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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

#51

Post by AmericanChopper »

fsloth wrote: post #23
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the solution to increase these farms’ economies of scale? So the same civilisation-enhancing forces that drove development 10,000 years ago can show their force more broadly?

What economies of scale specifically do farms have? A farm is not a factory where you can create a uniform process...

Harvesting, planting, fertilizing, irrigating... are all uniform processes. Larger farms can invest in more machinery (and more expensive machinery), and build more infrastructure for themselves. They can do more sophisticated testing of their crops/animals, can monitor the things they need to monitor to a higher level, they can absorb loss-incurring seasons more readily. All of that is economies of scale.

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

#52

Post by ashleshbiradar »

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.

it depends on the context, concentration of land in the hands of few promotes income inequality. It maybe a good thing for consumers, but will be a bad thing for small - medium farmers who wouldn't be able to sustain their income source.

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

#53

Post by bluGill »

xenocratus wrote: post #41
kebman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is true, but a lot of people hate the thought, since a farm has historically been a family working within a small community or a village, first and foremost for their own benefit, with the surplus going back to the village or greater society through trade or cooperation (or later by force through taxation by the Lord of the land). This was a good and healthy life that produced strong people. For t…

> a lot of people hate the thought Source? > For thousands of years the farm was the producer of civilization and culture. The producer of "civilization and culture"? In what sense? Farms produce the goods we eat, how does that lead to culture and civilization? I'm not that knowledgeable at history - if that is the case, then I'd really like to read more about it. > Today, on the other hand, it has been reduced to a…

Historically more than 95% of the population had to live on a farm to support the 1%ers who didn't. Most of them were slave labor. this farmers did define the dominant culture.

Of course most of them don't appear in history books so they are easy to forget about.

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

#54

Post by macspoofing »

mellavora wrote: post #43
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.

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.

Standardization is a hallmark of efficiency and humanity has lots of mouths to feed. I'm not sure you can really do it any other way.

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

#55

Post by danielheath »

macspoofing wrote: post #54
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. Standardization is a hallmark of efficiency and humanity has lots of mouths to feed. I'm not sure you can really do it any other way.

I don't think we could have gotten here any other way, and I'm very glad to be able to eat every day - but if we keep rapidly converting good land into bad, we're going to end up worse off than we were before Haber & Bosch gave us an alternative to famine.

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

#56

Post by eeZah7Ux »

fsloth wrote: post #22
zpeti wrote: post #16

And if they didn't, food would probably be a lot more expensive.

Does a strong argument exists for this? To my understanding agriculture was turned into big business in the beginning of 20th century because of political process, not because it was obviously a more efficient way to produce food at the time.

> Does a strong argument exists for this?

No. At that level of concentration the opposite is true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly

On top of that, massive multinational companies can have extremely influential lobbying groups and can demand subsidies from governments.

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

#57

Post by refurb »

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 think you lose a lot of granularity when you just measure a farm by size.

A 20,000 acre “farm” that only grazes a few thousand head of cattle because it’s practically desert could be much less productive than a 100 acre farm in the most fertile region of the world.

So it wouldn’t surprise me that the smaller farms feed an outsized proportion of the population.

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

#59

Post by refurb »

fsloth wrote: post #23
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the solution to increase these farms’ economies of scale? So the same civilisation-enhancing forces that drove development 10,000 years ago can show their force more broadly?

What economies of scale specifically do farms have? A farm is not a factory where you can create a uniform process...

Buying a $500,000 machine (that has massive throughout) makes sense when you’re farming 10,000 acres, but not so much when it’s 20 acres.

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

#60

Post by vagrantJin »

oblio wrote: post #40
kebman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is true, but a lot of people hate the thought, since a farm has historically been a family working within a small community or a village, first and foremost for their own benefit, with the surplus going back to the village or greater society through trade or cooperation (or later by force through taxation by the Lord of the land). This was a good and healthy life that produced strong people. For t…

That's a "Golden Age" perspective. At best it was true for a minority of people for a rather short moment in time, compared to the time agriculture has been around. Historically agricultural workers were slaves or at best serfs. In any case, a brutal lifestyle, generally for someone else's benefit. Well, what you're saying does apply to a category of countries, underdeveloped ones. Countries at very low levels of wha…

> Countries at very low levels of what we'd consider civilization.

Industrialized.

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