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Home > What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can't Make a Living
________________________________________
What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can't Make a Living
By Jaclyn Moyer [1] / Salon [2]
January 1, 2016
On the radio this morning I heard a story about the growing number of young
people choosing to become farmers. The farmers in the story sounded a lot
like me - in their late 20s to mid-30s, committed to organic practices,
holding college degrees, and from middle-class non-farming backgrounds. Some
raise animals or tend orchards. Others, like me, grow vegetables. The
farmers' days sounded long but fulfilling, drenched in sun and dirt. The
story was uplifting, a nice antidote to the constant reports of industrial
ag gone wrong, of pink slime and herbicide-resistant super-weeds.
What the reporter didn't ask the young farmers was: Do you make a living?
Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage? If
the reporter had asked me these questions, I would have said no.
* * *
My farm is located in the foothills of Northern California, 40 miles east of
Sacramento on 10 acres my partner, Ryan, and I lease from a land trust. In
the heat of summer, my fields cover the bronzed landscape like a green quilt
spread over sand. Ten acres of certified organic vegetables trace the
contours of a small valley floor. Tomatoes glow crimson. Flowers bloom:
zinnias, lavender, daisies. Watermelons grow fat, littering the ground like
beach balls.
A businessman once advised me never to admit my business was struggling. No
one wants to climb aboard a sinking ship, know what I mean? he'd said. At
the time, I agreed. I believed if a business was failing it was because the
entrepreneur was not skilled enough, not savvy enough, not hardworking
enough. If my farm didn't turn enough profit, it was my own fault.
Whenever a customer asked how things were going, I replied, Great. I thought
about the sinking ship, and never said, Well, we're making ends meet, but we
work 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and pay ourselves only what we need to
cover food and household expenses: $100 per week. I didn't tell anyone how,
over the course of the last three years since Ryan and I had started our
farm, I'd drained most of my savings. I didn't admit that the only thing
keeping the farm afloat was income Ryan and I earned through other means -
Ryan working as a carpenter and I as a baker. I didn't say that despite the
improvements we made to the land- the hundreds of yards of compost we
spread, the thousand dollars we spent annually on cover crop seed to
increase soil fertility, every weed pulled - we gained no equity because we
didn't own the land. I didn't say I felt like I was trying to fill a bathtub
when the drain was open.
* * *
One afternoon, a fellow farmer came over for a visit. He asked how we were
doing, and this time I told the truth. The farmer told me he'd been farming
for nearly a decade and last year he made the most profit yet: $4,000. I
spewed out a slurry of concerns, told the farmer how I'd done the numbers
every way and the future wasn't looking much more profitable. The farmer
just nodded, as if I was telling him what I'd eaten for breakfast that
morning and not revealing the shameful secret of my failing business. The
more we talked the more I began to wonder about other farmers I knew.
I wondered how many small farmers actually made a living. Before I set out
trying to answer this question, I had to define what constitutes "a living."
I decided making a living meant three things: 1) The farmer had to pay
herself a weekly wage that equaled what a person working full-time would
make on minimum wage, which in my town would be $360 per week. 2) The farmer
had to abide by labor laws, meaning no unpaid workers or interns doing
essential farm tasks. 3) The farmer had to earn her income from farming,
which meant nonprofit farms that survived on grants and donations didn't
count; neither did farms that sustained themselves on outside income
sources.
I talked to all the farmers I knew, considered farms I or my partner had
worked at in the past, farms I'd visited, friends' farms. Most farmers I
talked to worked outside jobs to keep their farms above water, others
skirted by on an income they calculated to be $4 per hours, and most
depended on interns, volunteers or WWOOFers for labor. I did not encounter a
single farmer who met my requirements.
Then I looked into national statistics. According to USDA data from 2012,
intermediate-size farms like mine, which gross more than $10,000 but less
than $250,000, obtain only 10 percent of their household income from the
farm, and 90 percent from an off-farm source. Smaller farms actually lost
money farming and earned 109 percent of their household income from off-farm
sources. Only the largest farms, which represent just 10 percent of farming
households in the country and most of which received large government
subsidies, earned the majority of their income from farm sources. So, 90
percent of farmers in this country rely on an outside job, or a spouse's
outside job, or some independent form of wealth, for their primary income.
