Some Farmers Have Discovered That Online Stardom Can Be More Lucrative Than their Crops or Livestock (wired.com) 68
An anonymous reader shares a report: It's not an easy time to be an American farmer. The number of farms in the US is declining, according to the Department of Agriculture, as consolidation makes big operations even bigger. In 2017, the most recent year for the USDA's industry census, the average farm income was just $43,053, and less than half of farms reported positive net cash. The price of commodities like corn, wheat, and milk have fallen, making it harder to turn a profit. Extreme weather, like this year's devastating floods in the midwest, puts additional pressure on farms. Many have also been negatively impacted by the US trade war with China. "The weather still dictates a huge amount of our lives, input costs have skyrocketed, meaning most of us live under a mountain of debt that we hope we can make the payments on every year," says Zach Johnson, a fifth-generation farmer whose channel Millennial Farmer has nearly 400,000 subscribers.
On YouTube, though, the picture is sometimes much rosier. There, farming can seem more like an aspirational lifestyle choice rather than a precarious livelihood. Buxton says YouTube has seen an influx of new creators who specifically chronicle what it's like to open a farm after living in a city or working a corporate job. Like #VanLife videos, where creators share how they abandoned the mainstream to live on the road, farming content serves as a how-to guide to an alternative way of living. [...] Jake and Becky, who asked that only the first initial of their last name be used to protect their privacy, have over 400,00 subscribers, a large enough audience to turn YouTube into their main source of income. Some of their most popular videos revolve around their livestock, which isn't surprising -- animal videos have powered the internet's content machinery for decades. But that enduring appeal can make some situations complex for farmers to navigate. "The animal lovers don't want to see anything happen to the animals. That's been a tricky balance," Jake says.
On YouTube, though, the picture is sometimes much rosier. There, farming can seem more like an aspirational lifestyle choice rather than a precarious livelihood. Buxton says YouTube has seen an influx of new creators who specifically chronicle what it's like to open a farm after living in a city or working a corporate job. Like #VanLife videos, where creators share how they abandoned the mainstream to live on the road, farming content serves as a how-to guide to an alternative way of living. [...] Jake and Becky, who asked that only the first initial of their last name be used to protect their privacy, have over 400,00 subscribers, a large enough audience to turn YouTube into their main source of income. Some of their most popular videos revolve around their livestock, which isn't surprising -- animal videos have powered the internet's content machinery for decades. But that enduring appeal can make some situations complex for farmers to navigate. "The animal lovers don't want to see anything happen to the animals. That's been a tricky balance," Jake says.
Bootstraps (Score:1)
This what happens when you vote against your interest for decades. GOP is party of handouts for the rich at the cost of working class, and that includes farming.
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Farming Subsidies has been a fairly bipartisan agreement.
Rural Voters hate the idea of Regulation in their daily lives. Even if these regulations will have a net benefit, having them not farm on 10000 sq feet of land near a river, or make sure their livestock eats a particular type of food, cuts into their lively hood as well.
However the problem, is these regulations for the most part are meant to help them in the long run, keeping their land and water clean and productive, and making sure they don't overf
Re:Bootstraps (Score:5, Informative)
The GOP denying climate change ...
You are confusing talk with action. Red states have more solar installed than blue states, and generate WAY more wind power.
That's funny. When I looked up the states' solar capacity, I found that California was the top producer and that its capacity was more than the capacity of the next 7 highest producers combined. California is a blue state, if you're confused on the matter. The top 10 are:
1. California
2. North Carolina
3. Arizona
4. Texas
5. Florida
6. Nevada
7. New Jersey
8. Massachusetts
9. New York
10. Georgia
If we look for commonality, we'll see several trends. These states tend to have larger surface areas and larger populations. The top seven are below 42 degrees latitude and the remainder are on the East Coast, i.e. they all avoid the cloudy Northwest. It appears solar capacity has less to do with politics than with need and opportunity. Meanwhile, the GOP continues to deny climate change.
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And if we look at a wind map [nrel.gov] we see that the states with the highest wind speeds are in a swathe down the middle of the country from North Dakota to Texas, much of it desolate territory with little value and filled with Republicans. Little surprise that people saw this as an opportunity to make money. It seems highly unlikely they're doing it combat climate change.
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It seems highly unlikely they're doing it combat climate change.
Their motivation for doing it doesn't matter.
All that matters is the results.
Re:Bootstraps (Score:5, Insightful)
GOP is party of handouts for the rich at the cost of working class, and that includes farming.
