Farming, the good-the bad-and the ugly?

Question

I need some additional info on farmers for a project.

I need some good points to farming.

I need some bad.

I need some really bad.

More about the workers rather than the farm. Wages, labor, and cost.

I've been looking online and can't find anything behind it all.

Answer 1

From my youth on a mid-western farm:

GOOD The fresh air and being outdoors experiencing Nature firsthand.

BAD The fiscal unpredictability. Will my crops grow well this year? Will I make money growing them?

VERY BAD There are some EXTREMELY long days that cannot be avoided. Worse yet, many farm workers are injured or killed in accidents on the farm.

Answer 2

Farming:

The good:

We're an agricultural society.  Having agriculture as the basis of our civilization has allowed us to get away from having everyone be a hunter-gatherer.  The great inventors, philosophers, and scientists didn't spend half of each and every day chasing down food.

The bad:

Having agriculture has enabled us to increase our population beyond the natural carrying capacity of the land.  This has resulted in large population centers with attendent pandemic disease, pollution, and other environmental messes.

Agriculture itself has become industrialized, with occasional bouts of soil depletion, erosion, selenium (and other) metal poisoning of the land, rendering it less useful for continued farming.  We also have run-off pollution, in which nutrients move from the farm through the rivers and into the ocean, at each point changing the ecology.

Answer 3

you can't find much because there isn't many real farmers left.  The bad is you spend all this time doing your crops. Tilling disking plowing and then cutting racking and bailing and right now gas prices are so high that it is c**p/ and then you get screwed. a lot of small farmers loose money every year, i know we do .  cattle farming is  Branding, castrating. ear notching vacinating.  a lot of hot long days and never enough hours in the day.

Answer 4

The true family farms have practiced sustainable agriculture for generations. Sustainable agriculture replenishes what it takes ,protects the beauty,and makes sure the land my grandfather took care of will be taken care of ; for my grandson to take care of.

I guess you can look at the large Dairy farms in Okeechobee county Florida that made lake Okeechobee so nutrient laden that all kinds of moss,algae,and aquatic life took off.as the bad.

Even though the farms you read about with labor issues make it sound sensational(that's how they sell newspapers) The number of actual farms in the United States that even hire this help is so minuscule compared to the number of farms and real farmers The thought of it would make you laugh'

I know who toiled in the fields from light to dark it wasn't,t an illegal it was my mom, my dad and us kids just like most of the farms in this country.