Nowadays, for many people farming has turned into a business. Full stop.
Farm operators work, people grow, people risk, people reap the fruits of their labour. They take days off and go away for vacations. When the operation grows big enough, they hire others to work for them. When it grows even bigger, they hire managers to help them to efficiently run the business.
Usually, big farmers still have their own prerogative, some special tasks that they do themselves, such as running a combine, and deciding on what to seed or when and where to sell. Not that there are no other people to do it, but it keeps them connected to what usually was started by their fathers or grandfathers.
It may sound pretty similar to running a family farm as it used to be some 50 years ago, but there is actually a big difference.
Business is business. It’s math, mechanics, strategy, maybe just a bit of gambling sometimes, and a game of opportunities. Those who have a good nose for new opportunities usually get much further in this game. Business goes by laws of the market and is affected by the professionalism of those running it. It all equally matters when you are running a traditional family farm, but there are some big underlying differences. And I see family farming the way it used to be as a completely different type of occupation.
I was introduced to family farming a few years ago now. And since I didn’t have a clue what family farms are, I first looked at it as just a business. I wanted to understand how processes work, I wanted to see the tactics and strategy, I wanted to know how things are balanced, what motivates people to work and how they build the growth into their operation.
In the beginning, I was asking questions, but they were left unanswered. Then I just got involved with the process to understand it from inside out. And soon all I could see was a lifestyle. Even though my family was working really hard at the farm started by their father, they weren’t actually working in the way most people on the planet understand working.
They were just living. They hardly know what to do with the time off and don’t see it as motivation to get something done. They take opportunities as they go, but not always do they strategize towards them. They put their lives into work, but they don’t notice how much they actually do.
For many of you who grew up at the farms, my frustration may sound amusing or weird. But with many generations of a big city background, all I’ve seen before was either nine to six, five days a week type of work, when people with more or less enthusiasm attend their workplaces to do what they know and sometimes even like to get paid and to get some satisfaction from utilizing their skills and talents; or businessmen and women.
The latter ones would start doing what they know and/or like to have a bit more freedom than a fixed schedule, but mainly to “make money” (the saying created by Americans, which still amazes me as it does sharply describe my understanding of core business motivation) to live the life they want, whatever it may mean.
But never before had I met people who would work really hard from dawn to dusk for the sake of work. As an outsider I could think of my farmers feeding people, working for the good of others, putting their lives into the common progress. But I bet none of them ever thought much of it. Unlike many other farmers who chose to turn their farms into business, people around me kept living their lifestyle.
It took me a long time to see and understand the core of family farming, and only recently I realized that there was another big difference between business and lifestyle approaches. And that is emotions. The family farms are threaded with emotions.
They are everywhere. Verbal communication, which often is the base of most businesses, here is often lacking. It's all about sensing and knowing. The workloads farmers take upon themselves often are quite intimidating and impossible to catch up with, even within the family, which pushes everybody to the limit.
The roles are distributed across the family almost intuitively (at least that’s how it looks from the outside). So there are often no rules on the ground, just expectations. And since most farmers are not mind readers, those expectations often turn sour causing open or hidden conflicts.
The level of the stress, created by weather, fluctuating markets, responsibility loads, unexpected technical issues, and other circumstances farmers have no say in, is always pretty high, but usually remains unaddressed. On top of that, there are family bonds, strong care and unspoken love, that I've hardly seen anywhere else.
Emotions exist everywhere, but they are different within the family. And I believe that at family farms they are often invisible, but core components.
I still can’t tell that I totally understand how a family farm works. But now I know that hard work and love for what you do, spiced up with an emotional mix, make this tough lifestyle unique and very beautiful in its own, very natural manner.