* * *
One day late into my second season owning the farm, a customer walked in
while I stood behind the counter spraying down bins of muddy carrots. The
man asked how things were going. Financially, I mean. He held a head of
lettuce in the crook of his arm, a bundle of pink radishes dangled from his
hand.
I looked at the man and instead of replying with my usual "great," I said,
We're getting by. He nodded, Well, you may not be making lots of money, but
you're rich in other ways. I opened my mouth to reply, but the man had
already turned away and was gazing dreamy-eyed out at my fields, each row
buttered in late-afternoon sun. I turned back to the heap of carrots, not
sure what I would have said anyway.
I wanted to ask the man which "other ways" did he mean, exactly. But I knew
what he meant. I heard this kind of thing all the time: You must love what
you do, or not much profit in farming, but what a great lifestyle, or, well,
you're not in it for the money, right?Customers repeated these aphorisms
warmly in an attempt to offer me some consolation or encouragement. But
watching this man gaze out at my fields, I couldn't help wondering if it was
the customer who was the one being consoled.
Surely many farmers enjoy what they do, as I often find pleasure in my daily
tasks, but ultimately farming is work, an occupation, a means of making a
living that must fulfill the basic function of a job: to provide an income.
Does the notion that farming is lovable work excuse the fact that the entire
industry relies on underpaid labor? Does it somehow make it OK that in 2014
it's forecast to be $-1,682? I had to wonder if this notion works only to
assuage a collective discomfort provoked by an unsettling fact, a fact that
should enrage us, that should disgrace us as a society: the fact that the
much celebrated American small farmer can't even make a living.
* * *
A few weeks later I gave a presentation at a local high school. The teacher
had asked me to talk to her food systems class about being an organic
farmer. After I finished my talk the teacher turned to her class. So, she
asked, how many of you think you might consider a career in agriculture
after high school?
Not a single student raised a hand.
The teacher surveyed the air above her students' heads for a few moments as
if scanning the ocean for whales, as if any minute a hand might spring up.
None did. Then she looked to me and offered a sympathetic half-smile,
half-grimace, as if the tally had come in and I'd just lost an election.
I shrugged. She didn't have to apologize to me, I hadn't expected the
students to want to become farmers. I guess I didn't make it look too
appealing, I said. And I didn't - I didn't romanticize the early mornings
out in the field or extol the health benefits of physical labor. I'd told
the truth: I grew 10 acres of organic vegetables, worked upward of 60 hours
a week during the height of the season, and my total income last year was
$2,451. Most of the kids probably earned more that this with a summer job. I
told them how most jobs in organic agriculture were either "internships"
where workers received food or housing instead of a salary, or were as
underpaid and exploitive as jobs on conventional farms where workers were
hired seasonally, earned minimum wage or less, and received no benefits.
Driving home from the high school I wondered if perhaps I should've placed a
more positive light on farming. As the average age of the American farmer
neared 65, I knew young farmers were badly needed in this country. Would it
have hurt if I'd mentioned the evening the great white egret landed just a
yard away from me in the field? How the bird's body stood taller than mine
as I crouched between rows of collard greens, how its neck moved like a
snake, slithering upward so it could peer down at me. And when the egret
unfolded two white wings and lifted into the sky, a breath of wind pushed
against my cheek.
Or I could've described the joy of pausing in the field during a summer
morning harvest to slice open a watermelon, how the fruit's pink flesh
remains slightly cool inside its thick rind despite the heat of the day, how
I hollow out the melon with a spoon from my pocket and eat an entire half.
Of course the lifestyle of a farmer had its perks, but it didn't seem this
was the point. Surely there were plenty of professions that offered moments
of joy and satisfaction, surely the doctor, the wildlife biologist, the
chef, or mechanic, at times enjoys her work. But no one expected these
people to take this satisfaction as pay.
When a student asked if my farm was sustainable, I told her that I was
certified organic, I managed my soil fertility through crop rotations and
compost applications, I didn't use synthetic pesticides, I conserved water.
But no, I'd said, I didn't think my farm was sustainable. Like all the other
farms I knew, my farm relied on uncompensated labor and self-exploitation.
My farm was not sustainable because I knew the years my partner and I could
continue to work without a viable income were numbered.
