If you find this story interesting, I would encourage you to travel to central and south america.
There are farms there with 1,000+ year traceable, verifiable histories.
The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
71–80 of 217 posts
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#72Here's what I find funny: many of the people who extoll the virtues of capitalism also bemoan the death of small businesses and family farms. Or at least they pay it lip service. Why is this funny? Because small businesses and family farms are inherently more socialist than capitalist. Why? Because it is closer to owning the means of production and capturing the excess value of labor by those who are, well, laboring.…
> Why is this funny? Because small businesses and family farms are inherently more socialist than capitalist. Why? Because it is closer to owning the means of production and capturing the excess value of labor by those who are, well, laboring. These are socialist principles.
But why is it funny? You're not wrong that family farms are socialist in nature. Farmers have traditionally, at least here in Canada, even been socialist in political view. Our socialized healthcare system, for example, was a product of the work of farmers. The NDP, our closest answer to a socialist party, was born out of the older United Farmers party.
Bemoaning the death of that socialist legacy is like bemoaning the disposal of an Apple II, Commodore 64, or whatever legacy computer system is to your fancy. Being sad to see that history go isn't at odds with extolling the virtues of our modern technology, nor is it unusual to have a place in one's heart for the past while also embracing the present.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#73I’ll suggest that farmland is even older, like thousands of years old, and it belonged to other people who lived there before Europeans showed up. So it’s important to keep that in the conversation.
The land has been above-water since the middle Triassic. So yes, much older than thousands. The most recent non-European owners didn't leave much in the way of title (they took possession of it by conquest); so it is important to keep that in the conversation.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> for whom any NZ wage is a fortune back home This is the problem to solve, and something I believe is becoming solved gradually even if very slowly; developing nations have been developing. But if we manage to eradicate this idea of "high wage countries", or at least reduce it so that the imbalance is not order(s) of magnitude, then that will alleviate many of the negative side-effects of globalization.
We can’t eliminate it on a city by city, or state by state basis. How would that inequality ever be eliminated on a country by country basis?
You see it being eliminated right there in the post. Globalization is moving money to the people who are more needy by giving them the chance to earn a relative fortune by harvesting apples in NZ. It's a fabulous success!
We see this all over the place. Many manufacturing jobs moved from China to cheaper places where people are more needy because so many Chinese were lifted out of poverty.
The best way out of poverty is allowing globalization to continue doing this and have policies that focus on creating abundance rather than seeing the economy as a zero-sum game.
At some point automation will hit a point where we must have something like UBI, but it seems like we aren't there yet.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#75Earlier 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…
Abundant solar means you can just rip the nitrogen right out of the air.
Sounds like the cost is in the ballpark already:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/19/pulling-fertilizer-ou...
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#76Low 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…
Exactly like big tech in the US and their H1B carve out.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The death of the small town seems like it was fore-ordained by simple economics. In big cities, you can afford to have businesses like restaurants that aren't Sysco retail outlets, movie theaters that show more than the five most popular films on Earth at the moment, libraries that have books beyond romance novels, bestsellers, and out-of-date nonfiction. Moreover, cities are the economic drivers, even in the agricul…
I understand that these quotes are poignant symbols of how dependent rural areas are on cities, but you can't expect to base an argument about economic change on some quotes that you liked from books.
Do you have anything to add?
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The death of the small town seems like it was fore-ordained by simple economics. In big cities, you can afford to have businesses like restaurants that aren't Sysco retail outlets, movie theaters that show more than the five most popular films on Earth at the moment, libraries that have books beyond romance novels, bestsellers, and out-of-date nonfiction. Moreover, cities are the economic drivers, even in the agricul…
Again, I have no business commenting on this as I have no idea what I’m talking about. But it’s striking driving through WI and MI vs IN, IL and IA. In the former, where the agriculture is dominated by less commodity agriculture (dairy & fruit) small towns exist and thrive. In the latter dominated by the most commoditized crops in the world (feed corn & soy) they don’t.
Lots of timber industry in Wisconsin and Michigan. The paper mill in my town directly supports several hundred jobs (like the on site jobs) and is a gaping maw consuming wood fiber from the region.
(several hundred jobs doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a big deal in a small town)
Oh oops: It's not several hundred on site, it's ~1,000.
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can’t eliminate it on a city by city, or state by state basis. How would that inequality ever be eliminated on a country by country basis?
You see it being eliminated right there in the post. Globalization is moving money to the people who are more needy by giving them the chance to earn a relative fortune by harvesting apples in NZ. It's a fabulous success! We see this all over the place. Many manufacturing jobs moved from China to cheaper places where people are more needy because so many Chinese were lifted out of poverty. The best way out of poverty…
But the effects globalization has had on the environment has been disastrous
Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 up…
I had a friend who used to FIFO to/of one of the offshore NZ fishery Islands cos they wouldn't get out of bed for less than $300 an hour and he could make enough in 3 months to have the other 9 months off. Cost of living there is extreme, $4.50 for a bottle of milk on the mainland but $12 there. The islands economy is export based.