[voakbasda]

As a small farmer, I can tell you: independent small-scale farming is not profitable in any meaningful manner. Government is actively killing it, by giving away every possible concession to Big Ag.

The food in stores is pretty much all garbage compared to food raised on small farms. It sickens me to see things go this way, but this is the reality that we have created.

[xu3u32]

I am someone who usually gets their beef from costco, small middle eastern markets and sometimes when its on sale at the neighborhood grocery store (Publix). Would you mind sharing in what ways what I'm consuming is trash compared to what comes from small farms?

[JoeAltmaier]

I buy grass-fed beef from my neighbor. There's no difference as far as I can see. I like to support my neighbor, but there's no magic, no difference cooking, no startling color-change tricks as reported elsewhere in this thread.

[CreepGin]

We have opposite experiences with pork and poultry. The meat we get from local homesteads are noticeably way better than store bought. Maybe beef is a different story. I don't know...

During 2020 summer, we raised 4 peking ducks in our backyard. We gifted some of the processed meat to extended family members. And to this day, they still can't stop talking about how good the meat were.

[adrr]

Poultry that is free range is more stringy and chewy. It also much leaner and smaller. I lived off free range chicken when i worked summers on my grandfather's farm in Hawaii. It is all personal preference. If you order chicken pho at a Vietnamese restaurant it will most likely be free range chicken or what they call "Walking chicken". It is completely different than a Tyson Chicken from Costco with oversized breast meat.

[cheese_goddess]

Really free-range poultry (backyard chicken, rather than chicken grown in a factory with a tiny yard just enough to satisfy free range regulations) is like you say, tough, stringy, full of muscle, with normal-sized breasts and its meat is dark. It's no good for roasting because you really have to boil it for a couple of hours at least in order to get it to the point it's edible. I made the mistake once to only cook a hen for half an hour, like I'd do for supermarket chicken and I spent the night chewing until my jaws ached (I didn't want to throw it out. Poor bird died so I could eat it; so I ate it).

That said, real-free-range chicken makes the most unbelievably godly soup. They have this amazing yellow fat and their skin is thick with it, so they make a really thick broth. Just add a few vegetables, a bit of celery, some carrots, potatoes, and you don't even need rice or anything else to thicken it. I suspect it's that kind of chicken that people mean when they say that chicken soup is good for you when you're sick. It's the kind of soup that could raise the dead.

Edit - I forgot about the bones. Real free range chicken bones are hard. You can't just snap them between your fingers. Well I can't anyway. They're like real bones. Amaze!

[tsimionescu]

Chicken meat and hen meat are different things. Big stores very rarely sell hen (or rooster) meat, normally only the meat of young, immature chicks is consumed, free-range or not.

This is like the difference between veal and beef. The younger animal has softer meat and a different kind of fat.

[artificialLimbs]

You have to put it in the freezer before it gets stringy and chewy. You're eating old chickens if it's stringy and chewy.

[c_o_n_v_e_x]

Here in Singapore and Malaysia, you can get "kampong chicken" (village chicken)... basically the chicken you see running around the village. They're great for soups and have a lot more flavor imo.

[bobthepanda]

Chicken doesn't have to be free-range to be better than what Tyson et al. are producing.

White striping is a lot more prominent in factory farmed chicken.

[jghn]

I get most of my meat from a local farm share. I've noticed that the largest difference vs grocery store meat by far is the fat in the pork we get. Poultry in general would be next, followed by the actual pork meat, and then beef. But yes, it's nice to get poultry that tastes like ... something.

The largest difference at first with beef was that it was grass fed and I was not used to that. But now I tend to buy grass fed beef when I do get it from the supermarket and thus don't notice a big difference vs my farm meat.

[ineedasername]

Is it possible that freshness and lack of freezing are the cause of any difference. (Also I assume local farms do not artificially plump chicken with fluids)

[CreepGin]

The ducks we raised were even better tasting than from other local homesteads. I think the trick was in the amount of organic peas and red wrigglers we fed them.

[abduhl]

This sounds like how I always “reminisce” with old associates about how good they were when they or we did X. Except you’re even more related to these people and so the vested interest in making you feel like they think you’re a great dude is even more entrained.

[shawn-butler]

Arguable. Non-feedlot raised animals do evidence some seasonality in the texture and flavor of the meat.

The nutritional value of the meat produced / consumed may be chemically similar although there is some research to support the higher human health benefits (CLAs, Omega 3s,Omega 9s, etc.) of grass-fed beef, but it is the stewardship used to raise those animals has a vastly different impact on the environment. Can't really speak to your neighbor in particular but you could ask him/her about rotational grazing and their antibiotic / animal healh protocols.

Just because you can't see the tail-pipe emissions coming from your car doesn't mean they aren't real and impacting your health and the viability of future generations.

Really this is a failure of the educational system in the US. If people knew the facts, they would be supporting and buying from local producer-owned cooperatives. One good example that I know of in the Upper Midwest market is https://www.wisconsingrassfed.coop/

[sokoloff]

> Really this is a failure of the educational system in the US. If people knew the facts, they would be supporting and buying from local producer-owned cooperatives.

Even people who know the difference might prefer to buy cheap factory farmed meat, might not have freezer space to hold 30 pounds of meat until they can use it, or $250 to tie up in what amounts to personal beef futures.

The coop meat you linked is pretty competitively priced and I’m sure it’s good. Even with that, it’s more expensive and for some people, price really matters.

