Food movement forgets one important element

Remember the song mothers don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys?  Well now farmers are singing the same tune, "Don't let your children grow up to be farmers".  In an adverse cultural change in the current food movement there is one important piece that is being overlooked, the farmer.  Crunched in between slim margins, farmers markets, Big Farms and making a living wage, almost 98% of all family farms are operating in the red, often only propped up by government subsidies to keep them afloat, but still barely making ends meet.  Dealing with the norms of life, health care, education and the mortgage and taxes, most are struggling and often living below the poverty level.

While our approach at Zombie Jac's is not farming, it has led to the concept of farming as part of the overall business model, to be considered.  Our focus is food product creation and the concept of farming comes from the need to make a quality product featuring local produce in the product as well as keeping cost at bay.  On average it takes us about 1 lb. of FRESH habanero peppers for the base of our habanero hot sauce to create 15 5 oz bottles.  Habaneros are grown only in a few areas of the US and Mexico commercially and typically you can only order habanero powder or dried habaneros and in our product the end quality suffers not to mention that same 1 lb. of habaneros can cost as much as $30 to $80 to get in New York.  Right there that would require us to sell the sauce for almost $20 a bottle just to break even (once we get the product to market).  On the flip side I can grow almost 10lbs. of habaneros in New York for about $30 or less depending on if I plant seedlings or start from seed.  That already starts to make dollars and sense!

Read the following article and see what the farmers are really saying about the hype and look at the realization of what and were the real damage and dangers are.

Happy gardening, farming and eating!

Don't Let your Children grow up to be farmers.

From left, Josiah Venter, Noah Patrone-Werdiger and Toby Fischer remove rocks at Ro-Jo Farms in Bethany, Conn. CreditLili Holzer-Glier for The New York Times