Sense of Community
Economics of Scale
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How modern farms are making economics of scale work
Local farmers talk about the economic forces that have shaped American agriculture, and how modern farms are making it work.
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Sense of Community is a local public television program presented by OPT
Sense of Community
Economics of Scale
Clip | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Local farmers talk about the economic forces that have shaped American agriculture, and how modern farms are making it work.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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[audio logo] [music playing] There's definitely a perception that farming is sort of a-- a poor way to make a living, and it's a tough thing.
And-- and I think there's some truth in that, and certainly historically it's been the case.
But in the-- in the world that we dwell in right now, which is specialty crops-- so vegetables and cut flowers-- with access to markets where we're selling directly to the people who are eating our vegetables, it's a really good living.
You know, historically, we were a countryside of small farms, 10 acres, 20 acres, maybe 40 acres.
And each family had their farm, and they were growing food-- you know, well, pork, corn, whatever else on that farm, a lot of strawberries, a lot of tomatoes historically-- and that's mostly gone.
We went from that to where we are now 70 years later, where most of our food has traveled over 1,200 miles to get onto our plate.
The way we got there was largely based on government policy.
It was a choice that the Department of Agriculture made in the 1950s to say we're going to get big or get out, so it's time to scale up these farms.
Most of our problems when it comes to finances is that-- it's from overproduction.
So we produce a lot of food.
Supply and demand dictates the more the product is out there, the lower the price.
We produce a freely traded commodity, and markets set the price of that.
If you want a vibrant farming economy, we might have to step up and pay a little bit more, you know, for our-- for our food.
Otherwise, you're going to get the lowest cost producer out there, and most of the time that's bigger, bigger, bigger.
I serve a couple thousand people, you know, and that's really all we can do.
And I think rather than me try and get big enough to feed another 2,000 people or 10,000 people or whatever that would look like, it would be a much more elegant and appropriate and resilient solution to say let's have another farm a mile that way or half a mile that way because now we're starting to create resiliency that actually resides in neighborhoods and communities.
One of the things that I've said for years and I still say is we need 100 farms like Millsap farms scattered around the perimeter of Springfield, Missouri.
So eventually we're sitting surrounded by the foods that feed us, and actually within a couple miles of us, that would be a pretty beautiful image I think.
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