[b112]

If they have the free cash. For some, every penny saved is vital. I think we often don't get this here.

[brailsafe]

> Really this is a failure of the educational system in the US. If people knew the facts, they would be supporting and buying from local producer-owned cooperatives.

This is an idealistic liberal fantasy that implies rather condescendingly that anyone who does otherwise is uneducated. I support my local grocery store in whatever way I can, but I buy what I can afford, try not to support slave labour if I know about it, but otherwise it's far more important to me that I cover my bases for energy, nutrition, and desire. Tailpipe emissions can be measured, and people avoid them all the time largely by not having cars or living near congestion, if they can afford to, because it makes the air gross. If the result of paying more for steak means mostly that it tastes a bit better and you feel morally superior, then an educated person of moderate means would choose the more reasoned choice compared to what it cost them. I don't think it's like the difference between literally inhaling from an exhaust pipe or breathing mountain air. I think it's more like pretentious juices that I see at my local mart. One is already expensive at $8 and is basically sugar, and the one labeled organic small-batch hand-squeezzed is $18 for the same size, and is basically sugar. Ya it might taste better, idk, but I sure as hell am not paying $18 for a jar of juice.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

https://www.localharvest.org/

[gutitout]

Maybe it’s not grass-fed.

Kidding. Really though if it was you could taste it. In some cases I prefer grain fed cows cause they just taste better. However the fat ratio of healthy to unhealthy fat, omega 3 to omega 6, is a major reason to go grass-fed.

[b112]

May depend on the grass! The flavour comes from variety of grasses, which is why wild meat tastes so different. I've has farm raised deer/venison, and wild was much better ..

So maybe the grass was just ...

[JoeAltmaier]

Let me look out the window .... yup! There they are, eating grass.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Don't know about grass-fed beef, but the taste of grass-fed milk compared to regular is night-and-day to me. I don't often splurge on organic but for milk I do solely for the taste.

[JoeAltmaier]

I know all about that! Every spring when the dairy cattle in the midwest are turned out into the green fields, the milk tastes of onions. Because wild onions is one of the first things to sprout in the spring!

[shaklee3]

organic milk mostly tastes different because it's pasteurized at a higher temperature. this makes it last longer and gives it a more of a cooked taste. it's personal preference if it tastes better.

[hn_throwaway_99]

No, I'm not just talking about organic milk. I think there is a huge taste difference even between grass-fed organic milk and "normal" organic milk. (Note I've never seen non-organic grass-fed milk). Normal organic milk doesn't actually taste all that different compared to conventional milk to me.

For me the biggest taste difference is from the grass, not the organic.

[hindsightbias]

A decade back, you couldn’t get grass-fed in any US metro, save the BA. And that was imported from Paraguay or Argentina.

Now it’s probably corn finished and pesticidy, but it does taste more like I remember as a kid.

[ratsmack]

That may be because many "grass-fed" farmers do a 120 day corn finish which adds weight quickly. This makes the beef more like what is produces commercially.

[poulsbohemian]

The rancher I buy beef from is a multi-generation family friend. I can tell the years he's finished on grain vs. the years he hasn't. Same Angus beef on the same grass fields, drinking the same mountain spring water, same mobile kill operation. But, some years it's obvious in the taste and texture he has mixed in corn / grains into the diet.

To the other poster asking about mobile kill operations - it's less stress on the animals, and that ultimately does yield a better product. So whether you view it through the lens of tasty meat or animal welfare, in both cases it's a win.

[wyager]

We raised some lambs a couple years ago. The meat was noticeably much tastier than store-bought lamb. Don't know if this was a function of diet or freshness or what, but it was quite compelling.

[throwawayboise]

Grass-fed beef will have a "gamier" taste than supermarket beef, especially if it is not "finished" by corn-feeding before slaughter. It's not bad, it's just different. If you are used to the taste of steak from the supermarket beef, which is mostly corn-fed, grass-fed "free-range" beef will taste different.

[xd]

I took on some caged hens (about 6months back now) that were off for slaughter to be turned into dog food. Straight away they took to the patch of land in my garden I gave them and laid eggs .. the eggs they lay are on another level to anything store bought. I can put a pan of water on boil over a stove; crack an egg into it and have a perfect poached egg 2-3mins later. They are creamy and rich as if they have life compared to what now tastes almost rancid in store eggs.

Waking up at sun rise every day to let them out is a pain but more than worth it. That said I wouldn't recommend keeping hens unless you've had exposure to them on some level other than visiting a farm.

[zwieback]

I added a solenoid-operated latch to my chicken coop that opened when the sun came up. I didn't like getting up at 4:30 in the summer. At night I still manually closed it since I had to make sure I didn't lock a skunk or possum in with the chickens.

[wiredfool]

Funny, I had it auto open at 8am and close at civil twilight automatically, and it was the auto closing that was the much bigger deal for me.

[inetknght]

> I added a solenoid-operated latch to my chicken coop that opened when the sun came up.

That's pretty cool. Is it battery operated? Do you have your chicken coup next to your home or did you run power to the hen house?

[zwieback]

The coop was maybe 60 ft away so I opted for a battery that I'd have to recharge every few weeks. I don't have chickens right now but if I ever get more I'll use a small solar charger and maybe add a few more bells and whistles. I lost a lot of chickens to raccoons and hawks so maybe next time I'd actually do a fully enclosed chicken run.

