American Farmer (GF)

Posted by Ron Khare on Feb 16, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments

[This is one of my posts from Growing Freedom, my old blog on the trials of trying to start your own sustainable garden/mini-farm with almost no personal experience. This was originally posted on Apr 27, 2009]

from “How To Grow More Vegetables” -
“One mini-farmer may be able to net $20,000 to $40,000+ a year on a 1/8-acre mini-farm. He or she might work a 40 hour work week and take a 4-month vacation each year.”

When I heard this for the first time, my jaw dropped. First, straight-up, that’s more a year than I’ve ever made – and I’d have all the fresh free food I could eat, too. In fact, that sentence was the reasons I started this whole mini-farm/garden in the first place. How could I pass up the chance to make money while increasing my health and reducing dependency on the current food distribution system? How could anyone, really?

Oh right… I guess most people make more money than me. But just to be sure, I did some checking around. Yup… the average American makes about $50,000 a year. But then I noticed this: “The median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) was $26,036 in 2006.”

$26,036? That’s right in the range of supposed income from mini-farming! And then this idea hits me: median income. That means basically average – half of Americans make less than that.

But maybe people would hate working outside, planting and watering and harvesting. Maybe people really like their jobs! Which is somewhat true, but maybe not? (I can’t find figures that back up this “77% of Americans hate their jobs” I found elsewhere). But maybe they’d go for a job where they could make just as much money working significantly less time (4 month yearly vacation, anyone?). After all, people are generally working more than 40 hours a week now.

If you’ve been following my links, you should know by now that I suck at research. I’ll just get to my point:

Half of America could be farm their own food and see not only an increase in income, but also significant health gains as well.

There is a link between poverty and health problems, due to mostly to diet. So it follows, then, that if people below a certain income level were to farm and eat fresh fruits and vegetables while getting more exercise… well, you see my point.

Since I fall below the poverty level in terms of income, I decided to see if this would really work. This blog is my testing ground. If you find anything interesting on these subjects, please keep me informed. More to come!

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