Pennsylvania Leads the Way in Promoting Agriculture.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Would that my state had a program like that. There are so many unfilled needs.

Friend of mine from Nebraska, we were in language school together. Family had like 1600 acres, in corn. He put 10 or so acres in middle eastern vegetables. Some of them are quite different than our own. On Friday, he would load up his truck, and drive into Lincoln, and park near the Mosque. He was besieged by people trying to buy a taste of home. Soon, he had a business going. Being able to speak Arabic helped, but he felt it was not totally necessary.

Last I talked to him, family was making more money from the vegetables than the corn.

That is the problem in agricultural parts of this country.

We have an enormous infrastructure built up for commodity crops like corn, wheat, soybeans, beef, and hogs. So if you are a farmer in Nebraska you can grow those sorts of crops or livestock and you have a ready market in every single town where there is a grain elevator or stockyard. No farmer in Nebraska has to worry about whether or not he can sell wheat or corn. He only has to worry about the price.

By contrast, growing anything else is a huge undertaking because you have no ready markets. You have to create and cultivate them yourself and that is both an enormous amount of time and effort but also risk.

100 years ago the plains were much more populated and farms were smaller and less mechanized. So one could actually grow more diverse crops and find markets for them. The consolidation and industrialization of agriculture basically changed that. And in a very real way it has trapped farmers.

Pennsylvania has the enormous advantage of being close to lots and lots of population centers. So there is more potential out there to be creative when it comes to agriculture. And small farms with eclectic arrays of crops are more likely to find markets than a farm in say western Nebraska.

Maybe the solution is innovation. This would work in Pennsylvania. North Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC within driving distance. Much of the midwest has significant immigrant populations.

[Ken]

Would that my state had a program like that. There are so many unfilled needs.

Friend of mine from Nebraska, we were in language school together. Family had like 1600 acres, in corn. He put 10 or so acres in middle eastern vegetables. Some of them are quite different than our own. On Friday, he would load up his truck, and drive into Lincoln, and park near the Mosque. He was besieged by people trying to buy a taste of home. Soon, he had a business going. Being able to speak Arabic helped, but he felt it was not totally necessary.

Last I talked to him, family was making more money from the vegetables than the corn.

That is the problem in agricultural parts of this country.

We have an enormous infrastructure built up for commodity crops like corn, wheat, soybeans, beef, and hogs. So if you are a farmer in Nebraska you can grow those sorts of crops or livestock and you have a ready market in every single town where there is a grain elevator or stockyard. No farmer in Nebraska has to worry about whether or not he can sell wheat or corn. He only has to worry about the price.

By contrast, growing anything else is a huge undertaking because you have no ready markets. You have to create and cultivate them yourself and that is both an enormous amount of time and effort but also risk.

100 years ago the plains were much more populated and farms were smaller and less mechanized. So one could actually grow more diverse crops and find markets for them. The consolidation and industrialization of agriculture basically changed that. And in a very real way it has trapped farmers.

Pennsylvania has the enormous advantage of being close to lots and lots of population centers. So there is more potential out there to be creative when it comes to agriculture. And small farms with eclectic arrays of crops are more likely to find markets than a farm in say western Nebraska.

Maybe the solution is innovation. This would work in Pennsylvania. North Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC within driving distance. Much of the midwest has significant immigrant populations.

When you boil it down, farming is just a small business.

Immigrants are 80% more likely to start businesses than non-immigrants in this country and something like 21% of all small businesses in the US are owned by immigrants.

Makes sense that immigrants would move into agriculture, especially if young Americans are not interested in taking over farms. That seems like a good thing to me. 150 years ago, most farmers in the US were immigrants.

[Judas Maccabeus]

That is the problem in agricultural parts of this country.

We have an enormous infrastructure built up for commodity crops like corn, wheat, soybeans, beef, and hogs. So if you are a farmer in Nebraska you can grow those sorts of crops or livestock and you have a ready market in every single town where there is a grain elevator or stockyard. No farmer in Nebraska has to worry about whether or not he can sell wheat or corn. He only has to worry about the price.

By contrast, growing anything else is a huge undertaking because you have no ready markets. You have to create and cultivate them yourself and that is both an enormous amount of time and effort but also risk.

100 years ago the plains were much more populated and farms were smaller and less mechanized. So one could actually grow more diverse crops and find markets for them. The consolidation and industrialization of agriculture basically changed that. And in a very real way it has trapped farmers.

Pennsylvania has the enormous advantage of being close to lots and lots of population centers. So there is more potential out there to be creative when it comes to agriculture. And small farms with eclectic arrays of crops are more likely to find markets than a farm in say western Nebraska.

Maybe the solution is innovation. This would work in Pennsylvania. North Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC within driving distance. Much of the midwest has significant immigrant populations.

When you boil it down, farming is just a small business.

Immigrants are 80% more likely to start businesses than non-immigrants in this country and something like 21% of all small businesses in the US are owned by immigrants.

Makes sense that immigrants would move into agriculture, especially if young Americans are not interested in taking over farms. That seems like a good thing to me. 150 years ago, most farmers in the US were immigrants.

Yes, I know of another immigrant group that got into agriculture. They are called Mennonites. Turned out, they were quite good at it.

[Ken]

Yes, I know of another immigrant group that got into agriculture. They are called Mennonites. Turned out, they were quite good at it.

i have extended Mennonite family still farming in the Belleville PA area on several different farms, including the one my mother grew up on that has been in the family since about the Civil War. I have to wonder how that community would respond if a family of Somali or Guatemalan immigrants sought to buy a local neighboring farm to make a start. Would they rally to help? Or would they close ranks and try to prevent it by trying to buy up the property themselves or some such?