[conradev]

This. It is all in the yolks. Farm fresh eggs from happy chickens can be a nice deep yellow/orange, whereas factory eggs are usually pale yellow.

Of all of the farm products discussed in the thread, eggs show the biggest difference in my opinion

[gniv]

Are you sure this is still true? I thought nowadays it's mostly what supplements they put in the feed. These supplements are sold exactly with this kind of promise.

[philipkglass]

You appear to be correct.

"Handbook on Natural Pigments in Food and Beverages"

Chapter 14 - Feed Additives for Influencing Chicken Meat and Egg Yolk Color

Pigmentation of egg yolks and poultry tissues (mainly skin and fat) directly reflects the contents of carotenoids in the feed of birds. In most countries of the world, consumers prefer pigmented egg yolks, whereas pigmented poultry tissues are less desired. Especially in the southern part of Europe, eggs with a golden-orange tone of yolks are preferred. This is achieved by supplementing feeds of birds with both yellow and red carotenoids. For this purpose, nine carotenoids are approved as feed additives in the European Union, five natural and four artificial products, six with a yellow color and three with a red color. This chapter describes the ways of pigmenting egg yolks and poultry tissues, how to measure the achieved color, the factors affecting the color of the product, the deposition rates of carotenoids, and the contribution of carotenoids in egg yolks to humane intake.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978008100...

Here's one of these products from BASF:

https://nutrition.basf.com/global/en/animal-nutrition/produc...

Poultry cannot produce carotenoids on their own, which is why the color of egg yolks depends on the carotenoids combination in their diets. However, it is not only the quantity of pigments that matters but also their bioavailability and color intensity. With Lucantin® Yellow (C-30 ester) any egg yolk color between light pastel yellow and reddish is possible.

[novok]

There is one brand of eggs, happy egg co heritage breed that has some of the deepest color yolks I've seen with a different smell and taste. Significantly tastier. I've tried a lot of brands and price categories and haven't found ones like those.

https://happyegg.com/heritage-breed/

[shaklee3]

this is not true: https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs

[inetknght]

> That said I wouldn't recommend keeping hens unless you've had exposure to them on some level other than visiting a farm.

I recently bought a few acres in SE Texas and several people have recommend I raise chickens both for the eggs and also to help with some of the insects around here.

Why don't you recommend it?

[xd]

I didn't word that well, what I meant to say was get some exposure to chickens and a keeper who will give you the insights you need to understand what's required for happy chickens - even if that is a bunch of Youtube videos.

In Britain a lot of people rush out to get rescue hens and stick them in a rabbit run on their patio which is what I try to avoid encouraging.. being turned into dog food is a better outcome than the quality of life some chickens get.

[tbyehl]

> Why don't you recommend it?

Not GP. Can't imagine why they wouldn't. Once you're past the construction phase -- coop, containment, predator defense -- they're fairly low effort. Provide food and water, clean the coop regularly, and pay enough attention to them to quickly notice if your birds start getting sick.

Source: Started with 6 chicks and 8 rescue hens a couple years ago, presently around 40.

[omeze]

Not GP but how'd you find the land? I'm from Texas (grew up but haven't lived as an adult) and was wondering how to find 1-2 acres

[inetknght]

I went through a half dozen real estate agents. After several months and false starts, I found a real estate agent who was close to retiring, loved driving far, and liked looking at rural properties. During the week she'd send property listings to me and I'd yay/nay them. Then on the weekend we'd drive around and see three or four of them -- literally all-day affairs on Saturdays and half-days on Sundays. That went on for several months.

I moved from Houston to my new 5 acres in August after watching the housing market for a year and actively searching for a home for about 6 months.

Honestly the real selling point is that this home has AT&T gigabit fiber :)

[jdhn]

AT&T fiber in a rural area? What's the closest major city?

[AndrewUnmuted]

It's true; it is. This year I bought half of a red angus cow straight from the farm. It turns red when it gets cooked. It's a sight to behold. The stuff you buy at the costco has been frozen and unfrozen at least twice before you buy it. That's already a meaningful difference. They clearly treat it with some sort of coloring agent.

In the 30 years I have cooked meat, nothing can prepare you for real beef that comes straight from the source. If it's USDA approved it ain't right.

[voakbasda]

You are absolutely correct.

It all starts with better nutrition. CAFO cows that end up at the supermarket are fed low-quality grains and feedstocks, rather than grass that they were evolved to eat. The difference between grain and grass fed beef is amazing.

USDA processing is a complete farce. I can only sell locally, because I am not willing to send my animals to such facilities. Instead, I can only sell here in my home state, because that's the only way I can say that my animals were born, raised, and died humanely on my farm. The butcher will drop them where they stand, eating a final meal in the conditions that they were raised.

If I want to go with USDA in order to sell my products out of state, by the cut, or to resellers (e.g. restaurants), then I must load my animals onto a trailer, haul them almost two hours away, and allow them to suffer the trauma of that experience before finally being slaughtered in inhumane conditions. I can tell you right away: that experience severely damages the quality of the meat.

Big ranches can afford their own USDA facilities, but small farms must share the slowly dwindling number of processors that still serve the public. There are less than two dozen in my entire state, so you currently need to book them further out than the entire lifespan of the animals that you plan to raise. Right now, my processor has completely booked 2022; a new farmer cannot get any animals processed there until 2023!

Seriously, fuck the USDA.

[bee_rider]

Any thoughts on Mobile Slaughter Units?

