribution costs are figured in whatever the real number is shrinks by a lot. Third of all you need to be an area where a large number of people will pay double what it costs at Walmart for your produce. Lastly it takes years and a lot of trial and error to successfully produce efficiently and a couple of mistakes or bad luck and you are wiped out.
I actually have a lot of experience with this. I have a BS in Agronomy and managed a youpick/market garden back in the 90s. I still garden extensively you can see my YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/@pecospablo
I wish reality was as rosy as this video I really do. But I don't bother to try to sell my produce or expand, I know better. I just do it because I like it and eating top quality fresh picked food with high nutrient density is important to me.
and the nutrition per lb has fallen. Farm slop