Questions to Ask Farmers

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   What did you pick today, and what has been in storage?

   At a market stall this is the friendliest way to ask the important question. Growers answer it happily and in detail. Resellers answer it generally, and the change in specificity is easy to hear.

2. 2

   Do you grow everything on this table?

   Many stalls legitimately supplement with produce from neighbours, and most will say so if asked plainly. What matters is whether the answer is offered readily or arrives after a pause and a qualification.

3. 3

   What is the crop that actually pays the bills?

   Every farm has one or two enterprises carrying the rest, and it is often not the thing they are known for. The answer reorganises everything else you hear about how the farm is run and what the risks are.

4. 4

   How many acres, and how much of it do you own?

   Renting rather than owning changes every long term decision: whether you build soil, plant perennials, invest in irrigation, or improve buildings. A tenant farmer on a one year lease farms differently and has to.

5. 5

   How did you come to be farming this land?

   Inherited, married into, bought, leased, or started from nothing are five different financial situations. The answer tells you about debt load, about freedom to change direction, and usually about the family in the background.

6. 6

   What is in season right now that people walk straight past?

   This is the question growers most enjoy, because everyone asks for the same four things. You will get a recommendation, a cooking method, and a much better conversation than a question about tomatoes in July.

7. 7

   How do you handle weeds and pests?

   This is a better question than asking whether they are organic, which is about certification rather than practice. Many small farms follow organic methods without paying to certify, and some certified operations spray approved products routinely.

8. 8

   Are you certified anything, and was it worth doing?

   Certification costs money and paperwork and pays off mainly in wholesale channels. A farmer selling directly to you may have decided their customers know them well enough, which is a reasonable answer and a revealing one.

9. 9

   What does your year look like, month by month?

   This turns an abstract idea of farming into a schedule: seeding under lights in February, transplanting in May, the long grind of harvest, the paperwork winter. It is also the fastest way to understand why they look tired in August.

10. 10

    Which month is the hardest?

    The answer is rarely the one an outsider guesses, and it is often about cash flow rather than labour. Spring, when everything has been spent and nothing is selling yet, is a common and unglamorous answer.

11. 11

    Who else works here, and how do you find them?

    Labour is the binding constraint on most farms. Answers about family, seasonal crews, visa programmes, or doing it all themselves tell you the real scale of the operation better than acreage does.

12. 12

    What did the weather do to you this year?

    Every farmer has an answer and most are specific about dates. Ask what they did in response, since the adaptation is more interesting than the complaint and shows how much slack the operation has.

13. 13

    Where does your income come from besides this market?

    Wholesale accounts, restaurants, a CSA, farm stands, agritourism, and off farm jobs all carry different margins and demands. Direct sales look profitable per unit and cost an enormous amount of time to make.

14. 14

    How do you set your prices?

    Ask this respectfully and you will usually get a straight answer about costs, about what the market down the road charges, and about what people will actually pay. It is also the polite way to stop yourself haggling.

15. 15

    What equipment could you not manage without, and what breaks most?

    Machinery answers reveal the scale and the age of the operation, and repairs are a large hidden cost. Small farms often run decades old equipment kept alive by one person who can fix it.

16. 16

    What have you stopped growing, and why?

    The discontinued crops carry the lessons: a pest that arrived, a price that collapsed, a labour requirement that could not be met, a buyer who went out of business. This is where you learn what the farm has survived.

17. 17

    What has changed about farming here since you started?

    Land prices, development pressure, the number of farms left nearby, weather patterns, what customers want. Older farmers give long answers and they are usually the most substantial part of the conversation.

18. 18

    What do customers ask that misunderstands the work?

    Farmers field the same handful of misconceptions every weekend and rarely get invited to correct them. Ask, and expect an answer about prices, about pesticides, or about how much of what is sold as local really is.

19. 19

    Does the farm make money?

    Ask this plainly and late, after other questions have established you are interested rather than judging. Many will answer honestly, including about off farm income and health insurance, which is often the real story.

20. 20

    Who takes this over?

    Succession hangs over most family farms and almost nobody asks about it directly. The answer is sometimes a child coming back, sometimes a young farmer being brought in, and sometimes silence, which is an answer too.