* * *
One evening while running errands in town I recognized a customer walking
toward me on the sidewalk. Hey, the woman said, I drove past your farm
today, it looks beautiful, all those flowers blooming.
Thanks, I said.
I love having an organic farm in our community, the woman continued, I just
think this whole food movement it so great. I imagined this woman walking
into my farm stand, fumbling a tomato in her palm, admiring the
new-car-shine of each purple eggplant. Maybe she chooses two crookneck
squash and a handful of thumb-size jalapenos. Before getting back in her car
she looks out at the fields, at the tidy rows of salad mix and baby kale;
then the woman drives away smiling, watching my fields rise and fall in her
rearview mirror.
My farm's become a billboard, and like all billboards, this one is
deceptive. It depicts abundance and prosperity- two young smiling farmers
working among neat rows of greens under a crisp morning sun. Heaping bins of
produce, all of it picked fresh and free of synthetic chemicals. Despite all
the talk of small farms disappearing, despite concerns of big ag controlling
our food, GMOing everything and dousing it all in RoundUp, driving past my
farm one might feel a flutter of relief, think there's a small farm right
there where I can go and pick up a bag of organic baby kale, spot a bluebird
resting on a fig branch, notice a patch of weeds growing among the lettuce.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars in federal subsidies are doled out to
mono-crop farms growing high-input GMO corn and soybeans. Meanwhile, the EPA
continues to approve the use of pesticides such as Atrazine, which have been
linked to birth defects, infertility and cancer. Meanwhile, the Supreme
Court rules in favor of Monsanto, allowing the corporation to sue farmers
whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with GMO seeds. Meanwhile, Ryan
and I rifle the Internet in search of a new opportunity, one that can
provide us with enough income to purchase health insurance or see the
dentist, to take our soon-to-be-born child on a trip to visit its
grandparents, to save a little chunk of money each year so that one day we
might be able to buy a piece of land ourselves, and perhaps then we could
return to farming. Because the truth is, no matter how many young people
choose to farm, no matter how many bunches of kale are made into smoothies,
or canvas shopping bags are packed full of colorful carrots and lacy heads
of lettuce, no matter how many hip new restaurants declare themselves
farm-to-fork, none of these things address the policies that dictate how our
country's food system works, policies that have created a society in which
the small farmer can't even earn a living.
I smiled at the woman on the street. Thanks, I said, and we both continued
in our opposite directions.
Then the woman glanced back over her shoulder, I hope the farm stays here
forever,she added. I hope you never go off and get a real job.
I let out a too-quick, too-loud laugh. Don't worry, I said, not turning
around to face the woman, hoping she wouldn't detect the uncertainty in my
voice, I won't.
* * *
A quarter mile up the road from my farm the land rises just enough to give
me the elevation to look down upon the entirety of my operation - the
fields, the greenhouses, the barn. Sometimes when I'm driving past I pull
into a turnout here, step outside the car and lean on my hood. I look down
at my farm, at the rows of tomatoes and peppers. I notice the thistle has
grown high around the fence line, the bindweed curling up the steel tines of
an idle tractor implement. I wonder how long it would take for the landscape
to erase my farm if I simply walked away, if I quit farming tomorrow. If no
one dragged a scuffle hoe through the rows of onions or mowed the thistle,
if no one harvested the wheat or the melons or the squash, no one seeded
cover crop in fall. The thistle would flower, each bloom dropping a dozen
yellow seeds into the soil like needles into a pincushion. Ground squirrels
would wait for the melons to ripen, for the pumpkins to flush orange, then
carry them away in pieces. The neat edges of each half-acre block would
fray, weeds creeping in until the 10 acres appeared once again undivided,
just a fallow field.
Or maybe another young farmer would take over my lease, buy the greenhouses
and tractor equipment, irrigation lines and stacks of harvest bins. Maybe
this farmer would do it better, last longer. Or maybe she too would quit
after only a handful of years.
Jaclyn Moyer is a writer and vegetable farmer based in the foothills of
Northern California.
