“Do you think food just grows on trees?”
“I mean, some of it does, yeah.”
Basically all the land is already owned by corporations or farmers with generational wealth. Where will the farmers farm?
Basically all the land is already owned by corporations or farmers with generational wealth
This is really not true. Around 15% of total -current**- farmland by area is owned by corporations. I get that you probably want to say it’s often the case and that “much” land is owned by corporations, but that’s not 100% the case. There are also several initiatives to help match farmers with land either to buy or rent, and even government loan programs to help folks buy their land. I know from personal experience that it’s not easy, but I also know compared with actually making a living farming, finding the land is relatively easy.
** I specify current because there are many different classifications of what constitutes arable land. When it comes down to it any land is “arable” with enough effort.
It’s called feudalism
There’s a lot of farmers that are looking to not be farmers anymore. There’s also lots of land for lease.
There’s a lot of farmers that are looking to not be farmers anymore.
Because people demand all produce be in season all the time, be extremely fresh, cost next to nothing, be sustainably grown, be delivered to your door and be absolutely perfect looking.
As a consequence, a farmer is lucky to make $25k per year on $250k in revenue.
Farming has pretty much always been a way to spend millions to make thousands. Whether it’s meme produce or staple grains.
It’s not quite that bad.
On another note… I have no idea what “meme produce” is supposed to me.
Micro greens, whatever the new super food is, various labels you can apply to sell lettuce for 5x the normal price.
Ah. “Baby”. Because everyone likes to eat babies.
Sorry, can’t hear you, paving over our arable land because owning apartments is less work.
I wish we were building apartments. I just got a business park and a whole police complex being built.
Dense living isn’t the issue. It’s single family homes turning everything into lawn
I mean I think the spread of single family homes as opposed to dense living is very much linked.
Next episode we talk about our eroding farmlands and needless urbanization.
I mostly listen to heavy metal on my tractor.
Have you tried switching to unleaded?
Maybe they don’t like listening to soft rock.
Lead is actually a pretty soft rock, as well as a heavy metal
There probably is the occasional farmer using leaded gas in a tractor…
It’s your one way ticket to midnight.
Why the fuck does she complain when she doesn’t want to do the very thing she’s mad about no one elseis doing, and yet she wants others to drop what they’re doing and do that work for her?
Maybe it’s just a joke
What are all of our finest bros with carefully curated facial hair and neck tattoos going to do for a living now, if not talk about hustlin’ and unfaithful club rats in front of a mic? I’m not even sure where these dudes worked before podcasts were an option. Bouncers, I guess? Stealing cell phones?
marketing probably
Which is more difficult though? Establishing and maintaining a farm or a podcast?
I think it’s the high barrier to entry (long days, hard work) that prevent more people from starting a podcast
Farming is far more demanding in startup capital, labor, skill, and hours.
Creating a podcast is easy. Creating a good podcast requires skill. Creating a successful podcast requires skill and luck.
Farming badly and unsuccessfully is comparatively easy as well. Anyone can throw seeds into dirt and wait for rain.
No man, being a bad farmer takes way more work than being a bad podcaster.
I could just record myself talking to my cat and be a bad podcaster.
chokes way up on the mic, drops voice an octave Welcome back to the Aggravated Hour, I’m the Captain, and on this week’s episode we’re going to get right down to tonight’s questions: Who’s a good kitty? Are you a good kitty? Who’s a kitty? Are you grey? I think you’re grey. Let’s examine the evidence.
Dirt and seeds are relatively expensive compared to a microphone and internet access
Absolutely. My point was that success in farming is determined by startup capital, skill, long hours, and hard labor, whereas success in podcasting requires connections and luck over effort.
There are many incompetent farmers and many aspiring incompetent farmers out there. They don’t stay that way for long unless they are independently wealthy.
I have no idea why anyone would down vote you…
Unless you’re famous, wildly charismatic, or have some very specialized knowledge I’m not sure how you break into the podcasting game. I mean you could have a podcast, but it wouldn’t earn you a living.
Farming you could have microgreens or mushrooms in customer hands in a few weeks and that could be done from a closet after watching some youtube videos.
