At the end of the day, farmland is going to earn a similar basic return to whatever other capital asset, and while farming labour isn't unskilled the amount of people raised in it means it earns like it is.

Nobody who says this is picturing manhandling half-dead battery chickens, and it's usually someone white who isn't going to move to the mountains of Ethiopia to farm subsistence crops and cocoa. That pretty much leaves something land-intensive.

I did talk to someone on Lemmy who made it work with ranching, but ranching is definitely not a good earner right now, and a lot of people are leaving the industry. Modern crop farming seems a lot like a desk job on wheels. Mainly, I think people just want space and fresh air, and have no idea what rural life is actually like.

[–] Alenalda@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The goal I had for my first vegetable garden was to produce enough food to last a month. I was able to achieve that for under 50$ in parts. More recently I've been getting into fruit trees which has been a little more expensive because I'm not doing to grafting myself. You don't have to feed the entire neighborhood yourself, and will like 30min of effort a day you can have more than enough for your own needs.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you're not eating anything else, but still have a year-round growing season, it takes an acre or two for modern agriculture to feed a person. That's a lot by city standards, but not in general (it was more like 60 in pre-modern times). It's basically what the Ethiopians mentioned are doing, plus the cocoa so they can have things that don't grow on trees, as well.

and will like 30min of effort a day you can have more than enough for your own needs.

Mountains of human experience suggests it takes a lot more effort than that. Have you had to deal with pests, drought or disease yet?

You might still come in under 8 hours a day, but then you add in the cash crops... Again, this is something only white people generations away from subsistence farming seem to think will be easy.

[–] Alenalda@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not saying you need to grow enough to feed a village on 30min a day. After I got everything prepared I water every other day if there's no rain and spot weed when I feel like it. My goal was enough for like 50 meals from a small garden and anyone can easily supplement their diet without that much effort. Hobby vegetable farming and industrial agriculture are two different things and as food insecurity worsens and costs go up, it'll be a valuable skill to have. For me it takes more work to preserve the food than it does to grow it.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago

Sure, absolutely it's a great skill to have just in case. Ditto for preservation.

[–] AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yup. My extended family is farmers. They got out of livestock decades ago because there was no profit at the scale they were willing to do it in and animals smell terrible at (abusive) scale. Corn and soybeans, they had a contract with a major company for sweetcorn last I heard.

I love the idea of an air conditioned tractor cab that's mostly run by GPS and lets me sit around and listen to podcasts while babysitting the tractor, but I don't want to live in Bumfuck Iowa so I didn't go into farming.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 day ago

And there's other babysitting-type jobs out there, if that's what you want. Actually that's one sector poised to grow a lot do to AI, because AI needs hella babysitting.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's always a balance of what you can afford, what you want to do, and what your market can bare. You may love raising chickens, but eggs will almost never pay off. I love hot peppers. But I can't get by growing just that. It is skilled and complicated for sure.

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't know where you live but round here if you want to raise chickens you gotta first buy some chicken quota (I am serious).

So you are in the hole before a bird lays its first egg.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm in Japan. It's not worth it on my scale to even try. I do plan to get chickens for our eggs (and bonus bug eating and compost helping), but otherwise I'm just in the veg business. I have full English support and website which helps me find my market

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So do you have a kind of mixed farm + social media presence thing going then?

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago

Kinda. I don't use most social media, which I suppose is not super helpful