The New York Times published an interesting article Saturday on the growth of small farms in recent years: Farm Living (Subsidized by a Job Elsewhere).  The article, in a nutshell, reports the fact that the number of small farms in the U.S. is growing again in recent years after decades of declining numbers.  The diversity of folks operating farms is also increasing.  The unfortunate catch is that it's very difficult to make a living as a small farmer and, for this reason, many small farmers have off-farm jobs.

I often fantasize about having a hobby farm some day . . . and I envision it as a hobby farm for two reasons.  First, I really, really love my present occupation and see myself continuing to do the work I do for a few more decades—but I'd be happy to do it part-time, rather than full time.  Second, as this article reports and as I know from my relationships with some local farmers, it's incredibly hard to make a living as a farmer and I don't want to take the pay cut.  It's this second point that's unfortunate.  Because I love my present occupation so much, I'm not directly effected by this second point.  But those who do want to make a living farming should be able to make a comfortable living farming . . . and our national agricultural policies need to be changed to make this possible.  For example, we need to end subsidies to mega corn farms . . . subsidies that undermine our entire agricultural system by fueling the growth of already-huge farms that qualify for the subsidies and making it difficult for small farmers (who want to grow food for people, instead of corn for cars and cows) to compete in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, I have little faith that the Obama administration's face of "change" in the field of agricultural policy—Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa and now U.S. Secretary of Agriculture—has much interest in ending subsidies to the agri-corn interests that run politics in his home state.  Surprise me, Sec. Vilsack . . . surprise me.