Your focus on being less cruel to your cows is pretty admirable, but I don't really see how average consumers could evaluate whether their local farm is:

* Putting in the sort of extra effort that you are

* Following safety protocols more generally

I dunno. I'm not super attached to meat, so I'd probably quit eating it before putting in the effort to eat it ethically. Actually when I put it that way, I should probably quit it...

[voakbasda]

The USDA allows Mobile Slaughter Units. My state does not have one, because it's too expensive to bootstrap. We're talking millions of dollars of capital expenditures to get one running, because you still need a non-mobile facility in which to finish processing and pack the meat.

None of the existing processors are willing to invest in such a venture, when their existing facilities are increasingly being regulated out of existence. No one is building new USDA facilities to serve small farmers.

[vwcx]

One counterexample to this might be the field harvesting of bison. Starting to see more 'artisanal' buffalo ranching that stress the positive ethics and efficiency of slaughtering in the field as needed. Of course, they still do need a partnership with a local processor to make field harvesting work.

[AndrewUnmuted]

The way to do it is to meet the farmer.

We had a nice hour long walk & talk with the farmer we went with here in middle TN. He gave us $50 worth of free samples at the end and checked in with us a few times to see if we were able to get a good meal out of the sample meat.

We saw his process, we met the cows and saw first-hand how he cared for them. We also saw that he cared - he cared a lot.

When you think about it, this is the stuff you're going to feed your family. We put in a lot of effort when buying a car but not when buying our food. It's amazing what a little effort and thought can get you out here though, in "the sticks."

[hcurtiss]

I'm only one guy, but having raised and butchered several of both, I vastly prefer grain-finished steers. The trend toward lean grass-fed beef mystifies me. The fat and marbling with grain-finished animals is much higher, particularly if modestly confined, and that has at least historically earned a better grade. It's certainly easier to cook and preferred in my household.

[graaben]

How did you go about finding a farm to buy from? I'm very interested in doing this.

[freedomben]

I'm in Eastern Idaho, and you can find small ranchers to buy meat from pretty easily on local Facebook pages. I even met one at the park and just started up a conversation. In the end it wasn't cheaper (It was about the same price as Costco) and I had to buy at least a half cow, but the quality was so good I can't even believe it sometimes.

[mynameisash]

I haven't done this yet, but The Omnivore's Dilemma mentions EatWild.com as a resource for finding "beyond organic" food. That might be a good place to start.

[matchbok]

In absolutely no way does any beef sold in stores contain artificial color.

[e44858]

I frequently see "nitrites" in the ingredients list, whose main purpose is to color the meat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_nitrite#Color_and_taste

[xyzzyz]

They don’t add nitrites to raw meat, only to processed one. Nitrites is why your ham is pink instead of gray. But, more importantly than color, nitrites are added as a preservative, to avoid botulism.

[kbart]

Wasn't the claim that nitrites help against botulism denied few years ago? According to Guardian: "A bombshell internal report written for the British meat industry reveals nitrites do not protect against botulism"[0]

0. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/mar/23/nitrites-ham-ba...

[ironchef]

Modified air packaging with carbon monoxide is _very_ common in the US. So the “artificial color” isn’t some dye or something… it’s how the myoglobin reacts to the MAP.

[mastazi]

I grew up on a farm in Italy and for years I could not eat supermarket meat as I found it absolutely awful, so it might be a habit that forms over time. Note that this was not about beef because we didn't have cattle (beef is the only meat we had to buy from outside), anyway in my experience grass-fed high quality beef tastes definitely nothing like supermarket meat... it's not just the taste but the tenderness/consistency/texture.

[belorn]

To take ground beef as an example, when I put typical store bought beef in the pan there will be a lot of liquid forming and boiling. Ground beef from small farms tend to need a bit more butter as it has much less water content in it. It not uncommon to hear cooks that always ground their own beef in order to control water and fat content.

[goostavos]

Are farms which sell directly to end consumers profitable at all? Like as a lifestyle business?

Last year I purchased a 1/4 beef directly from a local farm and, as a life long city dwelling techbro, found the whole experience awesome. As dumb as it is, I really liked feeling 'closer' to where my food came from. I know the farm, the people who run it, the age and hanging weight of the beef, where it was processed, and so on. I even like that you get everything, including the generally 'undesirable' cuts, because you're processing an entire cow. I haven't purchased beef from a store in almost a year at this point!

I've been enamored with it ever since. On the techbro side, I wonder if there's something more small farms can do "local beef as a service" wise. The process, at least with the farm I went through, was clunky and manual to say the least (especially when doing it for my first time).

[relaxing]

> Are farms which sell directly to end consumers profitable at all? Like as a lifestyle business?

It varies, but the range is generally between “no, someone’s working a job outside the farm to make ends meet” and “margins slim enough that one small disaster means no longer being able to cover expenses.”

[kurthr]

I'm not sure the government is actively killing it... they just aren't doing anything about the oligopolies and collusion that have always developed in these sort of situations. That may seem subtle, but many argue that we want to make the government do less to "keep them off our backs". Well, guess what these are the consequences. These markets may be "free", but they are not efficient, in fact they are arguably corrupt. The economists have also figured out what side their bread is buttered on.

[lettergram]

> I'm not sure the government is actively killing it... they just aren't doing anything about the oligopolies and collusion that have always developed in these sort of situations.

They are implementing regulations that put smaller butcher shops out of business. That said, the regulations may be good, but if the burden is too high .... well you have a problem.

[xbar]

I'm not exactly sure either. But my observations of politicians serving big business over small producers by dismantling anti-competitive regulations in several industries makes me think that it is almost a certainty.

Accidents of policy do happen, but would you agree that it is suspicious that 4 food packing companies are making massive profits on such a 40-year-old accident and no one has thought to just fix it yet?

[apatters]

I mean, corporations are created by government regulations. If you don't have a law which specifies how they work, they don't exist.

So if you have a body of law which enables the creation of these things, details how they are managed, and then they develop into oligopolies, this is not something that happens "naturally" -- it's a deliberate result produced by whoever controls those laws.

[seventytwo]

The voters have the power to curtail influence of big ag and other corporate oligarchies, but that requires not being afraid of voting for leftist ideas like class consciousness, unions, and stronger government regulation on big businesses.

[artificialLimbs]

Can you show me some examples of leftist ideas helping small businesses by regulating big businesses?

[bigthymer]

Antitrust?

[mike00632]

I think it's more complicated than a simple left/right dichotomy. Bernie Sanders' biggest accomplishments as a Senator were giving billions of dollars to big ag as corporate subsidies (often to the dairy industry which donated heavily to his campaign). Giving taxpayer money to big ag is similar to the military industrial complex in that both sides of the political spectrum further it.

[sanp]

And it's many of the same constituents (i.e., farmers in red states) voting for the party of "small government".

[lettergram]

The federal government sets the higher and higher standards for butchers. It’s not the smaller local governments causing the issue.

[aksss]

How is big ag not representing an efficient market compared to thousands of small disconnected farms? In this sense thinking about efficiency being a measure of how open and accessible information is concerning said market. I can think of a few different pro/con angles to the assertion. Curious what's on your mind.

[kurthr]

Big Ag in this case is meat packing. Perhaps you're referring to the largest cattle ranches as well? Demonstrably, profits are going only to the middle men while farmers margins are squeezing to 0 driving them out of business... that will eventually raise actual supply prices once only the largest few "most efficient" ranchers left, but then those prices will be entirely passed on to consumers not the processors/middle men.

So supply prices rise as production falls... to the monopoly maximum marginal profit extracted from the consumer, just as predicted!

[lettergram]

Having been all over the country it’s amazing to me how different Wyoming and say Tennessee are.

The people in Tennessee already had to deal with the federal government implementing policies destroying the domestic tobacco industry. Btw this just means foreign farmers reap the profits. The federal government made the input costs to tobacco prohibitively expensive through taxes and regulations.

They then converted mostly to grass fed cattle farms. Now there are multiple aspects that make it difficult to be profitable.

It’s really painful to watch.

2008 also had a pretty large impact for farmers losing their farms, followed bu drugs, increased taxes, etc make it pretty difficult. All the farmers complain around me about “getting good help”.

[JoeAltmaier]

Destroying tobacco? Wasn't $2B subsidies over the last decade, enough to keep it going?

[AnthonyMouse]

The government is fully capable of doing two dumb things at the same time.

[lotsofpulp]

> All the farmers complain around me about “getting good help”.

I assume this is due to the low pay to quality of life ratio offered by farming jobs.

[lettergram]

Getting people drug addicted removes potential help and illegal immigration drives down prices

[dodobirdlord]

If illegal immigration was driving the cost of help down, would they be complaining of a lack of laborers to hire? Someone must be hiring all of these illegal immigrants if their presence is suppressing wages in an industry…

[aksss]

There's no minimum wage for illegal immigrants. The higher minimum wage gets, the more incentive there is to draw upon illegal labor markets, particularly the more plentiful the illegal labor units become.

[User23]

Rural birth rates plummeted so there are fewer potential workers. Add to that the methamphetamine and opioid epidemics and the pool of potential domestic farm workers is tiny. The ones that do the work are the ones that love the lifestyle.

That means that even small farmers lean hard on H-2B to pick up the slack. Interestingly those wages are actually pretty competitive: around $12 an hour plus room and board.

[lkrubner]

My friend Kathryn Bertoni used to be a farmer, and she survived for awhile by selling the produce via a CSA and various farmers markets, but in the end, she couldn't make a go of it. She wrote a great review of the book 'Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm" which you can read here:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/family-farms-are-doomed-buy...

[SavantIdiot]

Move to Portland, Oregon! There is a huge market here for local farm produce and livestock. During the 2000's, I couldn't find a CSA because all local farms were selling nearly everything to restaurants. In terms of meat production, it is a trend here for gyms to pool resources and purchase entire cows / pigs / lamb. The farm where I (used to) get my milk was 5 miles from my house (I switched off cowmilk)[0], but my poultry and pork and grown and butchered right next to it on another small farm.[1] There are many others, but they are far away [2], [3].

Now I pay 2x-3x for meat compared to the local big-market (or Whole Foods), but meat is supposed to be expensive if raised humanely and sustainably, so I'm OK with that. Plus I like meeting my chickens before eating them. "Portlandia" was not far off.

[0]: http://www.schochdairy.com/

[1]: https://www.marionacres.com/

[2]: https://friendsoffamilyfarmers.org/opn/soggy-feet-enterprise...

[3]: https://www.kookoolanfarms.com/

This is the place for small farmers.

