Provocative comments anger some as much as they open others to new ideas. At risk of provoking what he describes as the ‘farm-to-table cohort’, farmer, Chris Newman, links small scale farming with the neoliberal economic philosophy of free markets and open competition, the same philosophy so beloved of the big food corporations. Are small farmers risking their relevance in doing this?
Russ Grayson · Follow
Published in · 8 min read · Feb 9, 2020
Are small scale farmers contributing to their own financial and working life problems?
That is what US small scale farmer, Chris Newman, says. In an article in the US-based Medium magazine, Chris says the way out of their dilemma is through forming co-ops such as that which he started.
The article is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in small scale farming, farmers’ markets and regenerative agriculture even though it focuses on the American experience.
Small scale farming and selling through farmers’ markets is not the solution to regenerative agriculture, Chris writes.
“The cultural power of farmers markets is a symptom of what’s fundamentally wrong with sustainable/regenerative agriculture: veneration of the small family farm… the notion of the private farm… it’s taken particular hold among the farm-to-table cohort”.
Independent farmers growing what they want and competing in the food marketplace sidelines cooperation for a rugged rural individualism. This neatly positions small scale farming within the neoliberal economic philosophy of free markets and open competition, the same political economy within which large scale conventional agriculture operates.
As much as I like farmers markets, the amount of resources that small farmers pour into them is terribly misdirected if we’re serious about mounting a real challenge to the conventional food system.
Rather than challenging and offering an economic alternative to neoliberalism, small scale farming, whether for the farmers’ market system or for regular commodity agriculture, is a part of it.
The individualism of small scale farming isolates and weakens it in the face of stronger competition. Farmers have not only to face the challenges of weather, a warming climate, soils, fire and for some the uncertainties that come with a changing market that fluctuates according to fickle dietary trends. They have to compete with each other as well as conventional farmers.
“80+ hour work weeks, getting by without health insurance, paying employees next to nothing and/or relying on volunteers, supplementing with outside jobs. Enduring broken marriages, worn out bodies, social isolation, strained finances, emotional burnout”. These are some of the personal costs small farmers endure, according to Chris.
Clearly, reliance on volunteer workers is no basis for the economic sustainability of small farms. As farmers have said, volunteers often lack farm skills, require constant supervision and can pack up and go when they feel like it. Unless volunteers are skilled, the cost:benefit ratio can be low.
Chris’ comment about reliance on volunteers reminds me of questions asked about whether small scale organic farming is a sector that is too reliant on the free labour of volunteers through schemes such as WWOOF, Willing Workers on Organic Farms. The questioners asked that whether, without volunteers, the sector was unviable. I no longer recall who made the comments, however they are a valid question: can small scale regenerative farming survive without free or low-paid labour?
Complicating the question are allegations of exploitation of interns and volunteers, and of substandard accommodation.
Farmers markets are uneconomic because they are too infrequent to sustain farm operating costs.
Chris writes: “… the amount of resources that small farmers pour into them is terribly misdirected if we’re serious about mounting a real challenge to the conventional food system”. In his article he puts figures behind this claim.
The downturn in farmers’ markets sales is partly “the result of an explosion in local food hubs, which are themselves riddled with competitive issues of their own, in addition to (generally) being non-farmer owned”.
If this applies in Australia this will be disappointing to those in the fair food movement. When four of us set up the Australian Food Soversignty Alliance in 2010, farmers’ markets were one of the solutions we put forward. So were food hubs, the intermediaries between local farmer and urban eater such as Brisbane’s Food Connect.
Are stores a better solution to farm viability than farmers’ markets? In contrast to farmers’ markets, grocery and fruit and veg stores are open through the week. They offer a convenience farmers’ markets cannot with their weekly or fortnightly operation spanning only part of a single day of the week.
Stores makes food available to those unable to attend the limited opening times of farmers’ markets, especially if the stores remain open after daytime business hours. That was something I learned when director of Manly Food Co-op on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. The weekly farmers’ market did well, however its potential as a source of household food needs was limited by its once-a-week operation. Because the co-op was open every day, members and the public could shop at their convenience. That matters to busy working people. The convenience of stores always being there also makes them a potentially viable alternative to buying food in supermarkets.
“Farmers markets and other local outlets punch well above their weight in terms of social/cultural value, but this is fooling us into believing we’re making more of an impact than we actually are, and that a rapidly consolidating food system backed by venture capital, entrenched interests, and the world’s wealthiest corporations will somehow be displaced by the romance of neoliberal peasant farming”, writes Chris.
What Chris is getting at, I think, is the romantic notion woven by the local food movement—Chris’ ‘farm-to-plate’ cohort—and food advocacy groups around farmers’ markets, organic food home delivery services and food hubs . Creating this notion has been one of the public relations success stories of the movement. It is not a notion without substance, for few would dispute the value of short supply lines when it came to food security, or the quality of the food, both part of that ‘social/cultural value’ Chris mentions.
As a distribution venue coordinator for the now-defunct Sydney Food Connect, I saw first-hand how how coming by to collect their weekly box of locally-grown food was a feel-good experience for people. That was not without substance because their purchase supported small scale growers in the region and lent them a sense of being able to influence bigger picture trends. However, people still had to buy some of their needs elsewhere, and that elsewhere was often the supermarket. Why not, then, buy all of your food and other needs at the supermarket? That would save time. This is an example of the difficulty faced by alternative food systems in mounting ‘a real challenge to the conventional food system’ that Chris talks about.
Chris’ ‘neoliberal peasant farming’ might sound a little disparaging, however he is not the first to use such terms. I no longer recall its source, however the term has been used as a criticism of home food production within the permaculture movement. What Chris is getting at is that small scale farming such as the market gardening which over recent years has attracted a number of young people, lacks the scale, investment and market reach of conventional argriculture and cannot successfully compete with it because of this.
…the inefficiency of our self-investment (e.g. farmers markets), which is driven by farmers internalizing the mythic virtue of rugged independence, which keeps us isolated and denies us the efficiency, effectiveness, and power of acting collectively…
When producers combine their land, expertise, supply chains, and financial resources into a co-op committed to producing food regeneratively, responsibly and ethically, the results would be astonishing, Chris writes:
“Our competition is relying on the inefficiency of our self-investment (e.g. farmers markets), which is driven by farmers internalizing the mythic virtue of rugged independence, which keeps us isolated and denies us the efficiency, effectiveness, and power of acting collectively to countermand the efficiency, effectiveness, and power of private capital.”
Farmers would not set prices in the co-op model. Their autonomy would be less and they would have to adhere to the coop standards. Rather than rely on the uncertainty of markets for their income they would have the certainty of a wage.
Small farmers who see themselves as independent operators, Chris’ ‘neoliberal peasant farmers’, might rankle at his notion of their working for a wage. So might fair food movement advocates rankle at his suggestion that farmers not set prices. Farmers as price setters has been a core demand of the movement despite it missing how markets work. Prices are a negotiation between seller, buyer and whatever intermediary there is. Set your price too low and you endanger your economic viability. Set it too high and your customers go to some cheaper source. There are always sellers who set low prices to attract volume sales to spin a profit. Supermarkets, for instance.
Farmer co-ops are nothing new in Australia. They demonstrate the effectiveness of collectivism rather than each farmer negotiating price directly with buyers. Establishing small scale farmers co-ops might shatter the illusion of the rugged individualist farmer on the family farm, despite what ‘social/cultural value’ that carries. But, if that promises a steadier income and the other co-operative benefits that come with working together, is the loss of what might be little more than an illusion not worth the price?
