Farm-to-Table Doesn't Work (And here's WHY)

Comments · 1.7K

• GO

  @GoldShawFarm · 8 months ago · pinned

  There&apos;s a companion comic and essay I wrote to go along with this video. You can find it here: <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/morgangold/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-farm-to-table">https://open.substack.com/pub/morgangold/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-farm-to-table</a><br><br>If you want to preorder my new book, go here: <a href="https://bit.ly/dirtrichliving">https://bit.ly/dirtrichliving</a>

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• JM

  @jmorley72 · 7 months ago

  I stopped going to farmers markets because many of the stands were supplementing from big food distributors. &nbsp;They were buying 100 pounds of commercially grown tomatoes for $.80 a pound and selling them as locally raised, no pesticide, hand picked organic for $7.00 per pound. &nbsp;As soon as a good thing is created, the scammers move in and ruin it.

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• MI

  @michaeldennett1735 · 8 months ago (edited)

  Morgan, thank you for taking the time to create this thoughtful and well-researched piece. As a &quot;farm to table&quot; casualty - farmer who closed his doors in 2024, I&apos;d also like to add the idea that a farmer must be an accountant, social media expert, &nbsp;shipping and transport expert, &nbsp;marketer, in addition to the day-day farm operations, is insane, inefficient, and does not work - full stop. &nbsp;Proud of fellow farmers in Maine who keep truckin&apos; on!

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• GA

  @gardencat4952 · 8 months ago

  Here in southern &nbsp;NH all the foodies I know have have switched to cooking at home. &nbsp;They buy directly from the farms and some of are growing as much of our own that &nbsp;we can handle.

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• SA

  @saucywench9122 · 7 months ago

  I remember those corn syrup commercials. Bland, mass produced food is actually right. We planted a store bought potato in the back yard once. Just cut it up and buried the pieces. What I harvested and cooked with was a potato that tasted miles more potent than any purchased ready to eat form the store. It was a slap in the face to everything I bought from the grocery store. I&apos;ve never forgotten what that taught me. I may not grow a garden anymore but I definitely haven&apos;t forgotten. Same with blueberries. They&apos;ve always tasted like the smell of wet dog to me. I ate one straight from a bush during the lockdown and ended up eating everything that was ripe that I could see. How we don&apos;t garden with food as part of the landscape amazes me. Need hedges? Plant blueberry bushes. Small ornamental trees? Do dwarf apples, pears or plums or citrus or fig. Something that vines? Passion flower, grapes, tomatoes, cucumber, beans, peas, asparagus.

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• TH

  @thepragmaticfarmer6308 · 8 months ago

  Started a small farm in 2020. Its crazy how little control you have. There are SO many external forces that always overtake the internal forces. You can literally do everything right and achieve exactly what it is you set out to do and if the timing is wrong.... none of it matters ( from a business prospective). Also, for anyone looking for a property to start a hobby farm, farmstead or homestead..... the farm decides what will work and what won&apos;t. Everything I originally wanted to do, the characteristics of the property and environment forced me to go in completely different directions than my original intent. But when you find what works for your property, &nbsp;you just go with it and make the best of it.

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• BO

  @BonsaiAdventures · 7 months ago

  As a &quot;local farmer&quot; for OVER the past decade, I&apos;m definitely shifting away from food production. &nbsp;At our peak we offered pasture raises eggs DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR HOME for $6/dzn and farm pickup was 3 dozen for $10. &nbsp;We never had to raise our prices during the egg shortages of the past couple years, but somehow still struggle for customers. &nbsp;This year our roadside &quot;Farm Fresh Eggs&quot; sign and social media presence hasn&apos;t generated a single call in over two weeks. &nbsp;We&apos;ve cut out the home delivery and are offering the same eggs this year at $4/dzn, farm pickup and will probably just end up selling the laying hens off at $20 each as they&apos;re in FULL LAY. &nbsp; Only real thing that is profitable is our 35 head meat goat herd when we send the kids straight to the sale barn at 90 days, raising them further isn&apos;t economically feasible for us since it only nets about $25 more per head but entails about 4 extra months of labor and land use. &nbsp;You see the prices, very much affordable, &nbsp;and the reality is that consumers really want convenience. &nbsp;BTW, our farm is no more than 25 miles away from any single significant customer base in the county and as close as 5-10 miles to several desirable housing developments. &nbsp;I&apos;m price AND CONVENIENCE competing against &quot;pasture raised&quot; at the mega chain grocery stores where I&apos;m at least $1 - $2 cheaper and still not able to support the layer flock. &nbsp;IRONICALLY, When everything is said and done, I will have made the farm fortune by eventually dividing up the land and selling it off in 5 acre strips to developers that will market it to urbanites wanting to &quot;homestead&quot; as they flee the big cities about 75 miles away.

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• NC

  @ncvman · 8 months ago

  I don’t even go out to eat anymore. Farm to table or not. I stay home and cook my own food.

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• NI

  @niereformowalnieaspoeczna6670 · 7 months ago

  I&apos;m so glad that I grew up in Poland and buying food seasonally isn&apos;t anything weird. Not because in Poland you cannot buy strawberries in February but because it&apos;s not smart because they&apos;re imported, expensive and quite tasteless. When I was a child we didn&apos;t eat tomatoes at winter. Same as we didn&apos;t eat oranges and tangerines atin July. Now it&apos;s natural for me to buy food seasonally. And I even don&apos;t need to know where&apos;s the season for what. The prices will tell you everything

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• AT

  @Atochabsh · 8 months ago

  I&quot;m 63 and grew up in New &nbsp;England (Mass., NH, even Long Island NY) &nbsp;I clearly remember going to the grocery store and not having certain fruits and veggies that were NOT in season. &nbsp;If it was not in season, it wasn&apos;t available. &nbsp;I never even know what an artichoke, asparagus or avocado was until I was an adult. &nbsp;I think people have taken their ability to get any fruit or veggie at any time for granted. &nbsp;It was not always so.

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• CA

  @carlfrost6291 · 7 months ago

  As a FL based small farmer growing / packing/ distributing vegetables I tried working with my local government to establish a farmer led food hub. Spent over a year attending waste of time meetings with salaried administrators who could care less about the cause. They were more interested in where the next grant $ could be mined.

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• CS

  @cs3742 · 8 months ago

  My old sweetheart and his wife lived the hippie farm lifestyle in the Mad River valley Vermont circa 1970-1995. &nbsp;They rebuilt an old farmhouse (previous farm had failed), raised sheep, &nbsp;planted big gardens, made designer vinegars and pesto for sale at the farmers markets. &nbsp;At one point they had been longer that six months eating what they grew without purchasing any meat and very few veg. &nbsp;She processed and spun her wool and knitted her homemade yarn. &nbsp;She did demonstrations and taught her craft. &nbsp; She had spells of freelancing as a landscaper, and sold hand drawn greeting cards. &nbsp;HE SUPPORTED THIS LIFESTYLE WITH A JOB THAT REQUIRED A LONG OUT OF STATE COMMUTE, TWO WEEKS ON, TWO WEEKS OFF. &nbsp;He told me that if you wanted to live in Vermont you had to bring your own money like the &quot;trustafarians&quot; or one of you had a local ( not likely) paying job, you had to work out of state, or you had to start your own boutique style, niche market business with products that could be sold out of state. &nbsp;He cited Green Mountain coffee and Ben &amp; Jerry&apos;s. &nbsp;The Vermont economy has been subsidized by $ brought in from outside for a very long time.

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