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The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#51

Post by cyberax »

colechristensen wrote: post #48
cyberax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Industrial farming depends on oil as a chemical input, because the soil has been sterilized and turned into dirt in most places by ammonia based fertilizers. The process of tilling the land resulted in most of the remaining dirt being eroded over the past century. What a piece of nonsense bullshit. 1. Ammonia can be produced without any oil. Natural gas (not oil per se) is simply used as an easy way to produce hydr…

The future of land management is going to be cultivating, curating, and generally taking care of the living, mostly fungal, part of the soil which will displace some or all of the straight up chemical additions instead enhancing the natural symbioses between root, fungus, and bacteria on an industrial scale... but until then chemical additions are fine. The issue going forward is going to be cost not an existential t…

What a LOAD of bull.

Look, the hard truth is, nitrogen is the limiting nutrient. A square kilometer of plants can fix only so much of it on its own via symbiotic bacteria (and maaaaybe archaea), fungi can NOT fix nitrogen on their own.

You can optimize, curate, cultivate, paint yourself in dog shit and chant at the full moon however long you want, but there's a hard practical limit on that amount. And that's it.

Animals can concentrate nitrogen into manure, but they don't produce more of it.

That's why fertilizers are absolutely essential, as long as the Earth's population is above ~2B.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#52

Post by polishdude20 »

crtified wrote: post #38

Low wage industries struggle in high wage countries. Globalization displaces natural local supply and demand outcomes. The above two factors result in some very complex status quos. For example, take the country of New Zealand, whose significant apple growing industry is largely for export purposes - ostensibly, sending good fresh highly-valued NZ apples to other countries, where they'll fetch max $. Problem: apple w…

It seems like it's "ride the wave with us or get left behind" kind of thing.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#53

Post by Maursault »

Infernal wrote: post #19
Maursault wrote: post #15

> the 17-acre Willard Farm This is a very small farm even for family farm-sizes. Article does not mention if it was once larger, but I have a suspicion that it was. > “Today, the cost of producing anything is way out of line,” Paul tells Harasimowicz. “A dollar gets spent almost before you earn it because of the cost of pesticides, diesel fuel, labor, insurance—everything has gone up. You can only get so much for a t…

The author states that a nearby historical building was on what used to be Willard land. It’s likely that what remains is a very small fragment of the original whole.

That was my feeling, but thanks for spotting the evidence.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#55

Post by frogblast »

kasey_junk wrote: post #2

It’s important to remember that this was a specific policy decision. Earl Butz[1] famously said to our farmers “Get big or get out”. I don’t have the background or inclination to prove it but my conviction is the death of the small town, and the ancillary costs like the meth and opioid epidemics can be traced directly to the “fence row to fence row” approach he pushed forward and still exists today. [later] thanks ni…

Did he make that true via policy changes, or was it an astute observation of what was going to be true given economic realities?

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#56

Post by crtified »

golergka wrote: post #44
crtified wrote: post #38

Low wage industries struggle in high wage countries. Globalization displaces natural local supply and demand outcomes. The above two factors result in some very complex status quos. For example, take the country of New Zealand, whose significant apple growing industry is largely for export purposes - ostensibly, sending good fresh highly-valued NZ apples to other countries, where they'll fetch max $. Problem: apple w…

Fault? The situation with apple producers you just described looks like a win-win situation both for consumers and immigrants. The only ones losing are New Zealand workers, but from all invoked groups, they're the only citizens who could theoretically vote out these politicians.

I acknowledge that win/loss is arguable. It invokes ethical cans of worms that I'm reluctant to open here. In theory, the dominant demographic at HN are from affluent countries, so the maxim that there are endless folk from poorer countries who'd be willing to come and do our work for a lot less - could apply to most of us, in similar fashion. Would we call that 'a win'? Highly subjective, obviously. And dependent upon other factors such as opportunity cost, the question 'is there something economically better we could be doing instead'?

I suppose my point could be construed as highlighting the significant factors of power and inertia in regulatory systems, as pertaining to environmental and economic setups.

Regarding your point about Voting Out - it assumes that the major political parties differ in their stance on this one matter. If both/all are subject to the same lobbying, then whichever is elected will see the status quo remain.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#57

Post by itissid »

I was reading Matt Levine commenting on how the oil industry would have to figure out how to get "out" while making wild profits as recent as this year. It sounds poetic: the elements of man's destruction and food salvation are both rended from earth and yet both might end up being undoable, on almost the same time scales of technological evolution.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#58

Post by okillbite »

golergka wrote: post #44
crtified wrote: post #38

Low wage industries struggle in high wage countries. Globalization displaces natural local supply and demand outcomes. The above two factors result in some very complex status quos. For example, take the country of New Zealand, whose significant apple growing industry is largely for export purposes - ostensibly, sending good fresh highly-valued NZ apples to other countries, where they'll fetch max $. Problem: apple w…

Fault? The situation with apple producers you just described looks like a win-win situation both for consumers and immigrants. The only ones losing are New Zealand workers, but from all invoked groups, they're the only citizens who could theoretically vote out these politicians.

And those workers don't want to do those jobs, for that $, anyway. A friend of mine with a farm in Quebec, Canada says even if you can find folks to do the work and pay them well, they often aren't reliable. Better all round to use temporary workers

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#59

Post by Etrnl_President »

crtified wrote: post #38

Low wage industries struggle in high wage countries. Globalization displaces natural local supply and demand outcomes. The above two factors result in some very complex status quos. For example, take the country of New Zealand, whose significant apple growing industry is largely for export purposes - ostensibly, sending good fresh highly-valued NZ apples to other countries, where they'll fetch max $. Problem: apple w…

In my experience, individual small farms tend to be "displaced" moreso by government, than by broad concepts like Globalization.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#60

Post by randomdata »

btilly wrote: post #32
randomdata wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming. So long as there is residual value in the "hand-me-down" equipment, there will be economic value in operating it. At the same time it is not economically sensible for large scale farming to continue to operate old and outdated equipment, so the smaller scale farm actually fills a useful role in the economy.

The economic value from operating it will generally not match the opportunity cost of not doing other things. And those operating it will learn the cost of this the hard way when they fail to have access to the niceties of modern society that require exchanging what you've produced for something produced by others. Like, say, the computing device that you used to post your opinion.

> The economic value from operating it will generally not match the opportunity cost of not doing other things.

Trouble is finding a better opportunity. From personal experience, my small acreage and old equipment, on average, nets me half of my developer income for just a couple of weeks per year of work. That's really hard to compete with. What else are you going to do instead?

It doesn't scale in the sense that if I put in more time I won't make more money, but the nice thing about small farms is that time commitment is also small. Fantastic income relative to the time commitment, and still leaves you the ability to do other things the rest of the year.

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