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Comment by nsnick | Hacker News Reader

Farmers that are killing themselves grow commodity products. The people who are leaving corporate jobs to become farmers are wanting to farm specialty products like organic products or high end products like mushrooms, flowers, wine, or specialty cheeses. The problem is that the farmers who grow commodity crops live in areas that are not suited to growing specialty crops (the middle of the country) so they can't switch. Specialty crops are mostly grown on the west coast and the east coast where there is better soil and in some cases more water think Central Valley, Willamette Valley, Hudson River Valley. https://modernfarmer.com/2013/08/cashing-in-specialty-crops-...

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I also expect commodity farmer have significant debt and illiquid assets (namely all the machinery necessary for large-scale commodity farming as well as related lands), and most likely contracts with agro distributors to fulfil.

Regardless of soil suitability, you can't just shuck off a farm worth (tens of) millions, debt on the same scale (average debt-to-assets as of 2017 is ~13% and I would expect the farmers featured here are way worse) and throw out decades of experience to try and grow mushrooms, it's unlikely that it would make your clients and creditors happy. Even less so when you're in your 50s.

It's not just what they grow, but how they grow it and sell it. The soil on many mid-country farms is bad because of years of growing with chemical pesticides and fertilizers and bad practices, something that is potentially reversible with alternate growing methods.

Commodity growers on huge farms distribute their food into large grocers potentially all over the world, to be sold at the lowest possible price. They must maximize yields at any cost to make money. Specialty growers sell into farmer's markets, CSA's, etc, at a much higher cost for the goods. This is why many of them are in coastal and affluent areas, where the buyers are willing to pay considerably more for local, fresh produce that has been grown organically.

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