[poulsbohemian]

Can you talk more about this? As a consumer I generally see these two as almost mutually exclusive. What I mean is - while I know there is rent seeking on the part of Big AG, as a consumer I'm under the impression there are plenty of sectors where small-scale producers can be profitable. Meat comes to mind, as I buy directly from ranchers I know personally. Small-scale creameries have definitely been squeezed by rules written by Big AG, but then again some of those have had legitimacy IE: healthy and safety.

[mitchell_h]

fellow small farmer(live stock only) with a day gig. The only benefit to having a small farm these days is it provides a tax shelter, and an enjoyable(yet difficult) hobby.

Even if you outright own the land, by the time you figure in maintenance and equipment on any cattle farm under 500-1000 head of cattle you simply can't turn a profit in a meaningful way. What you CAN do is use it as a tax shelter where you sorta break even if you squint and hope.

[jdavis703]

Why is all the pasture raised, permaculture, organic blah blah stuff all so expensive if it’s not profitable? If I’m paying $12 for a dozen eggs when I can get non-sustainable, conventionally raised eggs from some megacorp for $3 then where is all the money going? Any consumer paying $12 for eggs certainly wouldn’t mind $13, which could then be profit.

[xyzzyz]

It is expensive precisely because it’s not profitable. Imagine if you were a builder, selling artisanal houses built without use of any power tools, only with organic manual labor, using materials prepared with organic manual labor only. You’d be building one deck in the same time it takes normal builders to build an entire house. The only way you could make a living this way would be if you charged multiples of what normal construction costs. But, even then, you’d still complain about your business not being profitable, as you’d have troubles finding people who will pay as much.

Myself, I like good eggs, but I’m not paying $1/egg.

[biztos]

> I like good eggs, but I’m not paying $1/egg

It looks like Whole Foods charges about half that for fancy organic eggs.

However, if you sold them at the Ferry Building in San Francisco and had a good story about why your eggs were special, I think you could get $12 a dozen.

How many of us are going to balk at $1/egg after we just paid $5 for an espresso and are ogling the $50 bottles of olive oil? Especially if we've been conditioned to not eat too many eggs because "cholesterol."

[xyzzyz]

The point here is that if Starbucks was buying as expensive coffee as are those organic $1 eggs, it would be $10-15 espresso. I’m happy to pay $1 for egg, if it comes with the rest of the breakfast in form of a sit down restaurant service. But paying $12 just for a carton of dozen eggs? No way.

[jdavis703]

I’m not sure that’s true. One of the cafes near me uses Strauss Milk (pastured cows, methane digesters, the works) and of course fair trade coffee. It adds maybe $1.50 to the price of a latte, for about $5.50. Commercial buyers can buy in bulk, so I imagine it’s a bit cheaper than buying retail from the kind of upscale groceries that sell sustainable foods.

[jdavis703]

Exactly, scrambled eggs or an omelette at a restaurant easily costs more than $1/egg. Obviously restaurants have all other costs. But in the grand scheme of things, if you’re living in an expensive place like NYC or SF, it doesn’t seem like that much.

[xyzzyz]

How much would the restaurant breakfast cost, if the restaurant was buying $1 eggs and other similarly expensive ingredients?

[cinntaile]

$12 dollars for 12 eggs? The goose is dead but the hen is still going strong.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Holy christ. If I could $12/dozen for my eggs I'd start raising chickens again! Where are you buying those?

[phillypham]

At Seattle and NYC farmers markets, I regularly pay $12 a dozen. The eggs are often sold out, so others are, too.

[throwawayboise]

I don't go to the local farmer's market because it's too political, but supermarket eggs here are often under $1.00/dz (presumably sold as a loss leader) and the most expensive "certified pasture raised" eggs are about $6/dz.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Must be nice. The main cost input to eggs is chicken feed. Assume a $15 bag will keep a dozen hens fed for a month, that's about 240 eggs (assuming 2 eggs per hen every 3 days) at a cost of $15 so about $0.06 per egg. Cost will drop significantly if chickens are kept on pasture and the labor inputs for a flock of a few dozen are minimal.

It may not be enough to live on but for a hobby, it's pretty much free money. Although I assume the market charges a stall fee that will eat into profits, but still...

[voakbasda]

In the US, the tax shelter plan only works if you are profitable 3 out of any given sequence of 5 years. Otherwise, the IRS prohibits deductions from "hobby farms". Be sure you check with an accountant, unless you have been showing a clear profit from your farming activities.

In my experience, a small farmer basically needs to cook their books to appear profitable. Profit is not realistic if you include all of the actual costs.

[loudmax]

> Government is actively killing it, by giving away every possible concession to Big Ag.

If government were out of the picture would small-scale farmers be better able to compete with Big Ag? If you were making policy, what would you have government do instead?

[after_care]

1. Simplify the tax code for farms under a certain size. Farms basically require itemization for every expense.

2. Right to repair. Seriously, they cannot repair their own equipment.

3. Add legal protections against GMO companies. Or other large private companies. More than a few small farms have be buried in legal bills.

4. Stop putting corn ethanal in gas. Its a poor use of fresh water. It’s provided almost universally by large farms. It reduces the quality of gas. We are much less dependent on foreign energy than when this was put in place. I guess this one will mostly sort itself out with electrification.

5. Universal healthcare. Or affordable healthcare for small businesses in general. Farming is very accident prone work.

6. Put stricter health regulations on animal husbandry. Big ag animal farms are some of the least sanitary work environments in the US, I’d rather shovel coal.

