We really need to get over this “poor little family farmer” cliche. In this part of California, this type of farmer is not common. On the outskirts and in the north of my city are quite a few large houses. Some might be better described as estates or mansions. Nearly 100% of the big money in this city comes from agriculture. The poor farmers in their mansions! Oh poor babies! Boo hoo!
A typical orchard around here (much farming here has gone over to nut trees due to a boom in the nut market, especially in Asia and to a lesser extent in Europe) nets $50,000/year. The poor farmers! They’re just like the Joads in Grapes of Wrath! Oh boo hoo!
In fact, much farming around here is simply done by rich people. Lawyers, physicians and just your general millionaire type who made his money in something else own many farms in this area because it is such good money. It is considered the same thing as an investment in a stock portfolio. I believe they hire a manager to run the farm while they are tending to patients or arguing for clients or whatever. Oh the poor doctors and lawyers! Oh the poor millionaires! Let’s all cry a tear for these poor rich babies! Waa waa!
As I said, the more you start learning this sort of thing, the less sympathy you start having “the poor downtrodden family farmer.” Farming nowadays is big business.
Further, farmers around here have been very sleazy about what exactly they claim to love so much – farming! California passed various acts, one known as the Williamson Act – intended to preserve farmland in the state against urban development – farms being necessary for food for humans after all, right? The farmers themselves and their bought off allies in the local governments have been wittling away at these acts for years to the point where they barely exist anymore.
Why? Because these great “sons of the soil” are perfectly willing to sell out the trade they claim to love the most to some greedhead land developer as soon as he waves some cash in front of their face. The local Planning Commissions are all insanely reactionary, and they spend most of their time rezoning agricultural land to residential and business zoning. Who is pushing them to do this? The land developers, of course, but also the “poor suffering downtrodden farmers.”
