Booker T. and the Pizza King

(Page 5 of 5)

July/August 1988
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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4. The farm shall provide year-round, full-time employment. You invite disaster, Whatley says, if you think you're going to work at this business part-time or as a Saturday-and-Sunday farmer. This is a fulltime job.

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5. The farm shall be located wisely. It should front on a hard-surfaced road within a radius of 40 miles (people don't like to drive farther than that) of a population center of at least 50,000. The farm should also have an excellent source of water for irrigation.

6. The farm shall produce only what the clients demand—and nothing else. Whatley thinks many farmers grow what they like to grow and then try to find buyers.

7. The farm shall shun middlemen and middlewomen like the plague. Normally, farmers get a small share of a household's food dollar, since harvesting costs—picking, washing, sorting, packing and hauling—make up about 50% of the retail price of food. With this system, the farmer sets his or her own price.

8. The farm shall consist of compatible, complementary crop components that earn a minimum of $3,000 per acre annually. Whatley believes many can earn much more than this, and if a crop isn't earning at least $3,000, it should be dropped.

9. The farm shall be "weatherproof —at least as far as possible—with both drip and sprinkler irrigation to ward off droughts and late spring and early fall frosts.

10. The farm shall be covered with a minimum of $250,000 ($1 million is better) worth of liability insurance. Whatley says that city folks can be a little dumb sometimes about country life, but most of them do know how to sue, and he advises that pick-your-own farmers protect their investment well.

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