this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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So, how soon will they be back when they realize farming is an order of magnitude more stressful than IT work?
I think that really depends on both the IT role as well as the type and scale of farm. If someone has a really stressful workplace in IT but makes enough money to buy a farm and semi-retire, it could just be that having the farm supplements their food and doesn't need to turn a profit. It's very different to, say, a subsistence farmer or one who has to make a lot to pay for mortgage, retirement, etc.
Honestly when I imagine someone in IT getting into farming, I imagine this. It's really an acreage with a garden and some animals, but they call it a farm, and aren't really interested in the actual farms.
That, or they do a hipster-bespoke-organic goat farm, which lasts a few years before they run it into the ground because they're expecting it to be easy or work like IT. To anyone reading this, I would urge you to explore a significant but less radical change first - there's plenty of jobs not like coding.
I mean, a lot of people do jump in with little or no research and try to spend their way out of problems. That is definitely not good, particularly when animals and animal welfare is involved.
I mean... are we gatekeeping farms now? I'm trying to feed my family and hopefully have enough to sell (starting next year, anyway; we moved here too late this year and I'm still learning my land). In my case, no animals for now (though chickens are in the cards for next year and maybe we'll do something else the following year).
I do plan to commercially farm, though I also plan to keep my day job for the foreseeable future. Market gardeners with a good market can make quite a lot off of the ~5000sqm of farmland like I have, but there's no market that's going to be good for that in rural Japan. The best case scenario for being commercially successful in that way would be to network with chefs in the bigger cities, but I have neither the talent nor reputation for that (nor would I want to commit to that until at least another year or two when I can confirm stability). I do have friends who run a restaurant who are willing to pay for some of what I am growing if it works out, and another lead in the nearest big city (~1 hour away), but that's it.
I'm outside nearly every single day preparing, cultivating, sowing, harvesting, etc. and treat it like a job. I just harvested ~15kg of potatoes this morning (literally one of the first things I did when moving here was get those in the ground) and a few kilos of green onions. Am I not at least a part-time farmer? The local government says I am, in any case (buying registered farmland in Japan is a process, lemme tell ya).
Kind of. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's not quite the same thing. People I've met like that are really just rich retirees who want the cachet of being "farmers". If you successfully do subsistence that's not you.
The farmers where I live have got to be the most gatekeepy group I've ever met, BTW. I'm from a non-farming branch of an established farming family, and I get the cold shoulder - in general, not just on agricultural things.
Do it. I had a backyard flock, they're pretty easy to manage on small scales, they'll eat many kinds of scraps and pests as a supplement, and they make more eggs than you personally can use very quickly. Do your homework first, of course, but it sounds like you get that. Honestly the most difficult part is keeping away predators, if they're in the area.
And when people make the bespoke-organic thing work, aggressive and skilled networking/sales is how they do it. It's just a really difficult, expensive way to make food, and people aren't going to appreciate that for the exact reason they think it's NBD as a career plan B. If you want to sell that stuff and make a profit you've got to be selling something else more intangible.
In Japan it might be different, though. I can't say.
I bet. I'm guessing you must be ethnically Japanese for it to even be possible. If not, I can only imagine the local scuttlebutt going on about you.
I left IT about a decade ago to farm 3000 acres and 300 cows.
It is very much not retirement living.
Good for you. You're a counterexample then, I acknowledge that.
He didn’t say he needed to make money farming.
Depends on how much subsidization they're getting
That's when they turn the farm into a themed hotel that is only open during select holidays.
I don't know about that, but it's not a "free lunch" and it's not the same as just looking at pretty scenery.
From a North American perspective, besides the absurd entry cost, it seems fairly similar to a being a long-haul truck driver or plumber. Simple, repetitive work that doesn't follow any predictable schedule. Physical arduousness depends on what you're growing and if you're going to hire scared brown people to do it for you.
You also get to live in an area that's close to nothing, surrounded by neighbors that think you're an elitist city prick and will never respect you.
I have multiple spreadsheets, have to monitor and adjust to a lot of different conditions, have to actively monitor pests and plant growth and react to those (and predict for the next year and be proactive), and a bunch of other stuff. Farming tends to very much follow a predictable schedule insofaras you know in any given season what you will be doing and what you need to be getting ready for.
Okay, maybe not simple. Repetitive, though. I see you guys driving back and forth across a field all day.
With predictability I meant more like you have no idea when it will be wet or dry (for example), and everything depends on that. Sometimes you have to work hard pretty much as long as the sun is up, or at least that's how it was in my family's farming days. They would even eat on their tractors while they kept going. Other times it's too muddy to do anything.
Also, “have taken up farming” is a saying for “leaving IT” in general
It's such a different type of stress (and job), people can find fulfilment in either of those while feeling overwhelmed by the other.