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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

#201

Post by vram22 »

svieira wrote: post #196
vram22 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I had given a few examples of quite successful long-running permaculture / regenerative agriculture operations here - people like Gabe Brown (Brown's Ranch, ND, US, ~5000 acres), Richard Perkins (Ridgedale Permaculture, Varmland, Sweden, 25 hectares?), Geoff Lawton (NSW, AU, well-known permaculture pioneer, 66 hectares/acres - countries consult him, even): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24827234 Most of…

There's also Ernst Götsch down in Brazil and Joel Salatin in the Eastern Seaboard.

Thanks, will check them out.

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

#202

Post by birdsbirdsbirds »

randrews543 wrote: post #107

This is all going to change over the next decade with the rise of indoor farming. With increased and more predictable yield, indoor farms can be more hyper-localized and run by independent-operators in their community.

From where do you get the energy for indoor farming? Is it more efficient to turn solar radiation with photovoltaic cells into electricity to then turn it back into light before it reaches the leaves of the plants?

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

#203

Post by iguy »

akiselev wrote: post #173
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That nutritional argument seems very speculative. I don't know of any 70-year-old food that could be tested side-by-side with 'modern' food. And 'nutritional content' is certainly up per dollar, per man-hour. And its more available with modern refrigeration and transportation. It seems overwhelmingly true that for most people, their food has improved drastically over 70 years.

What does 70 year old food have to do with it? Just go to any seed store or seed bank and you will find hundreds if not thousands (or tens of thousands) of varieties of everyday fruits and vegetables that you will not be able to find on store shelves. It's not because they're too old, it's because they're not economically viable at industrial scale. Their aesthetics are unappealing to consumers, they spoil too fast o…

Seeds are half of it, but wouldn't you'd also want to grow them in the same soil? Maybe manure & bone-meal were providing a different balance of nutrients to modern fertilisers, or just slower growth.

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

#204

Post by bluGill »

svieira wrote: post #198
bluGill wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your system means that when your local garden fails your family starves to death. With the large farm we have insurance so that when (WHEN not IF) there is a crop failure we just buy something from a farm far away. Distance is important here: crop failures tend to be because of a situation that affects your entire village so you can't fall back on a local safety net, you need a large one with a distribution network.…

Correction - the local system means that when the local system fails _for years on end_ then the remote part of society needs to step in to support those who are starving locally. But this is true, no matter how high you push things. If something kills all the okra (see Interstellar) then we'll have to fall back on spinach _as a society_ if we have one mega-farm. If everything on the planet dies off then we'll have t…

I don't know what Intersetellar is (obviously a book/movie but I don't care to look it up).

What is the local vs remote system? When you have small farms local is you, and remote your neighbors who you walk to. When you have large enough farms you can generate enough surplus that the world cares - and they are generating enough that they can afford to play nice. Small farmers in general don't generate enough surplus that they can feed each other across the distance of a continent.

Support from a galactic cluster is nice in SciFi, but in reality space is too big. It is questionable if Earth/Venus could support each other, as our orbits are often too misaligned to do anything in time. (the fast trip to mars involves Venus so things are even worse). Going between stars - forget it, by the time we find out about a problem they are dead or have survived.

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

#205

Post by leafmeal »

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…

I imagine there will be a market for growers like you the same ways there's a market for craft beer or organic foods despite giant breweries and consolidated farms.

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

#206

Post by jtuente »

opinion-is-bad wrote: post #160
thinkingemote wrote: post #137

This quote is from a report, which itself is based on a FAO report: http://www.fao.org/3/ca7036en/ca7036en.pdf Quote with context: The results show that, worldwide, farms of less than 1 hectare account for 70 percent of all farms, but operate only 7 percent of all agricultural land. Slightly larger farms between 1 and 2 hectares account for 14 percent of all farms and control 4 percent of the land. Together, farms of…

The profit share for those largest 1% of farms is even greater than 70% as well. I believe it’s around 93% of profits are made from the large operations.

For reference, 50 hectares (123 acres) is a small farm for an ag community/family. It's not the least bit surprising that they are low profit. Several members of my extended family farm at and above that acreage and a majority of my grandfather's farmland is leased out to a larger family operation since he's retired. Those family members mostly have regular 40/week jobs, since they're just hobby farms.

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

#207

Post by disown »

nahuel0x wrote: post #154

Say what you want about Marx, but his prediction about increasing concentration of Capital was right on the spot.

Concentration of capital is the essential point of capitalism. It's the ultimate end goal. Also, capital is a unit of power in a capitalist system and in all systems, power wants to concentrate. Power has a gravitation pull.

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

#208

Post by joubert »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #90
joubert wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate vs family/sole proprietorship could be one way to describe.

It still can be technically a corporation, even if the corporation is owned by a single person, a family or a small team of friends.

Yep. I was thinking of it more in a qualitative sense, similar to characterizing a phrasing/word choice as “corporate-speak” whether or not it is made by a corporation or not.

But perhaps there’s a better descriptor that also travels across cultures and legal frameworks (e.g. not all jurisdictions use the “corporation” nomenclature).

From Wikipedia: “ In American English, the word corporation is most often used to describe large business corporations.[7] In British English and in the Commonwealth countries, the term company is more widely used to describe the same sort of entity while the word corporation encompasses all incorporated entities.”

Communicating ideas precisely yet with nuance is a fun challenge :-)

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

#209

Post by JoeAltmaier »

gtsop wrote: post #159
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That nutritional argument seems very speculative. I don't know of any 70-year-old food that could be tested side-by-side with 'modern' food. And 'nutritional content' is certainly up per dollar, per man-hour. And its more available with modern refrigeration and transportation. It seems overwhelmingly true that for most people, their food has improved drastically over 70 years.

> I don't know of any 70-year-old food that could be tested side-by-side with 'modern' food. That's a false base for your argument. You can find traditionally grown vegs from villages today. Then you can grab a tomato from your super-cheap super market and test those two side by side. The traditionaly grown veg isn't old per say, but it is surely way closer to the old qualities. So if you find a difference between th…

So that just leaves soil, tillage, fertilizer, process. Which were pretty primitive 70 years ago.

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

#210

Post by opinion-is-bad »

jtuente wrote: post #206
opinion-is-bad wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The profit share for those largest 1% of farms is even greater than 70% as well. I believe it’s around 93% of profits are made from the large operations.

For reference, 50 hectares (123 acres) is a small farm for an ag community/family. It's not the least bit surprising that they are low profit. Several members of my extended family farm at and above that acreage and a majority of my grandfather's farmland is leased out to a larger family operation since he's retired. Those family members mostly have regular 40/week jobs, since they're just hobby farms.

Absolutely, the cutoff to be a large farm is quite low. I am a farmer myself, but we have a very large plot compared to the cutoff point (~10,000 acres, half of them permanent and half row crops). There are enough difficulties to managing our operation, I would never advise someone to go into the business unless they had an almost religious calling to it.
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