It seems like it'd be hard, but somehow organic farmers seem to be doing it.

Below is the most current listing I could find regarding acres and revenues for certified organic production in the US 2016 data and that number has been rising for some time.

Note that 5 million acres is about 1.2 % of the roughly 400 million crop acres in the USA. There are about 950 million acres in farms but a very large portion of that total is grassland and or wooded land.
I have worked with several organic producers (farm not just garden produce) and only two were not dairy farms so I have limited experience with just raising crops. One of the issues with organic farming I dealt with is that with not using chemicals, tillage became more of a practice to control weeds and that meant that the ground was open or bare more unless cover crops were utilized. Oats planted in the fall worked quite well as one could leave the growth for erosion control and the frost killed the oats so the producer did not have to deal with killing the rye or wheat the next spring. Dairy farmers could utilize the spring forage and thus had more options.
A lot of the organic commodity producers had more difficulty finding and keeping good markets for feeds like organic corn, oats, barley etc. as many dairy producers did not make much money when paying for organic grain and protein at the levels that many wanted to get. The big issue for organic farmers in our area was getting enough land. Most landlords rented land out on 3-5 year leases as that fit many crop rotations and if it took 2-3 years to get the ground certified and you lost the land due to competition you lost money. That meant that many of the farms were limited in production of crops or milk and thus were not nearly as profitable as they hoped they would be. However most of them were former conventional farmers and many had capitalized heavily and even though they were not using nearly the machinery or other facilities they still had costs and loans to pay and most of them were not able to get the production levels needed per cow to cover those costs.

Bryce

The way I see it more time will tell if a monster is being made. Which is out of my control. What aggravates me most is that used to we had $5 beans and a $25 herbicide bill. Then comes along a patent on roundup beans and with a few dollars per acre for roundup you have a good clean crop. $50 to $60 a bag was steep but seemed worth it. Then the patent runs out and they come up with patent #2. But now mother nature has been been making her own GMO's and now we have resistant weeds to roundup. So now you still pay a big price for the seed + roundup + some other either old or new herbicides to get the pigweed and marestail and others. So we are about back to same point of weed control before the roundup ready day and the chemical company's own us a little more. Of course you can go with Libertylink which should work for a while. Maybe the big seed company's can buy out the big computer patents ( whom you rent from a couple years at a time) and they can can have you producing 100 bu soybeans on old buckshot land. And why should the farmer care about profits, we have to feed the world, so plant fence row to fence row and maybe we can demise another 50% of the family farms as in the late 70's.


Maybe when I wake up it was just a bad dream.

There aren't many family farms left in my area.

I have not read every single post in this thread! I do stock heirloom seeds at my house, but I know within a shadow of a doubt the world would starve to death without GMO's (modified and engineered)!!!!!

X2 Diggerman I agree with you.

No way would I go back. I haven’t had to handle root worm chemicals for almost 15 years. Our farm is more efficient, safer, and environmentally friendly because of them.

Pennsylvania is pretty big into organic and non GE production.

I'm just really really really glad there are farmers cause it's easier to buy a tomato than keep those darn bugs off mine when we try to grow them ourselves. A loaf of bread is cheap when I consider how my ancestors had to "round up" theirs. Milk too. Man, get up and tend those stock day and night and day and night. May God continue to bless our farmers and what and how they do it. Forever and ever. Amen.

Oh and,
Trying to disparage a farmer who tills and tolls all day every day as commodity prices are really low >>>>>> is a really tough analogy. Why?
Because there's this certain group of men and women we know that set traps and catch critters >>>>>>> as low low lower fur prices remain in place. Why?
Cause they love it.

Thanks.

Yes.

I just wish more people would drink milk instead of that unhealthy soda pop.