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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

> The hours suck, the risk is high and the pay is low. If there wasn't such a strong emotional bond we'd pay a lot more for our food just to get people to do it.

Are you sure about that? Median farm household income is way higher than normal median household income [1] and farmers get a huge amount of subsidies at the state and federal level.

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-sector-inc...

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You need to really know the stats to understand them.

Big Midwest corn operations are like oil. They rake it in when prices are high and crash hard when they fall.

Smaller family operations from 100-1000 acres are all dying or dead now. In the 1970s, a 50 acre dairy operation was a viable business. Today, forget it.

That would explain average income being high, but not median. It's also household income, not corporate.

Corporations come in and buy farms that are underwater and then lease them to their previous owners. So farmers are working "their land", but aren't working for themselves and they have rent payments to make.

> In recent years, slightly more than half of farm households have had negative farm income and therefore rely on off-farm income to support their well-being

1) A huge number of farmers deliberately run their farms to try to show a net loss for tax reasons. 2) You're going to have to explain what off-farm jobs all these farmers have that provide them with 3-4x the median income in the places where they live, but somehow they have really rough lives because they own a farm.

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