A Good Time to Be a Beginning Farmer...

I do believe that it is a good time to be a beginning farmer, but I actually want to take it one step further. I think now is a great time to be a small-scale diversified crop/livestock beginning farmer (or veteran farmer). I have mentioned before that I'm not real big into letting myself fall into the trap of an "economic downturn", but on the other hand if everyone wants to have one than I may not have a choice. That is why I think it is such a great time to be a diversified farmer. Here is why I think that...

Lately I have enjoyed checking MarketWatch.com, not because I have any vested interest in the stock market, but rather because I love watching the price of oil fall (it is down to $53.92 as I type, but I'm sure it will change). Since I have been checking the oil every so often I have also checked out some of the articles on the page. One such article I read was this one, "We'll Be in Great Depression 2 by 2011". I can't really comment at all on any of the things that Mr. Paul B. Farrell has to say, nor do I really want to, but his article does make me appreciate the farm.

As I have read through American history of the Great Depression (especially Iowa's part in it) and seen documentaries like, "The People in the Pictures: Stories from the Wettach Farm Photos" I am constantly reminded that the depression altough still painful for many farm families wasn't nearly as bad as it was for others. In fact many of the Iowa farm children of the depression era talk about how they didn't really even know there was a "financial crisis" (to use today's term).

Why were the effects of the depression lessened for those on the farm? Because they had the bounty of the farm to provide for their families! Of couse the same wouldn't be true for all of today's farm that have moved to the industrial specialization side of agriculture, but for the diversified farms...

Today's diversifed farms (like ours is working towards) would be able to supply the family with beef, pork, produce from the garden, eggs, fruit, and even milk if they needed to. So, even if it may be a bad time to start a farm from an "economic crisis" point of view, at least we will have some food to eat if it does become Depression 2. But, I'm not saying that it will...

It May Be a Little Late For This...

It seems that no matter where you turn the only thing you can hear about right now is the financial "crisis" (yeah, I put that in quotes because I just don't do financial "crisis'"). I hear about it on the radio, on TV, through the internet, at church, around town, and just when I thought I had found a safe place I even found Allan Nation writing about it on his blog! But, I suppose it is a pretty big deal even if I haven't been following it too closely so I was interested to hear what Allan Nation had to say on the subject.

Of course you can read about it by checking out the blog for yourself, but I'll give you the basics right here... There is some bad stuff going on out there and lots of investors have lost theirs (and other peoples) money. A lot of that investment advice seems to be coming back empty right now. But, if people would have just focused on getting out of debt then we wouldn't be in the place we are right now.

Okay, that is my over-simplified summary of his short post, but I do think it has some good nuggets for agriculture and beginning farmers. First of all it points out that it is a crazy world that we live in and things are likely to change all of the time, so we need to be diversified and prepared for change. I am already seeing posts and comments pop up over on the Epi-Log about people planning on buying less expensive food, eating out less, and so on. So, things change from time to time and that leads to changes in the lives people live.

But, I believe Mr. Nation's short posts also underlines one of the most important aspects for agriculture and beginning farmers (and everyone else) ... minimize debt. Of course there is a time for it (that has been hashed out on here before), but that doesn't mean we need to go overboard with it. My wife and I are in debt for the first times in our lives right now and although it was a little scary we do believe it was a wise choice. The thing about it though is that while going into debt to buy land and build the house we have tried to minimize the amount of debt we have at all costs.

We have only borrowed money for the land and the house and will be putting in infrastructure as we have money, time, and resources. This means everything won't be set up right away and we will have to improvise in some areas, but it also means we won't be saddled with debt that comes calling for payments! I have mentioned before that we have tried to purchase this place just like we would if we were buying our first house in town for a growing and active family. In our case we just have a REALLY BIG backyard where we can keep cows!

I'm not sure what is going to happen through all of this, and on one hand I don't really care because I have bigger fish to fry. But, it does remind me of my old Boy Scout motto, "Be Prepared".