1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
theguardian.com
1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
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Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#2Some farms are just hella big with ultra low land productivity.
Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#3Some farms are just hella big with ultra low land productivity.
And a lot subsistence farming in the developing world where you basically just farm for yourself to eat which are very small.
And even if someone farms for selling to others if they don't have reliable access to machinery the farms will be really small as that just does not scale up (just take a look at pre industrial world where something like 90% of people were farmers)
Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#4> Anna Creek Station has an area of 23,677 km2 which is slightly larger than Israel
Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#5Some farms are just hella big with ultra low land productivity.
Currently, EU subsidizes farms based on land area. Which is supposed to change, but the lobby is strong.
Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#6> Anna Creek Station has an area of 23,677 km2 which is slightly larger than Israel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station
Yet only capable of carrying up to 16,500 head of cattle during a good season
Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#7Some farms are just hella big with ultra low land productivity.
And conversely, many “family
Farms” are just subsidy hoovering hobby farms relying on land appreciation to build wealth.
Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#8After the fall of communism in Bulgaria, land was to be given back to people(during the communism everything was owned by the government). Don't know the details but now we have small amount of farmlands and forests.
Turns out, most urban people don't fancy to work the land by themselves and those in the villages really suck at the organisation.
So my grandma is living in a town, she opted out to keep her land in a cooperative and simply receive some cash at the end of the year each year. Not much money but it's free money from her standpoint.
My relatives that live in a village opted out to own and work the lands by themselves like most of the other villagers.
The result? Villagers fail to organize the crop production, if one year potatoes turn to be very profitable, next year everyone do potatoes and prices tank, someone does tobacco and makes the bank.
Cattle production also died out because they failed to integrate into a steady supply chain of a buyer. Companies would be collecting milk and some villagers don't hesitate to add water and the companies stop coming. One year everyone is in milk the other year no more milk, everything becomes meat since some construction business gives more money in short term so they need to get rid of the livestock. Tough luck, the milk buying chocolate factory.
At the ends, most young people opted out to work in a EU country that pays very well during the season and stay jobless for the rest of the year. Those who managed to get good education completely moved out to the cities or even other countries so no one left to actually work their own farmlands with few exceptions of people who do speciality crops and work like beekeeping. Most of the farmland got sold to large companies and those who couldn't get good education become employees of the farms they once owned.
What I am trying to say is, it's probably the way it is because the alternative is not viable. These things need large scale companies, be it private or governmental.
Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#9Some farms are just hella big with ultra low land productivity.
And a lot subsistence farming in the developing world where you basically just farm for yourself to eat which are very small. And even if someone farms for selling to others if they don't have reliable access to machinery the farms will be really small as that just does not scale up (just take a look at pre industrial world where something like 90% of people were farmers)
> And even if someone farms for selling to others if they don't have reliable access to machinery the farms will be really small as that just does not scale up (just take a look at pre industrial world where something like 90% of people were farmers)
You seem to assume/imply that small farms in the developing world cannot scale up due to economic/business reasons.
However in some developing countries, farms cannot be scaled up due to legal reasons. Countries like The Philippines don't allow ownership of farmland over one or two hectares per person. For companies the maximum is 5 hectares if I remember correctly. Foreigner investors cannot legally own any land whatsoever there (not even through a company, because foreigners aren't allowed to be majority share holders).
Is that good or bad? I don't know. Agriculture world wide is a highly regulated and highly subsidized non-free market that has very little to do with the concepts of capitalism and free market. This should probably be analyzed on a country by country basis with a couple of history books handy.
Random facts that I like about farming subsidies in the West: if farming in the Western world wasn't heavily subsidized, it wouldn't exist in the Western world. The reason for the farming subsidies is to have internal food production in case a war prevents sufficient food imports.
Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
#10> Anna Creek Station has an area of 23,677 km2 which is slightly larger than Israel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station
Yet only capable of carrying up to 16,500 head of cattle during a good season
That's roughly 2 cattle per square mile or 1 head of cattle for every 1.5 sq km.