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Source URL:
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make-living
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jaclyn-moyer
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on What Nobody Told Me
About Small Farming: I Can't Make a Living
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Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can't Make a Living
What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can't Make a Living
By Jaclyn Moyer [1] / Salon [2]
January 1, 2016
On the radio this morning I heard a story about the growing number of young
people choosing to become farmers. The farmers in the story sounded a lot
like me - in their late 20s to mid-30s, committed to organic practices,
holding college degrees, and from middle-class non-farming backgrounds. Some
raise animals or tend orchards. Others, like me, grow vegetables. The
farmers' days sounded long but fulfilling, drenched in sun and dirt. The
story was uplifting, a nice antidote to the constant reports of industrial
ag gone wrong, of pink slime and herbicide-resistant super-weeds.
What the reporter didn't ask the young farmers was: Do you make a living?
Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage? If
the reporter had asked me these questions, I would have said no.
* * *
My farm is located in the foothills of Northern California, 40 miles east of
Sacramento on 10 acres my partner, Ryan, and I lease from a land trust. In
the heat of summer, my fields cover the bronzed landscape like a green quilt
spread over sand. Ten acres of certified organic vegetables trace the
contours of a small valley floor. Tomatoes glow crimson. Flowers bloom:
zinnias, lavender, daisies. Watermelons grow fat, littering the ground like
beach balls.
A businessman once advised me never to admit my business was struggling. No
one wants to climb aboard a sinking ship, know what I mean? he'd said. At
the time, I agreed. I believed if a business was failing it was because the
entrepreneur was not skilled enough, not savvy enough, not hardworking
enough. If my farm didn't turn enough profit, it was my own fault.
Whenever a customer asked how things were going, I replied, Great. I thought
about the sinking ship, and never said, Well, we're making ends meet, but we
work 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and pay ourselves only what we need to
cover food and household expenses: $100 per week. I didn't tell anyone how,
over the course of the last three years since Ryan and I had started our
farm, I'd drained most of my savings. I didn't admit that the only thing
keeping the farm afloat was income Ryan and I earned through other means -
Ryan working as a carpenter and I as a baker. I didn't say that despite the
improvements we made to the land- the hundreds of yards of compost we
spread, the thousand dollars we spent annually on cover crop seed to
increase soil fertility, every weed pulled - we gained no equity because we
didn't own the land. I didn't say I felt like I was trying to fill a bathtub
when the drain was open.
* * *
One afternoon, a fellow farmer came over for a visit. He asked how we were
doing, and this time I told the truth. The farmer told me he'd been farming
for nearly a decade and last year he made the most profit yet: $4,000. I
spewed out a slurry of concerns, told the farmer how I'd done the numbers
every way and the future wasn't looking much more profitable. The farmer
just nodded, as if I was telling him what I'd eaten for breakfast that
morning and not revealing the shameful secret of my failing business. The
more we talked the more I began to wonder about other farmers I knew.
I wondered how many small farmers actually made a living. Before I set out
trying to answer this question, I had to define what constitutes "a living."
I decided making a living meant three things: 1) The farmer had to pay
herself a weekly wage that equaled what a person working full-time would
make on minimum wage, which in my town would be $360 per week. 2) The farmer
had to abide by labor laws, meaning no unpaid workers or interns doing
essential farm tasks. 3) The farmer had to earn her income from farming,
which meant nonprofit farms that survived on grants and donations didn't
count; neither did farms that sustained themselves on outside income
sources.
I talked to all the farmers I knew, considered farms I or my partner had
worked at in the past, farms I'd visited, friends' farms. Most farmers I
talked to worked outside jobs to keep their farms above water, others
skirted by on an income they calculated to be $4 per hours, and most
depended on interns, volunteers or WWOOFers for labor. I did not encounter a
single farmer who met my requirements.
Then I looked into national statistics. According to USDA data from 2012,
intermediate-size farms like mine, which gross more than $10,000 but less
than $250,000, obtain only 10 percent of their household income from the
farm, and 90 percent from an off-farm source. Smaller farms actually lost
money farming and earned 109 percent of their household income from off-farm
sources. Only the largest farms, which represent just 10 percent of farming
households in the country and most of which received large government
subsidies, earned the majority of their income from farm sources. So, 90
percent of farmers in this country rely on an outside job, or a spouse's
outside job, or some independent form of wealth, for their primary income.