From Trump's farm bailout has cost taxpayers more than double the auto bailout [freep.com]
Back when General Motors and Chrysler faced bankruptcy during the Great Recession, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama pumped billions into a rescue of the auto industry. That bailout ultimately cost the public about $12 billion when everything was settled and loans repaid.
But that looks like small potatoes compared with the farm bailout underway now. So far, Trump's direct payments to farmers hurt by his trade dispute with China have totaled some $28 billion — more than twice what the auto bailout cost, according to calculations from Bloomberg Businessweek. And the payments are still flowing with no end in sight to the trade dispute.
From Farmers are slamming Trump's $28 billion farm bailout — more than double Obama's 2009 payment to automakers — as a 'Band-Aid' [businessinsider.com]
Trump has provided $28 billion in bailouts for farmers over the past two years — more than twice the $12 billion Obama paid out to automakers crippled by the financial crisis in 2009.
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Trump has provided $28 billion in bailouts for farmers over the past two years — more than twice the $12 billion Obama paid out to automakers crippled by the financial crisis in 2009.
And this is funded by the tariffs that are indirectly harming the farmers. Don't act like it's some magnanimous thing. This money was paid by the consumer in higher prices after the tariffs were paid.
Re:Bootstraps (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't act like it's some magnanimous thing.
There is nothing magnanimous in wrecking things so badly that you need to pay out over $28 billion in bailouts to prevent an industry from failing.
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Do you really not know how tariffs on imports work? Tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the US are paid by American consumers. Not by China.
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Do you really not know how tariffs on imports work? Tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the US are paid by American consumers. Not by China.
Have you been seeing much inflation on goods made in China. A bit in some places but much of the tariff cost was eaten by the manufacturers (ie Chinese companies). Moreover even if it did cost consumers something you can't just stay in a lopsided relationship because doing something about it will cause short term pain. To help put that in context if economists ran the world nobody would ever leave a bad relationship because there would emotional pain for a quarter or two. Oh no. The situation with Chin
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If that causes lower prices from China, that's entirely irrelevant to my point. That the actual tariffs are paid by Americans and they are the ones funding these farmer bailouts.
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The money is being funded from the tariffs paid by the Chinese. They're getting hit hard. Of course you'll never hear this from the media as they'd rather eat broken glass than report anything positive about Trump's policies.
A true denizen of Trump-Land with his "alternative facts".
Tariffs are a tax on imports. They are paid by U.S.-registered firms to U.S. customs for the goods they import into the United States.
The reason you won't see the media telling us that it is being paid by the Chinese is that is a lie.
Do you ever get tired of lying for Trump?
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It's not that simple. (Score:1)
Pity there aren't any other nations that can supply the quantity of goods America wants to buy. They just don't have the infrastructure or the skills.
Even with 25% tariffs it's still often cheaper to keep buying Chinese.
If America was capable of just cutting back on purchases, it wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. Just stop buying so much stuff you don't need.
China has a lot more options for the things it buys from America. Hence all the farm subsidies when China just buys elsewhere.
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what if us costumers start cuting back on ther purcases of Chinese goods, choosing other low cost nations instead, will that hurt china?
While inexpensive fabrics do often come from China, I don't think the costume industry has that much effect on China's economy as a whole.
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Sure, you'd prefer that we just continue to let China fuck us as they have been for years. A change was necessary, and if you don't have a better idea STFU
Re:Bootstraps (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite what Fox News tells you.
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First, when you spout right-wing extremist conspiracy theories based on inconclusive "lipread" evidence, you show just how far you've gone down the rabbit hole.
Second, she was the first lady. Who cares what she apparently said one time at a memorial service? How about the thousands of public comments and speeches she made that are not in any way left-wing, extremist or America-hating?
I actually feel sorry for you.
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How many actually call themselves Americans? Citizens of the world is what I hear. They hate Americans, consider us deplorable. It wasn't the right that started the hate parade."
I call myself American. I consider deplorable the racists who want a return to the good old days of lynch mobs and who applaud every moral failure of our Piece of That Ugly Scat. I consider deplorable the human rights violations that put children in internment camps on our borders and protect the wealthy from the consequences of their actions even as they screw over the working class who voted them in. I consider it deplorable that America has lost its moral spine and is even now on its knees before the mig
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I wonder how long it will be before you Americans are shooting each other again?
That will be bad for everyone when you do, but at least the racist South will lose again.
