RateItAll: The Opinion Network

yes, an honorable profession

I hate it personally, it's always hard and your work is seasonal.

Wait, in Texas or somewhere cooler?

i can't farm

I'd probably find it boring, although I suppose it's quite important.

sucks out side all day in the heat no thanks

good honest work as long as you're not spreading pesticides all over the place and letting your cow poop pollute all the water and stuff

nope not for me

I hate cows and shit!

The sweat, the smell, and the bugs make it seem like it isn't worth it.

Make money from crops

I wouldn't want their job for anything, but if it wasn't for the farmers, I don't think America would be eating.

Proud and hard working, but pretty difficult to make a good living anymore.

<_< I am so not going near the cornfields...bad shit happens there..banishment or aliens...and dun even start me with Halloween

Farming is the basis of human civilization; as LT notes, without farmers we would all starve to death in a few months. Sadly, agribusiness and capital costs have made this a difficult and unprofitable business for all but the wealthiest, land-rich famers. Still, if you've got the money for machinery, land, seed, etc...; lots of patience and stamina, and don't mind physical work and getting dirty, then there are few more satisfying jobs than farming. The decline of the family farm is a very bad sign indeed. While it's possible we'll all live on hydroponic veggies and soylent green in the future, I doubt that civilization can survive in the long run without farming.

Backbreaking work with low pay. Not my thing.

I have some family who are farmers, and while some of them are fairly prosperous, they are also far from wealthy.

Judging from some of the comments on here, a few reviewers know as much about farming as they do about particle physics.

On the one hand without farmers we'd have all starved to death long ago. On the other hand, many have shown no care for the environment and human health: they've fed cows with dead animal product and given us CJD, they've polluted the atmosphere with chemicals, fed us food coated in pesticides, ripped up hedgerows for fields and decimated nature.

Farmers don't get the respect they deserve.This is brutally hard work.Agribusiness with it's profit-driven motives,genetic engineering and overuse of chemicals has all but killed Americas hard working farm families.God Bless those who grow organic non-GMO foods! Someday,they will be remembered as true heroes.

Anyone who helps replenish the enviroment is deserving of my respect.

to be honest i'd love this job. You dont have really any limits, hours... you have a break when you like... you are among animals, i would love that job.

I would not want to be a farmer myself. I have a great deal of respect for them. they work their backends off. From Morning until night. the stress they must go through hoping they get some rain. and that their crops come in.and hoping they make some kind of profit. It is sad to me when I know that there were so many farms around when I was a kid. and to see them sell off their land so yuppies can have fancy homes. because they are no longer making the money to afford their farm.there are not anywhere near as many farms around now compared to when I was a child in the 60s and 70s. I would not have the willingness to work as hard as they do.

I give this a 3 just because it is truly honest work. But, personally, I could never do it. To be tied down like that, never able to leave your animals or your crops to travel and experience life outside of farming? I think I'd go crazy. My best friend's parents are farmers, and they've never gone more than 60 miles from home because they have so many responsibilities. I guess some people can do it and be content with it, but I would be awfully restless!

Since monolithic agribusinesses are where the action is, the few independent farmers out there usually get paid by the government to not plant, to plow crops under at harvest time, or to ship off their output as surplus to federal warehouses all over the country where the foodstuffs rot: all this for the sake of maintaining artificially high prices. A true example of American Something For Nothing. As the taxpayers are the ones footing the bill for this form of welfare, namely, handouts to people who are usually land-wealthy millionaires, it's a matter of the $$$ of many going into the hands of the relative few who are already well heeled. The Republican Dream. Sucker the little people so that the rich can laugh all the way to the bank. That's conservative values for you. And considering that the taxpayers get fleeced again at the supermarket when they pay those artificially high prices for food, someone else is getting over again. Subsidies to farmers should have been phased out decades ago, yet those thieves and influence peddlars in the GOP Congress OKed hundreds of billions of dollars in this type of wasteful handouts to the rich over the next decade. That's sound leadership for you!!! That's our so-called leaders looking out for the average person!!! Seems to me its more like millionaire protectors of the millionaires continuing to line the pockets of other millionaires at the public's expense. Vote Republican folks!!! If you like the idea of your tax dollars going into the pockets of millionaire farmers to sit around and scratch their butts, Vote Republican!!!

Farming as an occupation is nearly obsolete. What I dislike about today's farmers is the complaints they make about not being able to make enough money. Well, that's life. They need to get out of the farming business, because that's what it IS: a business. Farming is not a "way of life" and farmers are not entitled to government subsidies to supplement their income (nobody is). If it were true that an obsolete business should get government subsidies, does that mean that horse and buggy manufactuers should have gotten money from the government because they were driven out of business by the automobile? NO. Should the makers of the Commodore 64 get subsidies because it's not profitable for them to continue to produce an obsolete computer? Nope. I find it unfortunate that farmers are unable to maintain the family farm in the current market, but the reason they can't is because food is being manufactured easier, cheaper, and in higher qualtities nowadays, and their services are no longer needed: there is no shame in moving on and learning a new trade.

Why would you want to kill yourself over crops just for a few bucks? Get a real job. What happens if a drought happens? Huh?

Hard, hard, hard, hard, hard to do. I grew up on a farm and I don't understand how my dad can manage 2500 acres of crops almost entirely by himself. It seems sometimes like farmers have to work against everything just to make ends meet. And yet, there are times when I can see how incredibly rewarding and inspiring it would be. I have a tremendous amount of respect for farmers, enough to know that if I tried to do it, I'd go insane and run the farm into the ground.

For me this job is not something I can or will ever try to pursue. I'm allergic to both pollen and many animals which not exactly makes me eligable for this profession. This job is highly important and I admire the people being strong enough to take it on. Of course today with all the equiptment to relieve them being a farmer is probably not as gruesome today as it was 20-40 years ago, but I suspect it's still hard work. Animals to take care of, seed to be sown, acres of vegetables to harvest etc. All this would be a very tiresome task indeed. Talk about working to put food on the table! I am too lazy and allergic to take on this profession myself but I give a shoutout to the people who are strong enough to pull it off.