"HIPPY FARMS - they always fail."
These were the words of Chuck Barry, a small-scale organic farmer I met in Montrose, Colorado, about 10 years ago. Chuck made a comfortable living growing high-quality vegetables on two acres in a dry and seasonally cold environment that may be compared with Central Otago high country.
His comment was based on observations of some people going into farming with good intentions but little understanding of the amount of work involved and inadequate business sense. There is a popular, quaint, romantic notion among many people about growing food organically. But at the end of the day, when faced with actually doing it, most hippies opt out because it turns out to be just too hard.
On the other end of the spectrum, as we have been hearing recently in the news, many conventional farms also fail. Conventional farming wisdom over the last decade goes something like this: 1) borrow lots of money from the bank; 2) convert to dairy; 3) borrow more money; 4) rely on ever-increasing dairy pay outs; 5) borrow more money; 6) rely on ever-increasing land prices; 7) get rich; 8) what could go wrong?
On one hand I feel sorry for those farmers who have to sell because of their now unpayable debts. But on the other hand, I question why they bought into the paradigm described above in the first place, which appears to me to be very risky.
