डिफरेंस बिटवीन द स्माल फार्मर एंड रिच फार्मर
Answers
Explanation:
What is the difference between small farmers and large farmers?
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That is a very good question. I will take a stab at it. The best I can say is, it depends and it is relative. It is relative by industry: Livestock, row crops, food crops, orchards.
We have friends that are cattle ranchers (cow/calf) operation in Montana and Texas. The climate is dry, but they can run a cow / calf operations well. However, it takes many acres to feed 1 cow and her calf. It takes them days to find all of their cows. They have a lot of acres, but they have maybe 300 cows. Is that a big farmer? The cows are owned by the couple and his father. They have 1 employee that helps them at needed times.
Another farmer we know is a vegetable farmer. They have a total of 1,000 acres but they employe 50 - 60 people at times and as many as 250 employees. Because vegetable farming is labor intensive. Is that a big farmer?
Our farmer friend down the road has 12,000 sows. He has about 5000 acres of land to feed the hogs and haul the manure out. To me he is a large farmer, but in the hog world, he is a medium size player.
For us, we farm about 3,000 acres, have a 200 cow dairy, 300 dairy heifers, 50 beef cow/calf pairs and 180 dairy steers. Some say we are a big farmer, but we employ 3 people. 3 family members are involved in the operation. But I consider us a small to medium size farmer. To me, a big farmer in the midwest farms about 10,000 acres of corn/soybeans or a dairy with 3000+ milk cows.
We all know "big" farmers. My definition of a big farmer, here in the midwest, is different than our friends that farm in New Jersey and raise mostly vegetable crops.
The trend in the past centuries is to get larger because the margins are so low. It takes many acres to cover the expenses and provide a livable wage.
Whether we farmers consider ourselves large or small, I can assure you that the majority of farmers have a passion for what they do and they want to do it well. We want to receive a fair price for what we grow/raise and we want to treat our employees well many of us treat employees the same as family.