Farming you could have microgreens or mushrooms in customer hands in a few weeks and that could be done from a closet after watching some youtube videos.
Ha ha ha ha. “It’ll be easy they said! You’ll be raking in the profits in weeks they said”. LOL.
It took me three years of busting my ass to make a profit, and that’s considered exceptionally good.
There’s a lot you can do in the closet after watching some YouTube videos.
I spent all of my teenage years in the closet and I did indeed watch YouTube as a kid
I see farmers’ protests almost every quarter about how they are struggling, how bad big farm competition is, how the equipment they need is prohibitively expensive and vendor locked, how any seeds that they need to be competitive are patented and exorbitant in costs. I didn’t know farming was so easy.
Someone tell the farmers to watch youtube videos and clear out their closets. They clearly are doing something wrong.
You’re missing my point.
There’s zero income if you’re an unknown podcaster and there’s zero demand for it.
Almost anyone can grow something and there’s always demand for fresh produce.
I could work equally hard at either task and one would actually net returns for my work. This isn’t saying farming is easy.
Yeah, but you said you could have a podcast, but it wouldn’t earn you a living. The same way you could theoretically grow produce and it wouldn’t earn you a living either.
With enough work you could make returns on a podcast too. Both podcasting and farming require lots of work to grow a network, to acquire equipment and to find customers and partners. In both, you require time to be trustworthy. Both of those things are part of the same entrepreneurial process.
I may concede that perhaps you can get a couple of bucks faster with a homegrown garden, but it is not as easy as you’re saying. Your grocery store/restaurant will not buy random veggies from Joe nobody when they have suppliers already. They don’t even know how safe is the food you’re growing. You’d have to find specialized farmer’s markets and you’d have to pay for a stall there, as well as all the grow lights and hydroponics setup to grow the produce. That’s residual money, if money at all.
The people you see on youtube are probably making more money with youtube selling education than they are with their micro arugulas or whatever. Or maybe they’re lucky to have friends with restaurants or stores already who are willing to take the risk on some random person with no store and no licenses selling food on the side. And it’s a big risk, because some farms have sent people to the hospital by growing greens next to livestock and ended up contaminating everything with E. Coli. They probably won’t boil greens, so you can guess why it’s not a small risk to take. Sure, you can say, but I’m very clean, i have no livestock and my fertilizer is reputable, but without licenses, there is no proof and it’s not like they are going to send someone to inspect your farm.
And they’re not even gonna hear you out unless you’re coming with a price lower than the supplier that’s growing an entire greenhouse full of microgreens for them. The whole microgreens/mushrooms fad was a gap between the demand appearing and big corpos responding to it with their massive greenhouses. Every year that goes by, it’s gonna be harder and harder to break into that market, let alone survive in it. Farming is a very scale up sensitive industry and small players have an incredibly rough time in it over time.
Unless you’re famous, wildly charismatic, or have some very specialized knowledge I’m not sure how you break into the podcasting game.
There are only two real options:
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Be part of an existing popular podcast. If you get to be a guest appearance and you’re charismatic enough, you can get invited back more often until you’re a regular. Get good enough to get your own following and then you can eventually break off and do your own thing with sponsorships from the get-go.
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Be famous for something else first. If you’re a celebrity, author, streamer, YouTube personality, etc., you can start a podcast from nothing and have your sponsors and listeners already lined up.
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Does she believe that the thing that’s causing the lack of farmers is podcasters?
I’d happily be a farmer if it paid a good hourly wage.
Last I heard, farmers make a ton of money on average. It’s just tough work and your work/income is at the whims of the weather.
At least semi-seriously, yes. Men making podcasts has been kind of a femisphere thing, I think it started a few years ago as one permutation of “Men will do [x] instead of going to therapy” joke and got kinda latched onto.
I rarely listened to podcasts prior to farming. Now, that things are winding down, I’m so far behind in my queue
Podcaster meat.
Aw babe, we’ve been eating nothing but cryptbro podcasters for weeks, do you think we could try some audio fiction podcasters tonight?
Beets?
