I worked as a teenager for a farm that had been continuously operating since the Dutch colonial era.
There are few continuously operating entities that are 300+ years old in the US. That farm managed to operate for all of that time, but went dormant about 20 years ago. They board horses and lease the land for hay to pay the property taxes, and will probably sell it when the current family owner gets older.
It’s just not possible to compete against scaled agribusiness. To borrow another example in this thread, you can’t sell artichokes from your 500 acre farm when the competition plants 20 square miles of artichokes in a desert with government provided water.
Same with grain. We’re emptying an ancient aquifer in the Great Plains to grow wheat, corn and soy and have eliminated those crops everywhere else as a result. All good until the water runs out.
There are few continuously operating entities that are 300+ years old in the US. That farm managed to operate for all of that time, but went dormant about 20 years ago. They board horses and lease the land for hay to pay the property taxes, and will probably sell it when the current family owner gets older.
It’s just not possible to compete against scaled agribusiness. To borrow another example in this thread, you can’t sell artichokes from your 500 acre farm when the competition plants 20 square miles of artichokes in a desert with government provided water.
Same with grain. We’re emptying an ancient aquifer in the Great Plains to grow wheat, corn and soy and have eliminated those crops everywhere else as a result. All good until the water runs out.