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Project Farm (Score:3)
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Legalize Hemp (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Legalize Hemp (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just the U.S. The entire world produces more than enough food to feed the global population. Contrary to the apocalyptic proclamations that overpopulation will doom us, food production has never been a problem. The problem has always been food distribution. It simply isn't cost-effective to ship food from the regions with excess food, to regions with insufficient food. Unless it's done as charity (you pay to give stuff away).
It's not because of land. Corn ethanol stems from food policies implemented during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. For the first time, the country didn't produce enough food to feed everyone. The government decided never again, and implemented various programs to assure the U.S. always produces more food than it consumes. That's why crops are subsidized - when you overproduce, the market price drops, often to below what's necessary for farmers to stay in business. So the government buys all their crops at a fixed price, then resells it to wholesalers and supermarkets at a lower price. It's also why we pay farmers not to grow anything - so their farmland is held in reserve. If a natural disaster, weather, blight, or insect plague destroys the ability of some of our farmland to produce crops, these reserve fields can be put into use to grow replacement food within a matter of months, instead of years. Without this subsidy, these farmers would sell their land to developers, and it wouldn't be available to grow crops.
But overproduction means we always have food left over. We ship some of it overseas as foreign aid. A lot of it gets sold to cattle ranchers as cheap feed (which is why reducing meat consumption won't really reduce water use or food prices - the cattle feed is a sunk cost so we pay for it whether it's fed to cows or rots in silos). Some enterprising chemists figured out a way to convert corn into high fructose corn syrup, to reduce the nation's dependence on imported sugar cane. And during the 1973 oil crisis, the government decided to try to figure out a way to convert some of it into ethanol to supplement our domestic gasoline production.
It made sense back then because it was excess corn. If we didn't do something with it, it was going to rot in silos feeding rats. So doing anything with it was preferable. But then the corn lobby dug their claws into it, and now we wastefully grow corn for the sole purpose of converting it into ethanol. It's not the best crop for this purpose - sugar beets are preferable in our climate (In Brazil's climate, it's sugar cane). The only reason we started doing it with corn was because we had excess corn.
Re:Legalize Hemp (Score:4)
Since so many states have decriminalized marijuana we should legalize hemp.
Good news, the 2018 farm bill already federally legalized hemp - it’s legal now [wikipedia.org]. Also, in some cases, this decriminalized higher thc containing cannibis by accident. [teenvogue.com].
Did you miss the Farm Bill? (Score:2)
I suppose, but .... (Score:2)
I have two personal friends now who went from office day jobs to starting small farms, and while both leverage social media as a form of free advertising? Neither seems to be aspiring to make profits from YouTube viewers, or to talk the career choice up as more glamorous than it really is, to entertain followers.
What I've seen is this: Starting your own farm is obviously VERY labor intensive, but the people who succeed with it are the ones who already really like the outdoors and who actually like doing th
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what's the path your friends took? did they have family hand them down the land, or did they just find/buy a small holding and get started? (And if they needed financing, how did they sell that to a bank?)
Hard physical work outdoors sounds way, way better than sitting in a cube.
Genuinely curious.
Re:I suppose, but .... (Score:5, Informative)
Can't speak for them, but if you're really interested in starting a farm, then check your local Farm Credit office. Here in Canada(FCC-FAC is one of the big ones), the farm credit orgs will put you in touch with farmers who will teach you the ropes on anything you want. From food crops to specialty crops to cattle and sheep to exotics like beefalo and emu, as long as you're willing to work. It's win-win for everyone around if you're wondering, the bank expands it's pool of customers. The farmer gets a lower interest rate on loans from FCC, you learn how everything works and earn money working as a hand and can decide if it's something you really want to do.
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Cooped up. Chicken houses, not cars.
The YouTube Effect (Score:2)
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...but no food to sustain ourselves with.
America is the richest country in the world. Importing food would solve that problem.
You might even find it is cheaper.
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They used to say that about manufacturing, until the MBA's came around. The results speak for themselves!
Re:The YouTube Effect (Score:4, Interesting)
For things like TV sets, the results *do* speak for themselves. Now some of this is technology -- CRTs are inherently expensive to make and ship -- but back in 1990 a TV was a major purchase. People typically spent $600 to $700 on their living room set. That's $1200 - $1400 in today's terms.
I remember the debate about opening up trade with low wage countries like China in the 90s. On one hand you had people who said that the average American would become richer as his dollar buys more goods. On the other hand opponents said that this would cause good manufacturing jobs to dry up, making workers scramble to find less secure jobs to make ends meet.
