The Real Reason People Don't Start Farms

The US used to have a way for poor young people to work their way up to owning a farm. Now, the way you become a farmer is... mostly just be wealthy. That's it. And that explains a lot about the food system, and the US's rural economic problems. This video talks about how the "agricultural ladder" used to work. It had a lot of problems, but there's still a lot we can learn from it. And there's a lot we can learn from taking farm history seriously. Today's political & economic problems have all happened before- in farm country. There's real lessons in farm history, it's not just something to feel nostalgic about. Find me at: Patreon:   / farmtotaber   TikTok:   / sarahtaber_nc     / sarahtabernc   IG:   / sarahtabernc   Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sarahtaber.b... Twitter: https://x.com/SarahTaber_bww Substack: https://substack.com/@farm2taber Chapters: 00:00 Why the farm-curious rarely become farmers 00:42: Financial realities of starting a farm 5:21 Who can afford to buy land? 11:29 The Agricultural Ladder: how poor Americans used to work their way up to farm ownership 13:37: History deep dive 25:05 How the agricultural ladder stopped working 28:52 Why don't we talk about about this part of US history? 30:56 Why knowing our farm history matters Sources: The Farm Bloc. Wesley McCune, 1943. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc. Developing Dependence, Encountering Resistance: The Historical Ethnoecology of Farming in the Missouri Ozarks. Brian Campbell, 1998. (This article has a real BS-sounding title, but it has a GREAT deep dive on how the Farm Bureau was set up to benefit the wealthiest farmers.) https://web.archive.org/web/202302260... Henry A. Wallace's Turn Toward the New Deal, 1921-1924. Richard S. Kirkendall. The Annals of Iowa, 49(3):221-239. https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/annals-of-... Possession and Power: The Legal Culture of Tenancy in the United States, 1800-1920. Adam Wolkoff, 2015. https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/... The 4-H Harvest: Sexuality and the State in Rural America. 2016. Gabriel Rosenberg. University of Pennsylvania Pres. The Rise and Fall of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Arkansas. 2018. James D. Ross. The University of Tennessee Press. #farm #farming #farmlife #farminglife #agriculture #agriculturelife #agriculturefacts #agriculturefarming #history #ushistory #americanhistory #rural #rurallife #rurallifestyle #youngfarmers #farmer #farmers #farmerstory #farmerlife #farmerslife #farmerstruggle #ruralliving #ruraleconomy #ruraldevelopment #foodsystems #career #careergrowth #sustainableliving #sustainablefarming #sustainable #sustainableagriculture #sustainabledevelopment #sustainablegardening #sustainability #regenerativeagriculture