CRC Blog

I have been thinking about a blog topic for some time now. It stems from an article I saw on my Yahoo homepage about people’s income scale. The article had a great tagline and those always sucker me in so I clicked it. The report asked where people were on the income scale for example. If you make under $20k a year you are classified as poor, or if you make over a million dollars a year you are wealthy.

Let me preface this next part by saying that I have always considered myself to be rich, because of the life I lead and the wonderful industry in which I work. When I plugged my salary into the article, it said I was "lower middle income" which is fine with me. I suppose if you add in the perks I get from owning a rice farm it would put me squarely in the "middle income" bracket. That's all well and good but it doesn't seem to square with the presumption that has been around for years of "wealthy rice farmers in the valley.” It seems to be a common opinion in the media that we all sit on our farms "fat and happy,” although that actually describes me pretty well. Now, I'll allow that some in our number have done very well for themselves, as also some have not. The fate of that group is publicized by an auction flyer.

For those who are semantically inclined, it can be pointed out that some years my farm makes a lot more than just my salary and it’s true. All the money I make goes to Farm Credit West who loans me money every year to plant my crop and some lucky years I have some left. I use the leftover money I make to run the farm, purchase farm ground, buy tractors newer than 1965 models or a combine that does the work of two older machines so I can stay competitive with my neighbors. The newer machines are terribly expensive.