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Cake day: May 7th, 2024

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  • Not surprised there are vastly more small farms than large farms, but what does it look like in terms of acres?

    Acres don’t actually matter, especially for people who (a) have little idea what an acre is; (b) have little idea what an acre can produce. It’s not uncommon for a small farm that sells direct to consumers to net > $25k per acre while a commodity farmer might be lucky to hit $1k. And that’s the problem with the USDA numbers around “production value” in that report - I need to find a source for this but when last I dug into it, it turned out they treat everything as commodities at wholesale value and don’t use the actual retail sale value because they don’t have that data. IOW if I sell potatoes for $2/lb cash they will tend to see it as maybe $0.75 / lb. Meaning production value for direct-to-consumer is vastly under-reported.

    All this said, 45% of all agricultural land in the US is “small family farms”.






  • I’ve edited my original post to explain why I say this. It boils down to this: it doesn’t make financial sense to raise chickens for sale to random people. If there is one thing you can count on, it’s that farms simply can’t afford to do things that don’t make money.

    But go ahead and try it. Call the 5 farms nearest you to ask if you can buy chickens or full grown hens (roosters don’t count!) and report back. If you are lucky there is some hobby farm that doesn’t care about making money… but that’s gonna be the exception.


  • You could try a local farmer

    LOL. Doesn’t especially work that way city boy.

    Edit: Apparently I need to explain. I’m a farmer. Not one farm - not one single farm - I know will sell you either chicks or full grown chickens as some part of their regular operations. Mainly because it’s a pain in the ass and not profitable unless you are highly specialized and only producing chicks, in which case you are probably contracting with someone like TSC, using the cheapest feed imaginable and likely not making much money.

    Now I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions to this. There are probably hobby-ish farms around that will sell you a few chicks for random reasons. And you might get lucky and some farm has an excess for some reason, but generally any farm that’s producing eggs or meat birds needs to keep those chicks. I mean, I’m not kidding, it’s a real struggle to make any money at all even with eggs at $7-8 a dozen.

    But you are not, typically, just going to go down to your “local farm” (remember those?) and buy chicks. Go ahead, if you don’t believe me call around.









  • enbyecho@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.mlTruly independent web browser
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    4 days ago

    You don’t disagree with Kling enough to object. This is clearly demonstrated here.

    Edit: Let me a little more clear. Kling is the one bringing politics into it. The change was simple (one word!) and technically correct. It would be like if I said “I want our new logo to be red” and you said “don’t bring politics into it” when really I just like tomatoes and sunsets.


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    4 days ago

    people can have different views. you might not like them but it’s their views, not yours

    Yes, they can. And I can also view their views with disdain… or even horror and choose not to support their efforts, whatever they may be.

    What you are really saying here is that you to some degree don’t disagree with Kling and so it’s this particular view you find acceptable to let pass. If it were something like “people should be fine eating small children” you might react differently.