Why buying locally produced food matters

[KurtNYC]

Still, a long, cold winter, a farm village fallen on hard times, is the backdrop, not the explanation, for what happened to Dean Pierson on Jan. 21. Sometime after finishing the morning milking, Mr. Pierson, 59, a dairy farmer who grew up on High Low Farm on Weed Mine Road in Columbia County, which his father bought when he was an infant, did something no one will ever entirely explain. He took a small-caliber rifle and went through the barn he built about a decade ago methodically shooting all 51 of his milking cows in the head.

He left a note on the front door that warned the reader not to go inside but to call the police. Then he sat down in a chair and killed himself with a single rifle shot to the chest. He left behind a short suicide note scrawled on scratch paper that made reference to his depression over personal and financial issues. He expressed his love for his family but said he was “overwhelmed.”

Farmers live and die mostly in private, doing grueling, sometimes hazardous work, for long hours. But if there’s a face and a place for the quiet catastrophe facing many farmers, particularly dairy farmers still reeling from last year’s disastrous drop in prices, it’s hard to imagine one bleaker than the John Deere tractor pulling Mr. Pierson’s coffin atop a flat-bed truck, the death of one farmer but perhaps a requiem for a way of life as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04towns.html

Other dairy farmers in the area fought back and created a cooperative to sell hormone free, locally produced milk at a slightly higher price than factory milk from the West coast...

Dr. Simon, a member of the Agri-Mark milk cooperative, said the milk from his cows was going into the production of Cabot cheese, recognized for its quality with many awards. But the $250 bonus check the doctor received from Agri-Mark for the milk just didn't cut it.

Seeing that other small dairy farmers in the area were about “to give up or lose” their farms, he told them “help from the government is not on the way” and proposed that they join forces, produce and pack their own high-quality milk, free of artificial hormones, and sell it for a premium price.
...
Since it was the doctor's aim to produce and market milk from “clean operations” free of artificial hormones and with low somatic cell counts of under 200,000 cells/milliliter, he did not want his milk mixed in a tank with others. Somatic cells in cows are similar to white cells in humans, which are indicative of infection or stress, said the doctor.
...
The current commodity price is about $16/cwt for milk that costs the farmer about $19/cwt to produce. Hudson Valley Fresh is paying its farmers $21/cwt, Dr. Simon said.

http://www.columbiapaper.com/index.php/the-news/879-by-diane-valden

We're all in this mess together.

[aikoaiko]

1. A small farm farmer has to be part small business wizard and commodities guru to survive these days

My wife's family still has the family farm and I am in awe of their entrepreneurial acumen.

[Earth_First]

2. My wife are getting married next year on a local farm...

They are fruit farmers, dairy farmers and run a small cottage industry based around wedding planning/events.

I know exactly what you mean!

[KurtNYC]

3. I was looking through the wholesale prices for foods yesterday and most of what we

pay for at a grocery is going to 1) transportation of the food and 2) retail mark-up. But from the farmer side, you would have to be very efficient and resilient to produce food and make a living doing it.

Example: Carrots are under 33-cents a pound -- that is planted, tended, picked, bagged and trucked to Hunt's Point for under 33-cents so the farmer is getting less than 10-cents per pound (??)

---CARROTS: MARKET STEADY. sacks 48 1-lb film bags CA Topped med 16.00-17.00
50 lb sacks loose CA Topped jbo 16.00-18.00 mostly 18.00 one label 20.00 CD
Quebec Topped jbo 11.00-12.00 GA Topped jbo 10.00-12.00 mostly 11.00 cartons
bunched CA Bunched 24s 20.00-22.00 cartons 30 1-lb film bags CA Baby Peeled
22.00-24.00 mostly 22.00

Wholesale price of vegetables:
http://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/nx_fv020.txt

[FarCenter]

5. In the center aisle of the grocery store, the packaging cost more than the farmer got for ingredient

So besides buying locally, buy food that is least processed, marketed, and packaged.

[FarCenter]

4. Too bad -- 51 cows is uneconomic -- you need more like 500 as a minimum

Dairying is highly regulated in a way that has increased the fixed, getting started costs for equipment and facilities to the point where small operators cannot compete.