Not many people were talking about the possibility that *both sides* of the argument might be right. Free trade has been great if you're a doctor, lawyer or engineer; it has showered you with material goods beyond previous generations' dreams. But for people forced from low level manufacturing jobs into low level service jobs, the situation is a lot less rosy. Sure, they've probably got a huge TV, they cost nothing now. But they might not have health insurance, retirement, or savings to put their kids through school.
It's a complicated situation.
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Manufacturing was what built the middle class in the US though; Being on slashdot the usual response is something along the lines of "why should we pay some idiot a living wage to work in a factory".
BUT, what is missed is the impact on society. Take away the middle part of the bell curve having a living wage and the ability to own a home and you wind up with Gary IN or Detroit MI etc. Areas with huge disparities in wealth -- high crime, bad schools, and dilapidated infrastructure.
But hey, the rich can r
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Well, that's really what it boils down to. Do you care what happens to other people? If you don't it leads to different positions.
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It is widely accepted that trade is the best path to peace.
Better Business Model: Destroying Farm equipment (Score:2)
There seems to be more potential for Youtube clicks by blowing up old equipment on camera.
https://www.youtube.com/channe... [youtube.com]
Exceptions that prove the rule (Score:2)
Would that we could all vlog our lifestyles for that extra boost, but it's just not going to work for most of us. The long tail is just a lot of home video. The "stars" have that top-10 combination of personality, management skills, technical ability, and just dumb luck.
Blacksmithing (Score:2)
My first love is blacksmithing. It's not terribly good for your health, but I absolutely love it. I got into tech instead because, of course, there isn't much money in blacksmithing.
Now there are blacksmiths on YouTube making more money than I could ever dream of. I think it's fantastic -- good on them for turning their passion into a something they can share with the world and also make money doing.
Alec Steele [youtube.com]
Geothermal Greenhouse Porn (Score:1)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Unless the the land is shaded by a mountain, its not completly unusable.
Most Farms Are Just Hobbies (Score:4, Interesting)
Really.
There are 2.07 million farms in the U.S., but nearly all farm production is from just 300,000 of them, which have minimum revenues in the millions of dollars annually.
What of the other 1.8 million farms, or should I say "farms"? The Census of Agriculture defines a farm as any place that produced and sold, or could have sold, $1,000 or more of agricultural products during the Census year, so what passes the threshold of being a farm is very, very low (this lowest sales class if called a Point Farm). Someone who claims to raise $1000 worth of crops in a year, but sold none of it, is still a farmer under this definition. Fully 20% of all farms in the U.S. are Point Farms.
Currently 50.1% of all farms have sales of less than $10,000 a year (not the difference between the median, less than $10,000 and the average of $43,000). Such small operations would be pretty easy enter and exit from, since the scale is so small. And these are the (bare) majority of current farms. All of these are side-line operations by necessity and very few make money.
30.1% have sales of $10,000 - $99,999. These operations are far larger than the $1000-$10,000 a year "farmers", and so are more likely to be serious enterprises, but it is hard to see even a single individual making a living in this class since the net will be considerably less than the gross sales.
With such a highly skewed distribution between million dollar farms and thousand dollar farms averages hide more than they reveal. And, yes, less than half of farms make money, but the reality is that that number is much less than half. Only about 20% of farms might potentially be self-supporting principal or sole income. In fact 90% of all farm operators report working at least 2000 hours a year off the farm, i.e. they are holding down a full time job elsewherer.
But oddly, the number of farms has now been steady for 40 years (after a post WWII decline in numbers), yet the average time that an average "farmer" has been farming is just a few years. What is really happening here is the number of "farms" is determined by the number of surveyed farm lots, which change hands frequently as people wanting to "move out to the country" and the like buy them, take up hobby farming, then move on, These people are not life-long farmers or even necessarily long-time rural residents.
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Mod Up
Can we talk about Jake and Becky? (Score:3)
What? YouTube "celebrities" have, or are interested in, privacy? 400,000 people watch them puttering around a farm, but they don't want to tell a reporter their last name?
Maybe they should have considered that before getting famous? They're prominent public figures now, making a living from public performances. That's not a private life.
Reality check (Score:2)
As of the ->1990- US Census, "family farmer" was "no longer a recognized occupation" from the list of standard "recognized occupations", because it had fallen to under 1.5% of the US population.
When you hear about "farmers", the question is whether they're talking about actual farmers... or about subsidiaries of agribusiness?