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 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 here 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.

[–] AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 1 points 9 hours 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 9 hours 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 1 points 9 hours 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 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 1 points 7 hours ago

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