Why Are American Farms Disappearing? (77 Per Day, and the Tractor That Explains It)

The other day our friend Rick got a new tractor.

Well, new to him.

It's a 2000 New Holland 7610S, which is a purpose built 95 horsepower hay tractor, and it's going to be our hay mowing rig from now on.

This thing is….amazing.

It sounds so good. Like unbelievably good if you're into that kind of thing.

And best of all, it is so simple. Every single thing on it is mechanical. That means it's fixable.

I know I get on about this all the time. Some of you might even be tired of hearing about how great trucks and tractors and music USED to be.

But I promise you, the serviceability of a tractor matters to you and your family. It's also one of the structural reasons American farms are disappearing at 77 per day.

Why are American farms disappearing? 77 per day, actually

The non-stop increase in price and complexity of the machines that farms depend on is an important factor in the stat I brought up the other day…..

That America has lost 150,000 farms this decade. Roughly 77 per day.

When trucks and tractors are simple and fixable and affordable, farmers can afford them and fix them and keep them for decades.

Sure this is a tautology, but it's an important one.

There is a certain level of inefficiency built into small scale farming.

We do not need a tractor or a truck 24/7, or even every day. These are not fully utilized assets.

But when we need them, we need them, and we need them NOW. It's not an industry that lends itself to a quick rental when you need to do a job.

Even sharing stuff can be kind of hard, since everyone in an area is working with the same weather windows and timing.

So when the cost of owning and operating and maintaining these things becomes untenable, the natural trend is towards bigger farms. Toward operations that can utilize equipment for more hours per year, to work more acreage, and thus can afford to replace it when the complicated electrical or emissions systems implode in 10 years.

Why small farms matter (even when they're "inefficient")

Now, bucolic individualist small farm inefficiency is not without its problems. Everyone going it alone isn't magical. We believe strongly in cooperation.

But it also has its benefits, especially compared to the corporate-industrial alternative.

The tendency to care a little more about your product when your own name is on it, when the people eating it are your neighbors, and when your livelihood depends on quality and making customers happy enough to come back, counts for a lot.

(For the longer story on why the "patience and investment" model produces better beef in the first place, here's how long it takes to raise grass-fed beef.)

"Get Big or Get Out": 55 years in

This has been proven out btw. We're 80 years into aggressively consolidating and complicating and industrializing agriculture. It's been 55ish years since Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture told farmers to "Get Big or Get Out."

And how's that going for us?

Food tastes worse. It's less nutrient dense. We have to use more and new chemicals. The dust bowl appears to be coming back. There are flesh eating maggots.

Oh, and now even those low food prices (the singular benefit of industrial ag) are climbing. Because the earth is not a microchip. You can't get endlessly more efficient. Eventually you rob the soil too much and yields drop.

So now we get the worst of all worlds: industrial food that's both gross and expensive.

Oh, and they aren't making more land. So when that "farms closed" number gets to 500k, you can probably guess what's going to happen to quality, price, and nutrition. Consolidation has kinda not worked out great in *checks notes* every other industry ever.

This isn't all because tractors and trucks are complicated and expensive, but it's certainly a factor.

(For more on how "industrial food that's both gross and expensive" shows up in your grocery cart, here's why grocery store beef is watery and who's profiting from it.)

What to do about it

Okay. Rant over.

I'll spare you the rest and get to the point I always get to, because I am a friendly internet Grass-Fed Beef Salesman: the best thing you can do about consolidated, complicated, increasingly gross industrial food is stop eating it.

Opt out of the machine, and choose to work with people who do things the right, old school way and put their names and reputation on every box.

We make that easy. You can reserve a Beef Share with a free chest freezer here.

P.S. Knicks by a million.