That's interesting. Thanks for the update.

An elderly neighbor farmer in my area cut down four and a half acres of trees and hired a guy to bulldoze it about 6-7 years ago. In the course of time (about 4 years ago) his son took over the farm and finished clearing it and started farming it. The local FSA office found out about it and called him in for a hearing. They claimed it was wetlands even though its anything but wetlands. It was a level area in the middle of the field that was a pain to farm around.

Now FSA claims that the penalty for clearing wetlands is that he must pay back all farm subsidy payments that he has received since the time his father cleared the land. This gentleman is a dairy farmer and with the suppressed markets the last few years, he has received substantial milk payments. They claim every FSA payment must be repaid in full. He told me he did some figuring and the payments since that time to his farm would total just shy of $500,000. He farms around 1000 acres.

Needless to say, the whole thing is now in mediation. Sounds like they will settle for less. He told them he would just stop farming it and plant it back to trees. They told him that the only way they would allow that is if he'd do it to their specs which will cost around $20,000 an acre to return farmland to wetlands.

Moral of the story: Treat wood lots like a farm commodity and manage them appropriately just like we as farmers manage our fields.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

That’s why you shouldn’t take money from FSA. Every farmer in my area takes cost share from FSA on every pivot, land improvement project, tree planting, etc.etc., then they own you. Don’t farm the government folks.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

There in lies the entire tragedy: When commodity prices are low, be they grains, beans or milk, many farmers resort to expanding production and thereby collectively drive down prices even more. The way to go is a) be flexible so that one produce something else b) have very little or no debt so that the bank can't force you into production with losses. Cutting down trees to expand makes no sense at all for many reasons and yet one can see it allover the Midwest. Mostly to make room for those supersized implements that cost too much in the first place. I repeat here what I said before, many farmers seem not to want to be farmers but heavy machine operators.
The farming community has also long supported policies of limitless individual business expansion regardless if that's good or bad for the communities.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

I second Klaus' comment about heavy equipment operators. I was working the horses on a farm and saw the other folks never got off the machine(s) to do almost anything. Looking at other operations and saw pretty much the same situation on other places. Sad. Also noticed that there was little effort to mitigate damage caused with the machines.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Didn't plant corn. Planted orchard grass. Just cut it 2 days ago. Ready to bale the little that he has.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Guess I got to disagree to some extent. Working with a team gets so a senior can't do it anymore and has to resort to equipment if he can't physically do it.

Then too, a team or two is good if a fellow is working 100-200-300 acres, but start to get in the 10,000-15,000 acres and they won't cut it, and those big farms are what feeds America, not 100 acres.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Vince, while you are right that presently the big farms are producing the bulk of our food, especially the commodities, their practices are not sustainable. Too many so-called external costs are not presently factored in our food prices and what looks like cheap food actually isn't. Pesticides, fertilizers and high water use on those farms are destructive for the environment, which is to say in the long run for us. For example, the USDA is already looking into the consequences of the projected disappearance of the Oglalla water aquifer for food security in the USA and everyone knows about the continuous decline of our pollinator populations. We cannot live off of corn and soybeans alone, and even those despite or rather because of their high yields are getting less and less nutritious per unit.
We need more small farms especially in vicinity of large population centers to also cut down on the long transportation routes from production to consumption, which increase costs and are contributing to pollution.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Klaus .They have been saying that acquirer will be depleted soon for over 30 years. Here in Colorado,we have three acquirers stacked on top of each other. What is depleting them is huge a mounts of developments putting 8 homes to the acre Just south of me that use to be grazing land, thousands of homes have been added with either single wells or huge community wells. North of me, they have graded off bottom land and stuck thousands of hones on what use to be excellent farm lands.

It is pie in the sky thinking that many small farms close to urban areas can produce enough food for big city populations. New York city and Las Angeles combined have more people than the remaining population of the United States. There isn't enough farmland around those cities to grow enough food for them. In California,they have turned crop land into homes. Where is that land being being replaced . It isn't . You can't turn arid desert like Arizona and such into productive crop land without water. That includes small farms of 100 acres or large farms of a few thousand acres, No matter big or small water is required to grow food.

It is not the big framers or ranchers that are depleting the water resource , it is the hungry growing population.What would be unsustainable is millions of small farms trying to feed billions of people. Amish people who practice farming such as you suggest, can barely feed their own family let alone feeding even ten other families. Corm, wheat, oats, other grains, soy beans are the basic nutrition of millions of people. If they are not eating it, cattle are which produces the meat we eat. Although what you suggest is admirable, it cannot feed everyone.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

I guess we have to kill more bears, because one just took out 25+ hives last week. That is a heck of a lot of pollinators.

I believe recent studies shows hive collapse has been caused by another insect or disease, not pesticides


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Just remember there are more trees in the USA than there ever was At anytime in HISTORY. If they don't cut them down they will take over the whole country 60 years ago I could set on top of the high hills and count all the trees that I could see on my fingers Now on the same hill I can't count all the trees there so thick you just count groups of trees. Remember this used to be called the great AMERICAN DESERT Blowing sand for as far as you could see. Setting on top of the high hills you can see hills that are 15+ miles away. My grandmother said she could have walked all the way from Beaver OK to Ainsworth NE and never stepped on one blade of grass, you can't walk 1 mile now without stepping on grass.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Vince, the Ogallala aquifer has been overused widely for many years, more water has been taken out than was replenished, so it is natural that people have warned about that for a long time. To clarify the statistics: The USA presently has a population of 326 million, 24 million of which live in the New York metropolitan area which extends into New Jersey. New York City proper has 8.6 million residents. The Los Angeles area comprises roughly 13 million,when you add the population of both metropolitan areas you get 37 million, that is 11.35 % of the US population. What is true is that most Americans live in urban areas and that even those who live in rural areas largely are not participating in the production of food. My argument is that we need to change that and have many more small farms. Not just for food production, and do not forget, that if properly done, a small farm produces more value per unit of land than a big one, especially if it produces outside the usual range of commodities! My other argument for many more small farms is that a farm is not just a production site but also a homestead. Here in Platte County we have farms of 12 000 acres and more which usually are just run by the family of the owner and maybe two or three employees. Theoretically the same land could be home for 80 families on 150 acre farms, which when producing a wide variety of foods, could be very viable. But instead our agricultural policies have helped larger farms to get larger and have discouraged small farms from staying .
By the way, let's think of a healthier diet than the one that is based on corn, soybeans and meat only.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

It is such a shame that so much fertile ground is under blacktop now. I’ve read that a large percentage of fertilizer goes to lawn care, what a wast. It would be cool to have more smaller farms but reality is very few people want to put the time in it takes to be a farmer\rancher. Feeding morning and night 7 days a week is way to much for most to imagine. So many people feel 40 hours a week is maximum. I feel this is more of the reason for large farms, most do not have the work ethic to make a go of it anymore.


4 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum