With Uncle Sam's help, Americans return to the farm

[xchrom]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46282123/ns/business-retail/

HALLSVILLE, Missouri — Dan Pugh wishes he had a bigger tractor and his wife Laura worries about their chickens in the winter weather. But as new farmers putting down roots in rural Missouri, the Pughs are counting on more rewards than regrets in trading their city lives for the country.

A better quality of food and life are among the factors that caused Dan, 47, to leave a career in sales last year and move Laura, 48, and their two young children to 50-acres of rolling pastureland they call Honey Creek Farm.

The Pughs will plant their first crop of organic spinach and lettuces in the next few weeks on ground they tilled behind the barn they converted into a two-bedroom home. They are shopping for sheep and hogs. And though their first hives of bees mysteriously died, Laura is determined to develop a successful honey operation as well.

"The whole food and farming system is so out of whack," Dan Pugh said. "We want better and we can do something to help other people eat better."

[riderinthestorm]

1. I'd be really interested in how many are still farming 10 years later....

It's brutal, backbreaking work, 7 days/week especially if you have livestock, for 12+ hours/day. There's a reason those 'aging" farmers don't have any children willing to take it on - the kids have all fled and won't come back to that kind of grind. The uncertainty over how much you are going to make each year combined with the certainty that it won't be very much (think upper teens) and with no health insurance in one of the most dangerous occupations in the US....

It will take a lot more than a low cost loan to get some people to stay in this biz

[Ron Green]

2. U.S. farm policy ought to have a myriad of incentives

to family and small farming, including free health care. Price supports for organic crops, free soil amendments, interest-free loans - all of it ought to be tied to biodiversity and good husbandry. Supports for big corporate monoculture growers should not exist.

[riderinthestorm]

3. +1 and a pm kick... nt