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1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

theguardian.com

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Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#181

Post by ahelwer »

phpnode wrote: post #178
ahelwer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, when you say efficient, you mean percentage of profit (value produced/costs) is lower in aggregate than if that same patch of land were part of a much larger farm. I submit this definition of efficiency ignores the distribution of those profits, which currently support a group of people owning the fruit of their labor - as opposed to those people being locked into dead-end wage labor jobs working at a mu…

No, I mean it's less efficient. A large field can be farmed with larger machinery which is more fuel, time (and yes, cost) efficient than smaller machinery. There is less time spent moving between fields which can be critical for something as weather sensitive as harvest. Large machinery typically produces bigger gaps between tramlines and reduces spillage when turning, leading to greater yields and less waste.

You're just restating what you said and what I accurately interpreted: the costs are higher with smaller farms. You define this as inefficiency. I point out this definition of efficiency only considers amount of surplus generated, not how the surplus is distributed. With larger corporate-owned farms the surplus is distributed in a very inefficient way.

Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#182

Post by CameronNemo »

creato wrote: post #94
mellavora wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe true in glorious future where the industrialized farm can support increased biodiversity. Currently, however, this promotes large-scale monoculture. Which is inherently harmful on almost every level, including the ability to keep the cost of food down and and the supply up. Food diversity is much much less than it was 100 years ago. Nutritional content of food is down significant levels from 30 years ago.

> Currently, however, this promotes large-scale monoculture. Which is inherently harmful on almost every level, including the ability to keep the cost of food down and and the supply up. It's hard to reconcile this point with the strong trends over the last century of more monoculture, more production, and much lower prices.

It is not just monoculture that has created this increase in production. It is also increased inputs like fertilizer and pesticides. At a certain point the pesticides stop being effective and the ground needs so much fertilizer it increases prices. This happens on hundred year time scales, so you can't just look at a small portion of ecological history to reach conclusions.

You are welcome to think what you want, but everything I have read about agricultural ecology suggests that nature is stronger than our science. Pests evolve (perhaps slowly, but faster than the science we stole from nature). Naturally enriched soil is more fertile.

Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#183

Post by sdoering »

pueblito wrote: post #158

This article is the future for me. I’m a small farmer - I grow marijuana in Colorado. Federal laws have so far sheltered us and allowed us to grow (no pun) by keeping BigAg and Bank money outside. Now it’s an industry of small partnerships and family farmers and I am very happy. But it won’t last. When marijuana is finally legalized nationally there will be an immediate tidal wave of money and consolidating. Those th…

We have a lot of this (Big Ag) in Germany. But we also have many small-ish farms being able to provide for their owners. What I find from looking at agriculture is, that regional partnerships (from field to table) esp. in the organic sector help a lot stabilizing the situation.

Also forms like Community-supported agriculture seem to be working for some.

But - they are not focused and do not produce a specific crop. So not sure how this could work for a marijuana farm like yours.

None the less - being a proponent of localized farming and seasonal living, I would love to see some things working out for the likes of you and ensuring a free form of ownership and the ability to provide for you and your family.

Others proposed, that "winner takes it all" is a natural law. This would lead me to slavery is a natural law, as the winner would dictate the living conditions of the rest.

Absolut freedom (leading to winner takes it all situations) in the beginning (at least for me) necessarily leads to un-freedom for most in the end. This is actually what prompted me to think about different forms of freedom (individual freedom vs. collective freedom, positive freedom (freedom to ...) vs. negative freedom (freedom from ...)).

For me this leads to some form of democratic end of freedom. The idea that my freedom ends were yours begins. Something like this. I did a longer post on this - but sadly in German, so it probably does not make too much sense here:

https://schriftrolle.de/freiheit-versuch-einer-begriffsklaer...

Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#184

Post by phpnode »

ahelwer wrote: post #181
phpnode wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean it's less efficient. A large field can be farmed with larger machinery which is more fuel, time (and yes, cost) efficient than smaller machinery. There is less time spent moving between fields which can be critical for something as weather sensitive as harvest. Large machinery typically produces bigger gaps between tramlines and reduces spillage when turning, leading to greater yields and less waste.

You're just restating what you said and what I accurately interpreted: the costs are higher with smaller farms. You define this as inefficiency. I point out this definition of efficiency only considers amount of surplus generated, not how the surplus is distributed. With larger corporate-owned farms the surplus is distributed in a very inefficient way.

I'm talking about the process of turning sunlight into food. If you want to make that process use as few resources as possible (especially fossil fuels) then you need big fields with large machinery. Distribution of wealth is a different topic.

Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#185

Post by wsc981 »

Dylanfm wrote: post #13

Farms have continued to grow, echoing Earl Butz' (Nixon's Secretary of Ag) "get big or get out" philosophy. However, there are several studies out there showing that a greater portion of the world's population is fed by small farms: - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/12/1... - http://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/284666/…

I'd like to see more people do small scale farming anyways, mainly to support themselves, not in the first place as a business to get rich from.

Big farms tend to focus on a few crops (cash crops). Small farms that are meant to support a family would do better by having a great variety of crops. It's also nice to support a local community this way, by selling some extra produce to local markets or people in the local community.

My girlfriend has a small 3 rai (~5000 m2) farm. Originally she only grew rice ... or rather some Myanmar people grew rice on her farm for a small amount of money. In the past 1.5 year my girlfriend transformed the farm to support our family. Now about 1 rai is used for rice (enough for our family) and the remainder is used for growing fish, fruits (bananas, coconuts, mangos, ...) and vegetables (Thai aubergines, long beans, cauliflower, spring unions, ...).

Having a greater variety of crops also protects a bit from bad harvests or bad market prices. It makes one more anti-fragile.

In the future we should probably buy some land to grow the farm to about 5 rai and from then on we should be able to fully support ourselves with fish, fruit and veggies.

I think Jon Jandai has some nice ideas on setting up a small scale farm [0].

---

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2eoQyYoUww

Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#187

Post by ahelwer »

phpnode wrote: post #184
ahelwer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just restating what you said and what I accurately interpreted: the costs are higher with smaller farms. You define this as inefficiency. I point out this definition of efficiency only considers amount of surplus generated, not how the surplus is distributed. With larger corporate-owned farms the surplus is distributed in a very inefficient way.

I'm talking about the process of turning sunlight into food. If you want to make that process use as few resources as possible (especially fossil fuels) then you need big fields with large machinery. Distribution of wealth is a different topic.

It is astonishing to me that you can look at how technology has impacted labor over the past half-century and believe that this definition of efficiency, which by necessity includes human labor cost as something to be minimized for the benefit of the recipients of the resulting surplus, has nothing to do with distribution of wealth.

Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#188

Post by iguy »

ip26 wrote: post #176
iguy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The area farmed in the US has declined slowly since the 1950s, maybe down 20%? Am eyeballing graphs as google is failing me: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/58267/farms_fig01_45... It would decline faster if we didn't subsidize stupid stuff like corn ethanol, for sure. Edit, a maybe a better graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-land-area-used-f...

I don't know about France, but I understand in the US that decline has mostly been the result of residential development buying out farmland. For just one small but hot-button current example, see Napa. For a historical example, see Silicon Valley, which was once orchards.

Urban land is 69 M acres, cropland 391 (according to some quick googling) and pasture 654. So urban is 17% of cropland, or 7% of all farmland. I'm surprised it's that high to be honest, compared to plane-window impressions. Surely a majority of urban area is post-1950, how much is former crop/ranch/forest I'd struggle to guess. Would be interesting to have better numbers, and over time.

Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#189

Post by phpnode »

ahelwer wrote: post #187
phpnode wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about the process of turning sunlight into food. If you want to make that process use as few resources as possible (especially fossil fuels) then you need big fields with large machinery. Distribution of wealth is a different topic.

It is astonishing to me that you can look at how technology has impacted labor over the past half-century and believe that this definition of efficiency, which by necessity includes human labor cost as something to be minimized for the benefit of the recipients of the resulting surplus, has nothing to do with distribution of wealth.

I'm saying that's a different argument, and not one I raised.

You incorrectly inferred my meaning from my original post and are now doubling down, I'm not sure why.

It's as simple as this: We want to produce as much food as possible from as few natural resources as possible, emitting as little carbon as possible in the process. Large fields are more efficient at this, for reasons I've spelt out already.

Even in a fully communist society this would be true.

Re: 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

#190

Post by gdubs »

cm2187 wrote: post #30

Industrialisation of farming is a good thing more than a bad thing. You don't want the cost of food to go up, or the supply to go down. You kind of want large scale industrial farming. It's like complaining that large factories are taking over small artisans.

The challenge is when every problem becomes a hammer in search of a nail — corn and soy being the hammer in industrial farming.

Industrial agriculture is phenomenal, and a miracle of the 20th century. But at the same time, the negative externalities (to borrow a fifty cent phrase) have basically caught up with us. Monocultures are environmentally costly, and land use change is a major driver of climate change.

Personally I’d love to see a patchwork of local, regional farms supplementing an ever larger share of the food supply. There’s appetite for this type of produce — wealthy suburbanites are more and more willing to spend extra for “organic”, as flawed as that term may be.

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