Sarah TaberDec 18, 2022

RT @[email protected]

@[email protected] @[email protected] We need to protect farmland from development, this may not be the best way. Lots of farmers are using the profit from selling their land as their retirement. The retention of farmland as farmland can take many different forms. None of them should penalize the retiring farmers.

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/BetsyGarrold/status/1604241411934748673

Betsy Garrold on Twitter

“@SarahTaber_bww @axman643 We need to protect farmland from development, this may not be the best way. Lots of farmers are using the profit from selling their land as their retirement. The retention of farmland as farmland can take many different forms. None of them should penalize the retiring farmers.”

Twitter
Show threadSarah TaberDec 18, 2022

It surprises most people to find US farmers actually make more take-home income than most Americans! Because most of them have above-average-wage day jobs!

If we're all supposed to retire without selling off acreage, so can they!

Show threadV E R S A Y C EDec 18, 2022
@sarahtaber There's not a single farmer where I grew up that either isn't the head of some giant agribusiness, or their "family farm" became a commercial farm decades ago. None of them struggle.
Show threadSarah TaberDec 18, 2022
@CreepPhone Yep! It's never people who actually grew up around farms who are surprised by this information LOL
Show threadV E R S A Y C EDec 18, 2022

@sarahtaber The area I grew up is around the Salinas, California area. Tanimura and Antle is one of our biggest agribusinesses (a former "family farm"). They even got their name on the library of CSU Monterey Bay because they shoveled money at the university.

The Kitayama Brothers started a cut flower business in the 50's and it's a major cut flower grower near Watsonville (mostly Gerber Daisies). The Kitayama family still runs it but it's not a hardscrabble farm for them even with downsizing.

Show threadSarah TaberDec 18, 2022
@CreepPhone yeah for Japanese American farms that made it through WW2 incarceration, I'm like hell yeah get it tbh
Show threadV E R S A Y C EDec 18, 2022

@sarahtaber The Japanese farms there all seem to be focused on landscape type plants more than commercial food growing and they tend to be modest businesses.

But I think anyone going into farming *now* has money and probably has some kind of high paying job to fund it all... you just can't start off as the American stereotype of a farmer these days.

Show threadSarah TaberDec 18, 2022
@CreepPhone Yep that's the point I'm making. At this point in US history farmers are wealthy because big farms take a lot of capital. And small farms are such a cursed proposition that you *have* to be wealthy to afford one.
Show threadV E R S A Y C E
@sarahtaber This is why I have such a problem with most of those "homestead" and "small farm" YouTube channels, they make it seem like all you have to do is buy a plot of land and you'll be selling your organic vegetables in six months.
Dec 18, 2022 at 10:06pmWeb