* * *
One day late into my second season owning the farm, a customer walked in
while I stood behind the counter spraying down bins of muddy carrots. The
man asked how things were going. Financially, I mean. He held a head of
lettuce in the crook of his arm, a bundle of pink radishes dangled from his
hand.
I looked at the man and instead of replying with my usual "great," I said,
We're getting by. He nodded, Well, you may not be making lots of money, but
you're rich in other ways. I opened my mouth to reply, but the man had
already turned away and was gazing dreamy-eyed out at my fields, each row
buttered in late-afternoon sun. I turned back to the heap of carrots, not
sure what I would have said anyway.
I wanted to ask the man which "other ways" did he mean, exactly. But I knew
what he meant. I heard this kind of thing all the time: You must love what
you do, or not much profit in farming, but what a great lifestyle, or, well,
you're not in it for the money, right?Customers repeated these aphorisms
warmly in an attempt to offer me some consolation or encouragement. But
watching this man gaze out at my fields, I couldn't help wondering if it was
the customer who was the one being consoled.
Surely many farmers enjoy what they do, as I often find pleasure in my daily
tasks, but ultimately farming is work, an occupation, a means of making a
living that must fulfill the basic function of a job: to provide an income.
Does the notion that farming is lovable work excuse the fact that the entire
industry relies on underpaid labor? Does it somehow make it OK that in 2014
it's forecast to be $-1,682? I had to wonder if this notion works only to
assuage a collective discomfort provoked by an unsettling fact, a fact that
should enrage us, that should disgrace us as a society: the fact that the
much celebrated American small farmer can't even make a living.
* * *
A few weeks later I gave a presentation at a local high school. The teacher
had asked me to talk to her food systems class about being an organic
farmer. After I finished my talk the teacher turned to her class. So, she
asked, how many of you think you might consider a career in agriculture
after high school?
Not a single student raised a hand.
The teacher surveyed the air above her students' heads for a few moments as
if scanning the ocean for whales, as if any minute a hand might spring up.
None did. Then she looked to me and offered a sympathetic half-smile,
half-grimace, as if the tally had come in and I'd just lost an election.
I shrugged. She didn't have to apologize to me, I hadn't expected the
students to want to become farmers. I guess I didn't make it look too
appealing, I said. And I didn't - I didn't romanticize the early mornings
out in the field or extol the health benefits of physical labor. I'd told
the truth: I grew 10 acres of organic vegetables, worked upward of 60 hours
a week during the height of the season, and my total income last year was
$2,451. Most of the kids probably earned more that this with a summer job. I
told them how most jobs in organic agriculture were either "internships"
where workers received food or housing instead of a salary, or were as
underpaid and exploitive as jobs on conventional farms where workers were
hired seasonally, earned minimum wage or less, and received no benefits.
Driving home from the high school I wondered if perhaps I should've placed a
more positive light on farming. As the average age of the American farmer
neared 65, I knew young farmers were badly needed in this country. Would it
have hurt if I'd mentioned the evening the great white egret landed just a
yard away from me in the field? How the bird's body stood taller than mine
as I crouched between rows of collard greens, how its neck moved like a
snake, slithering upward so it could peer down at me. And when the egret
unfolded two white wings and lifted into the sky, a breath of wind pushed
against my cheek.
Or I could've described the joy of pausing in the field during a summer
morning harvest to slice open a watermelon, how the fruit's pink flesh
remains slightly cool inside its thick rind despite the heat of the day, how
I hollow out the melon with a spoon from my pocket and eat an entire half.
Of course the lifestyle of a farmer had its perks, but it didn't seem this
was the point. Surely there were plenty of professions that offered moments
of joy and satisfaction, surely the doctor, the wildlife biologist, the
chef, or mechanic, at times enjoys her work. But no one expected these
people to take this satisfaction as pay.
When a student asked if my farm was sustainable, I told her that I was
certified organic, I managed my soil fertility through crop rotations and
compost applications, I didn't use synthetic pesticides, I conserved water.
But no, I'd said, I didn't think my farm was sustainable. Like all the other
farms I knew, my farm relied on uncompensated labor and self-exploitation.
My farm was not sustainable because I knew the years my partner and I could
continue to work without a viable income were numbered.