Edit: Bonus, consider loosening drone regulations for rural areas. They are valuable surveying tools, and line of sight requirements is unnecessary in many agri situations

[aksss]

While not endorsing or rejecting your list completely, I'd just like to point out for others that "innovating regulation" is a thing - to the extent that a large corporation can lobby for new, burdensome regulation that only companies of a certain size can afford to comply with, they create large barriers to entry into markets and crush the margins of smaller organizations. This is the case in all industries, not just farming. Anytime you see a corporation advocating for regulation, the first thought shouldn't be "oh, that's admirable," it should be, "how will this affect their competitive landscape?"

[Gustomaximus]

Asset tax for large scale and absentee owners.

Basically if you live on the farm you don't pay. If you own a property remotely or its above a certain scale you pay x% a year asset tax.

I think this could solve a bunch of foot in the door issues around farming.

To add to this they need to break up the meat processing side. In US there is something like 4 meat processors holding most of the market. It's far too dominant for one country. There need to be I dusty breakup and easy of regulation for local small scale butchers.

[ryandrake]

A steep tax on property owned by absentees would solve a lot of other societal ills, too. People speculatively buying multiple properties they don't live in, treating them like bars of gold in a vault rather than homes. People buying condos just to turn them into AirBNB hotels. Landlordism in general which is, in balance, a parasitic activity, even if it does serve a legitimate economic purpose.

[voakbasda]

Break up all large corporations. Sure, start with Big Ag, but we need to dismantle Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Oil, etc. etc. End the anti-trust run by dismantling Big Government.

[CountSessine]

Do you break up large foreign corporations? Samsung? Sony? NEC? Philips? BASF? Volkswagen? Oppo? How do you do that? Or do you let small US companies duke it out with foreign giants, without the benefit of scaled efficiency?

[relaxing]

Tariffs, obviously.

[zwieback]

Nonsense - you can get everything from trash to exceptional quality food, depending on the store you buy it from. Not disputing your point that small farmers have it hard but on the consumer side there's lots of choice.

[CreepGin]

> Nonsense - you can get everything from trash to exceptional quality food, depending on the store you buy it from. Not disputing your point that small farmers have it hard but on the consumer side there's lots of choice.

When money is of no concern to you, sure. But reality is many people can't even afford to buy organic foods.

[philipkglass]

Food in general was more expensive before the Green Revolution, back when food usually was organic and came from small farms.

Here's a 1922 document showing American retail prices of food from 1913 to 1920:

https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bl...

Take a look at eggs, for example (page 21 as numbered in scans, 27 in the PDF). In 1920 egg prices fluctuated between $0.528 and $0.924 per dozen. Adjusting that price by consumer price index, it's something like $7.02 to $12.29 per dozen in current dollars. Back then people were forced to produce their own food, spend a larger portion of their income on food, or simply go without. Poverty that would force someone to eat cheap eggs now would force them to eat no eggs back then.

[DougWebb]

I just looked up the eggs I buy: Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs through Amazon Fresh. Currently $7/dz. They come with a url and farm id code you can use to see a live web cam of the hens that laid the eggs in the pack you're holding.

[mkoubaa]

Consumers can throw less food in the trash and they'd be able to afford more

[zmix]

It's interesting to note, how all these "Competition is Good for the Business(tm)" folks, in reality, do not want any competition, at all.

[ryathal]

Competition is good for business, but a lot of big companies have learned that it's better to compete at filling out paperwork the best rather than the best product.

[themitigating]

So do you want more regulation?

[MomoXenosaga]

The food in stores is cheap. And that matters to consumers more than whatever alleged quality small-time farmers can produce (was food actually better a hundred years ago? Doubt).

[programmertote]

I highly recommend you to visit third world countries and sample food from there. I grew up in Burma and have been living in the US for almost 20 years. Every time I went back to Burma, I buy milk, egg and chicken from local markets. I boil the milk and egg, and make curry out of the chicken. The milk is super creamy and if you boil it for 2-3 times, you get like 1-cm creamy foam on top. I tried the same with Costco whole milk, and didn't get as much cream/richness. The chickens are usually smaller, but they don't have "fishy" (for the lack of better way to describe it; but you can notice if you have lived in Burma for a while and came back to the US to eat factory-farmed chicken) smell before/after cooking. The chicken bone is a bit thicker and there is more bone marrow (I like chewing on bones and eating the marrow). Maybe it's the breed difference, but certainly there's no smell.

I'd also recommend you to try different kinds of fresh water fish that are available in places like Burma and Thailand. These fish are more and more difficult (expensive) to buy thanks to overfishing, but the variety and the flavor will just amazes you.

In general, I believe that factory farming has reduced the variety of available food in the US. Whether that impacts the long term health/flavor of the food is something we probably should conduct a long-term scientific study to confirm.

My wife and mom (from the same country) both told me that they cannot eat the chicken from US markets because of the smell, and it took me a while (15 years) to get that distinct scent that they mention and once I starts cooking more and more, I learned to distinguish that myself.

[cheese_goddess]

> The milk is super creamy and if you boil it for 2-3 times, you get like 1-cm creamy foam on top. I tried the same with Costco whole milk, and didn't get as much cream/richness.