[Judas Maccabeus]

Yes, I know of another immigrant group that got into agriculture. They are called Mennonites. Turned out, they were quite good at it.

i have extended Mennonite family still farming in the Belleville PA area on several different farms, including the one my mother grew up on that has been in the family since about the Civil War. I have to wonder how that community would respond if a family of Somali or Guatemalan immigrants sought to buy a local neighboring farm to make a start. Would they rally to help? Or would they close ranks and try to prevent it by trying to buy up the property themselves or some such?

If they"bought up the property themselves, I would suggest the purchaser likely was more interested in giving a son a start in the business , rather than spite.

[ken_sylvania]

Yes, I know of another immigrant group that got into agriculture. They are called Mennonites. Turned out, they were quite good at it.

i have extended Mennonite family still farming in the Belleville PA area on several different farms, including the one my mother grew up on that has been in the family since about the Civil War. I have to wonder how that community would respond if a family of Somali or Guatemalan immigrants sought to buy a local neighboring farm to make a start. Would they rally to help? Or would they close ranks and try to prevent it by trying to buy up the property themselves or some such?

If an immigrant family bought up a Belleville farm I would for sure wonder where the money came from!

[Ken]

Yes, I know of another immigrant group that got into agriculture. They are called Mennonites. Turned out, they were quite good at it.

i have extended Mennonite family still farming in the Belleville PA area on several different farms, including the one my mother grew up on that has been in the family since about the Civil War. I have to wonder how that community would respond if a family of Somali or Guatemalan immigrants sought to buy a local neighboring farm to make a start. Would they rally to help? Or would they close ranks and try to prevent it by trying to buy up the property themselves or some such?

If they"bought up the property themselves, I would suggest the purchaser likely was more interested in giving a son a start in the business , rather than spite.

[Ken]

i have extended Mennonite family still farming in the Belleville PA area on several different farms, including the one my mother grew up on that has been in the family since about the Civil War. I have to wonder how that community would respond if a family of Somali or Guatemalan immigrants sought to buy a local neighboring farm to make a start. Would they rally to help? Or would they close ranks and try to prevent it by trying to buy up the property themselves or some such?

If they"bought up the property themselves, I would suggest the purchaser likely was more interested in giving a son a start in the business , rather than spite.

Not spite, and not necessarily to get the son a start. I’ve been around these conversations. It is more like the community rallying to keep the land out of the hands of “outsiders” which might well be some 5th generation Lutheran farm family from the next valley over. Because, one never knows what those sorts of people might do. They might subdivide and put in houses. Or worse yet…[whisper] put in something really inappropriate like a winery that might attract the wrong crowd.

At least that was how things used to be a generation ago. My family has bought up neighboring farms, not to put a son to work, but just to control the land which they just then turned around and rented to nearby Amish farmers. I doubt much has changed. If it was Somali or Guatemalan immigrants the conversation probably wouldn’t be any different but there might be more urgency.

[ken_sylvania]

i have extended Mennonite family still farming in the Belleville PA area on several different farms, including the one my mother grew up on that has been in the family since about the Civil War. I have to wonder how that community would respond if a family of Somali or Guatemalan immigrants sought to buy a local neighboring farm to make a start. Would they rally to help? Or would they close ranks and try to prevent it by trying to buy up the property themselves or some such?

If they"bought up the property themselves, I would suggest the purchaser likely was more interested in giving a son a start in the business , rather than spite.

Not spite, and not necessarily to get the son a start. I’ve been around these conversations. It is more like the community rallying to keep the land out of the hands of “outsiders” which might well be some 5th generation Lutheran farm family from the next valley over. Because, one never knows what those sorts of people might do. They might subdivide and put in houses. Or worse yet…[whisper] put in something really inappropriate like a winery that might attract the wrong crowd.

At least that was how things used to be a generation ago. My family has bought up neighboring farms, not to put a son to work, but just to control the land which they just then turned around and rented to nearby Amish farmers. I doubt much has changed. If it was Somali or Guatemalan immigrants the conversation probably wouldn’t be any different but there might be more urgency.

I can certainly understand why they might prefer to have an Amish family farm next door rather than a winery.

[Ken]

If they"bought up the property themselves, I would suggest the purchaser likely was more interested in giving a son a start in the business , rather than spite.

Not spite, and not necessarily to get the son a start. I’ve been around these conversations. It is more like the community rallying to keep the land out of the hands of “outsiders” which might well be some 5th generation Lutheran farm family from the next valley over. Because, one never knows what those sorts of people might do. They might subdivide and put in houses. Or worse yet…[whisper] put in something really inappropriate like a winery that might attract the wrong crowd.

At least that was how things used to be a generation ago. My family has bought up neighboring farms, not to put a son to work, but just to control the land which they just then turned around and rented to nearby Amish farmers. I doubt much has changed. If it was Somali or Guatemalan immigrants the conversation probably wouldn’t be any different but there might be more urgency.

I can certainly understand why they might prefer to have an Amish family farm next door rather than a winery.

Yep, when these folks bought up this farm in Belleville and put in this winery and destination event venue a few decades ago it took my family at least a generation to stop being scandalized and get over it: https://brookmerewine.com/ Can’t let that happen again can we?

Point being, and relating back to the subject of this thread. Despite all the efforts of PA to promote agriculture to young people, I doubt much of it will “take” in Belleville since the locals will have none of it.