* * *
One evening while running errands in town I recognized a customer walking
toward me on the sidewalk. Hey, the woman said, I drove past your farm
today, it looks beautiful, all those flowers blooming.
Thanks, I said.
I love having an organic farm in our community, the woman continued, I just
think this whole food movement it so great. I imagined this woman walking
into my farm stand, fumbling a tomato in her palm, admiring the
new-car-shine of each purple eggplant. Maybe she chooses two crookneck
squash and a handful of thumb-size jalapenos. Before getting back in her car
she looks out at the fields, at the tidy rows of salad mix and baby kale;
then the woman drives away smiling, watching my fields rise and fall in her
rearview mirror.
My farm's become a billboard, and like all billboards, this one is
deceptive. It depicts abundance and prosperity- two young smiling farmers
working among neat rows of greens under a crisp morning sun. Heaping bins of
produce, all of it picked fresh and free of synthetic chemicals. Despite all
the talk of small farms disappearing, despite concerns of big ag controlling
our food, GMOing everything and dousing it all in RoundUp, driving past my
farm one might feel a flutter of relief, think there's a small farm right
there where I can go and pick up a bag of organic baby kale, spot a bluebird
resting on a fig branch, notice a patch of weeds growing among the lettuce.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars in federal subsidies are doled out to
mono-crop farms growing high-input GMO corn and soybeans. Meanwhile, the EPA
continues to approve the use of pesticides such as Atrazine, which have been
linked to birth defects, infertility and cancer. Meanwhile, the Supreme
Court rules in favor of Monsanto, allowing the corporation to sue farmers
whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with GMO seeds. Meanwhile, Ryan
and I rifle the Internet in search of a new opportunity, one that can
provide us with enough income to purchase health insurance or see the
dentist, to take our soon-to-be-born child on a trip to visit its
grandparents, to save a little chunk of money each year so that one day we
might be able to buy a piece of land ourselves, and perhaps then we could
return to farming. Because the truth is, no matter how many young people
choose to farm, no matter how many bunches of kale are made into smoothies,
or canvas shopping bags are packed full of colorful carrots and lacy heads
of lettuce, no matter how many hip new restaurants declare themselves
farm-to-fork, none of these things address the policies that dictate how our
country's food system works, policies that have created a society in which
the small farmer can't even earn a living.
I smiled at the woman on the street. Thanks, I said, and we both continued
in our opposite directions.
Then the woman glanced back over her shoulder, I hope the farm stays here
forever,she added. I hope you never go off and get a real job.
I let out a too-quick, too-loud laugh. Don't worry, I said, not turning
around to face the woman, hoping she wouldn't detect the uncertainty in my
voice, I won't.
* * *
A quarter mile up the road from my farm the land rises just enough to give
me the elevation to look down upon the entirety of my operation - the
fields, the greenhouses, the barn. Sometimes when I'm driving past I pull
into a turnout here, step outside the car and lean on my hood. I look down
at my farm, at the rows of tomatoes and peppers. I notice the thistle has
grown high around the fence line, the bindweed curling up the steel tines of
an idle tractor implement. I wonder how long it would take for the landscape
to erase my farm if I simply walked away, if I quit farming tomorrow. If no
one dragged a scuffle hoe through the rows of onions or mowed the thistle,
if no one harvested the wheat or the melons or the squash, no one seeded
cover crop in fall. The thistle would flower, each bloom dropping a dozen
yellow seeds into the soil like needles into a pincushion. Ground squirrels
would wait for the melons to ripen, for the pumpkins to flush orange, then
carry them away in pieces. The neat edges of each half-acre block would
fray, weeds creeping in until the 10 acres appeared once again undivided,
just a fallow field.
Or maybe another young farmer would take over my lease, buy the greenhouses
and tractor equipment, irrigation lines and stacks of harvest bins. Maybe
this farmer would do it better, last longer. Or maybe she too would quit
after only a handful of years.
Jaclyn Moyer is a writer and vegetable farmer based in the foothills of
Northern California.
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [3]
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/food/what-nobody-told-me-about-small-farming-i-cant-
make-living
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jaclyn-moyer
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on What Nobody Told Me
About Small Farming: I Can't Make a Living
[4] http://www.alternet.org/
[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
