Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

I also own one of those hobby farms. My simple answer is, No. At my scale, barter is pretty useless. How many vegetables will you trade me for one pig? It better be a lot because I only have 6-10 pigs to barter every year. We have a lot of hobby farms around here. But they all raise animals. Nobody is doing potatos or cabbage. I mean we all do a few onions and tomatoes. But nobody is growing enough of anything that they could trade for half a beef.

When people want half a beef, they pay cash.

The old style barter systems require scale just like the OP said. That scale no longer exists. Everybody is either too small or too big. If you are small enough that I can barter with you, you don't have enough of what I need. If you are ADP, you don't have a human who can interact with me to execute a trade and you have no interest whatsoever in my goat.

> I don't know what the solution to this is.

The problems you mention are very real. I am not in farming, so a noob, but it is clear to me that significant change in food production is a requirement.

I see some positive trends (at least here in The Netherlands). On the one hand the awareness that industrial-scale production is unsustainable. There is a Guardian article on that today: 'Europe's meat and dairy production must halve by 2050, expert warns' [0]. Also there was talk on potato farmers getting only 0.09ct per kilo for their produce, while in the supermarket it costs $1.80 (this for local production, NL is quite small). Even large farmers are selling below cost price. Furthermore they throw small potatoes back on the field to rot, because they do not match supermarket criteria. Etcetera. NL is 2nd-largest food exporter (in a bunch of markets) in the world, after US [1]. A system under strain.

On the other hand - at the consumer side - there is growing awareness of the problem, more willingness to pay more for local and organically (eco) grown foodstuffs.

I think it should be possible for different models to be profitable. Besides the bartering communities mentioned by sibling, your small farmers could all arrange yourselves in co-ops, both to the supply-side (buy machinery together) as towards consumer-side (e.g. run/finance a co-op supermarket).

Regarding produce: Diversifying, and offering stuff that is not in supermarket can be a unique selling point. Good cooking with proper ingredients has become a hype in NL (stimulated by countless TV programs). Now take cucumber. The supermarket only has the long green, rather tasteless kind. But there are countless varieties. Different forms, different flavors, more tasty. Sell it as a specialty. Tell a good story with them (i.e. marketing storytelling), 'The good country life'-idea. Have people be willing to pay a premium.

I realize that in Netherlands this may be easier, because of population density, and production being always very near to consumers.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/15/europe-m...

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...

His counterpoint appears to apply only to individuals and small bands; without density we never achieve industry, which brings us, well, the modern world and all its medicine, internet, refrigeration ... satellite-based forewarning of enormous storms and time to prepare against those and other existential threats to large areas.

People live to be 100 and happy and productive on largely grain-based diets, not thanks to the grain, but thanks to the modern world it allows. Pre-grain, we didn't live so long.

On balance I think grains are a no-brainer. Maybe there is some extraordinarily minor benefit to the individual not to eat grains, but, obviously, in light of the past 10,000 years of history, grains are fine for you and will keep you both alive and happy.

A 1/2 gallon of organic whole milk at a grocery store in Portland, OR is 3.99 or 4.59 depending on if the store brand is available or not. Not disputing any of your knowledge of the industry, just adding another data point.

For hydroponics, I've heard of lettuce being commercially grown, but nothing else - it's more expensive than just farming a large section of land.

And for automation, yes it is a threat, but often times more expensive than just paying cheap labor, which it seems the world won't be running out of in the short term