This is an interesting item, particularly as information for those not associated with agriculture.
Where Do Farmers Get Their Food From?
The answer is logical, rational, and ludicrous
I've split both worlds, of course, for decades, although more by fate than choice. Anyhow, one thing that's always amazed me is, to some degree, agriculturalist don't make full use of their own land.
I'm much more familiar with ranching than farming, so I'll start there. Almost every rancher I know eats their own beef. We eat our own beef. For this reason, beef prices at the grocery store are always a bit of a mystery to me.
If you know somebody who raises pigs, and occasionally we do, we get one from them. Again, that means we're paying below grocery store prices.
Okay, all this is common.
But what absolutely amazes me is that lots of farmers and ranchers don't take advantage of what's right before them.
I used to put in a huge garden every year. I don't anymore, as my town job took control of my life and I lost the time to do it. I hope to take it back up if I ever get to retire. I can't see a good reason that almost every farm and ranch doesn't have a garden. Yes, it takes time, but not that much time if you are right there. It'd cut food bills, as they're mostly getting their produce from the grocery store, and fresh produce is always better.
I also don't understand why farmers and ranchers don't hunt, and fish, more. I know that "time" will be the argument, but I've been around agriculture my whole life and farmers and ranchers have more time than city people do. They simply do. Their time commitments tend to be seasonal, and intense, but they have the time.
At various times in my pre married life, I used to live on wild game. And I know for a fact that prior to the 1980s, a lot of ranchers either did the same, or supplemented their meat supply that way. One student I knew when I was in US as an undergrad was an older (in his 30s) student, and had grown up on a ranch were they lived on wild game. Frankly, they poached it. I don't advocate poaching, but I also know more than one ranch family that poached pretty routinely into the 1970s.
Here, farmers and ranchers can get landowners licenses and I just don't see why they don't. And even if they don't, they usually have time after the fall to hunt and could on a regular license.. Indeed, as noted, they have more time than people in town do. Outdoors writer John Barsness once noted in one of his columns that when he was a boy, he had a ranching uncle that became a full time elk hunter after shipping.
As noted, I just don't get it.
Shoot, it was my dream, which I will not succeed at.
If I could do whatever I want. . .
If I'd had my way, I would have lived full time in the sticks as a rancher, I'd have gardened in the war months, and hunted in the fall. If I'd broke even, that would have been fine with me.
The Agrarian Dream.
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