That's probably because supermarket milk is typically homogenised, meaning it's been put through a very narrow funnel with great force until the fat globules break and become more evenly distributed throughout the milk. That's why supermarket milk doesn't have "cream on top". The fat stays suspended in the milk liquid and doesn't rise to the top (as is normal with milk that hasn't been homogenised). Homogenisation also usually standardises milk to a certain fat content while the excess goes to make butter, so you can expect homogenised milk to be just exactly 3.5% in fat (for cow's milk) while the milk you get from your local farmer is going to vary a lot above and below that, depending on season, feed, reproductive cycle and activity of the animals etc.

I suspect that the fishy smell in US chicken is because of a chlorine wash. There was a bit of a scandal about it recently in Britain.

[conradev]

and, thankfully, "cream on top" milk is now more available in US supermarkets

brands like Straus are generally available on the west coast, not sure about other regions

[cheese_goddess]

That's good. Homoegenised milk is also no good for making homemade cheese :)

[yurishimo]

If your chicken smells/tastes fishy, then it's going bad. The fat oxidization causes that smell if I'm not mistaken.

[robocat]

Things that eat fish, taste of fish. For example muttonbird in New Zealand is a seabird that tastes as strong as anchovy. The chickens are possibly being fed on fish processing waste, or ocean-caught “inedible” species like krill https://www.google.com/search?q=alibaba+krill+chicken+feed

[throwawayboise]

It's also likely that if it's from a big processor (e.g. Tyson) that it has been washed in bleach to kill bacteria. This may make for safer food but it certainly leaves an aftertaste.

[ramesh31]

(was food actually better a hundred years ago? Doubt).

It absolutely was, but of course there was less of it. Have you ever had real farm fresh eggs from a free range chicken? It's a completely different thing from those white shells with bright yellow yolks you get at the grocery store. Same goes for vegetables. Ever had a home grown tomato? Those things are worth their weight in gold. The grocery store version is really just a bunch of water in the shape of a tomato.

[yostrovs]

The reason the store egg shells are white is because the Leghorn breed is the most productive layer and it produces white shells.

But to compare our homestead eggs to the store's, you can simply hard boil the two and then use a knife to cut the eggs in half. Our pampered chickens make much denser yolks that are much harder to cut. There's clearly more of something in them.

[voakbasda]

Studies repeatedly have shown that micronutrients do not get replenished in monoculture crops, resulting in a measurable decrease in nutrition available in food grown in that soil. So, yes, food was actually better a hundred years ago.

[pfdietz]

Micronutrients are, by definition, present in micro amounts, so they can be fully replenished artificially with only small additions of material.

[freedomben]

Yes but it's difficult to get them in a form that is highly available for digestion/absorption, so most fortified food may have the same things on paper but it doesn't all get absorbed into your body.

[pfdietz]

We are not eating soil, we are eating plants (and animal flesh). An atom of (say) molybdenum taken up by a plant will be put into use in that plant in a way that's not dependent on its state in the soil.

Measurement and correction of soil trace element abundances -- often on a small scale -- is already state of the practice for large scale agriculture.

The whole micronutrient thing sounds like trying to apply a thin coating of science to a non-scientific thought process.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

What about chirality? I mean this in several ways. First we are not doing atomic assembly or molecular kitchen here.

Which means the atoms of single nutrients transform into molecules by biochemical processes.

Second, those structures are involved further into transporting nutrients around the plant during growth.

Third, the structure of the soil with a healthy network of fungi and soil seems to be important. Or at least that is the way plants have evolved, even if it seems chaotic and inefficient (like photosynthesis).

Fourth, with wine people speaking of the Terroir, which determines the complex interactions of soil, geography, temperature, sunshine, weather and whatnot else to produce that one specific taste. Why wouldn't the same be true for other plants and products thereof?

Fifth, if it would be sufficient to give them just the 18 common nutrients, light, water and heat they need, why can't we have them massproduced in the most efficient way in growhouses via (say) Aeroponics, where their roots are in no growth medium at all anymore, just sprayed with a fine mist which contains all the necessary nutrients?

Sixth, science is the process of understanding what happens by modelling, until further evidence necessitates revising of the model.

If one does not completely understand how the interactions between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizosphere & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza contribute to taste and nutritional value of the harvest, pointing to big-AG instead, that isn't scientific either, only dumb commerce.

Seventh, I'm not saying I know it, or others do, it's just that we all don't really know so far. While you pretend to.

Do you really think all the posters in this thread complaining about taste are suffering from some placebo/nocebo effect? Dancing their names under the full moon, or what?

Man, you are so killing my nerves!

[AniseAbyss]

If you could afford it. Which is precisely where we find ourselves today isn't it? You can buy whatever artisanal produce you want. You can have your yak milk from Bhutan if you have the money. The plebeians will just have to do with the supermarket.

[ipaddr]

By not needing to give antibiotics and by allowing animals to move and by providing better food the product was healthier, tastier but costed more.

You know those human growth hormone jumbo chicken beasts that have the woody texture and taste like water? They are cheaper for a reason...

[xyzzyz]

> You know those human growth hormone jumbo chicken beasts that have the woody texture and taste like water?

Which country do you live at? They don’t give growth hormone to chicken in US, which are enormous nevertheless, so I am now somewhat morbidly interested in seeing US enormous chicken breeds that are additionally given growth hormones.

[raincom]

Yes, appearance-wise, food is cheap. Taste-wise, it is bad. Taste any industrially farmed vegetable, you can see the difference.

[Grakel]

I don't even buy tomatoes any more, they all taste like wet paper.

[evv555]

Apparently not. Meat prices are going up because of collusion by corporate meat packers not because the price of meat is going up.