Farming as a career?

Cuauhtemoc

Anyone have any thoughts of Farming as a career?
Was thinking of becoming an organic farmer. Teagasc do a 2 year qualification for it.
Im not looking at becoming a millionaire just like to be able to make a living from it and i'm in the early days of researching it. Just looking for anyone's thoughts on the amount of land required for a viable income or is it doable as a career.
All thoughts appreciated.

Regards,

C

djmarkus

My dad was a dairy farmer for years, he got out of it because it was impossible to make a living from at todays milk prices, the only people making money are the big farmers with about 500 acres of land, no real room for small farmers anymore.

GoneShootin

The problem with organic farmer is to sustain a profit from it means a contract with a supermarket of some kind, and an agreement to supply someone with your goods.

But at least you have picked a realist profit turning area of farming. As dj said above Dairy farming has gone down the toilet and Tillage/Dry stock farming really only applies if you already have a large quantity of land.

pickarooney

I'm stating the obvious I suppose, but the amount of land required depends largely on what you intend to produce - livestock, grain, vegetables...
The smaller the plot of land, the more specialised you'll need to go. An acre might be plenty for aubergines but pretty useless for dairy farming. For it to be worthwhile, I imagine you'd need to concentrate on time/labour-intensive produce with a high unit resale price. Following culinary trends of vegetables can be important in gauging your market.

Cuauhtemoc

Crop farming primarily.
Wouldn't be interested in dairy or livestock. Except maybe free range chickens for eggs. Still at the early stages of planning this. Haven't handed in notice or anything, if i was to go ahead with it, it would probably be next some time next year.
Is farming at all sustainable if crop subsidies were abolished. As i feel they someday will.
As regard in demand/high price crops i haven't researched that yet, maybe 4 crops over 15 - 20 acres(digs deep into pockets) was what i was thinking.

GoneShootin

Crops as in barley/beet etc? Most smaller famers always have a secondary system in place (such as dry stock for example) given that our weather normally means unknown profits for crops, and so makes it hard to plan any budget ahead

Cuauhtemoc

As i said early days..but it would be mix crops so not to be too dependent on any one. I'd have to decide the mix on the quality of soil, the rotation of the crops and obviously whats a good earner(and other factors i've yet to learn yet ). I'd like a mix between veg, wheat etc.
I'd like to go into this as it appeals to me but if it wasn't financially viable i'd have to look elsewhere for a career change. But i'd be very disapointed if i couldn't get into this.