Tumbledown Farm .9 Acres (give or take an acre or two)

Dear Mr. President, While you are considering ways to create jobs by stimulating small business (both the creation of new businesses and new hiring by existing small businesses), please do not forget the sector of the economy that will produce the biggest bang in hiring (or working and producing, which isn't necessarily the same thing) for the smallest buck. I think you could more or less wipe out unemployment with a small investment in small farms. You would at the same time also begin to tackle universal health care by promoting the local production of fruits and vegetables everywhere in the U.S., to be sold straight from the farm to friends and neighbors "unprocessed." A diverse, locally grown food supply would multiply and be readily available to local eaters.

Consider these two well-known facts about two farms in the U.S. a century apart:
-In 1910 there were 6,366,000 farms comprising roughly 878,508,000 acres for an average of 138 acres per farm. (In 1900 there were fewer farms and the average farm size in acres was larger.) Most of these farms were diversified, with a mix of plant crops and animals, using to good advantage most every "waste" product on the farm itself. This was real recycling before it had the cachet and fancy name.
-By 2007 there were only 2,204,950 farms comprising a whopping 921,460,000 acres for an average of 418 acres per farm. Most of these farms are monocultures. They consume mightily and waste mightily.

-On the 1910 farm there were 13,523,000 workers, 3/4 of whom were family and 1/4 of whom were hired from off the farm.
-But on the 1999 farm there were only 3,103,000 workers, a little less than 2/3 of whom were family and an little more than 1/3 hired from off the farm. (In 2000 the total number of farm workers was 2,953,000. In 2007, there were 807,000 farm workers hired from off the farm.)

Sources: U.S. Agricultural Census of 1900, Jack Runyon's 2001 Rural America Farm Labor Report (USDA) .pdf, USDA's "A History of American Agriculture (1910), USDA data and statistics (home page).

Now consider this: there are roughly 15,000,000 unemployed workers today. (Your very own U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

Want to decrease unemployment by 10,000,000, Mr. President? Want to cut the number of unemployed workers by 2/3? Why not consider a "back to the farm" jobs program that creates more, smaller farms? Your wife has the right idea by starting that garden at the White House. I imagine there is enough space there to produce more than $1,000 in agricultural products next year. That's a farm!...right in the heart of Washington, D.C, at our house, the White House, in our backyard. I know it can be done. Our church raised almost 4 times that amount this year with a garden of only an acre. Here where we live in Indianapolis you could start your program by providing low interest or no-interest loans with loan repayment to start after 3 years. One of the most difficult aspects of farming, as with any business, is finding the start up capital. Your program could provide the necessary cash for people who want to start farming to purchase a vacant lot in the city, thus also eliminating absentee landlords and blight and halting the slide in property values. These new farmers would also need the cash to acquire the necessary stock, and would need to pour in the necessary work to convert the lot to a raspberry or blackberry plot, a vegetable garden or hazelnut grove, and then wait (while working) for the Good Lord to bless their efforts and our investment. It wouldn't be easy. It would be work. But then, after the 3-year investment period (or maybe it would be ten years or so for an investment in an orchard of slower maturing fruit trees), the government could be repaid, a little each year, maybe even with a little interest. Such a move would make up for the government's misguided "get big or get out" farm policies during the last half of the twentieth century. In the meanwhile, the nation goes back to work as a nation of responsible farmers and small landholding landowners. But of course, this requires the sort of long-range thinking and long-term investment with slow growth and modest returns that governments and businesses--and, let's admit it, individuals--no longer care to do.

That's a pity! What a better world might result if we only would.

Sincerely,
Your Local Tumbledown Farmer

P.S., in case you missed it, the definition of a farm today is "any establishment from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were sold or would normally be sold during the year." That's not a high bar to reach, especially now that the USDA has removed references to acreage owned. So, even my .9 acres might count!