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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

#81

Post by phpnode »

secondcoming wrote: post #69
onetimemanytime wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> since a farm has historically been a family working within a small community or a village Yeah, but I'd rather go to a supermarket and buy 5lbs of meat than go hunting. Things change. Small plot of land keep people where they are with zero hope or mobility. You cannot buy equipment and the tractors are best used in fields 1 mile wide or whatever.

I'm pretty sure I've seen farmers in rural Ireland successfully ploughing fields that aren't 1 mile wide.

Definitely, but smaller fields are a lot less efficient unfortunately.

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

#82

Post by prepend »

A few years ago I learned about the Matthew Principle [0] on an Econtalk podcast or something like that. Now I seem to see it everywhere and try to figure out if these types of winner take all are natural or just set up by interested parties to minmax.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

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

#83

Post by prepend »

Retric wrote: post #68
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?

My old boss operates a 1,000 acre farm as a hobby due to that efficiency. Sure it was a “family farm” but it was a trivial portion of their income and involved 10-15 hours of work a week. It’s hard to argue that’s a bad thing.

When you say operate do you mean do all the work? Or manage the farm and hire people to do that?

If the former, would you say what kind of farm it is, 1000 acre farm that’s easy enough to spend 15 hours a week seems interesting to me.

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

#84

Post by phpnode »

Retric wrote: post #72
yorwba wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, but it's not necessary to aggregate small farms into large ones to maximize machine utilization. It's also possible to separate the machine-owning part from the other aspects of farming and aggregate only that, by forming an association of farmers who share equipment. (Shared ownership of the means of production, so to speak.) In German, that's called a Maschinenring. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masch…

The overhead of transporting this equipment between farms makes the process significantly less efficient. The difference between harvesting 2,000 acres a day and 1,700 might not seem like a lot, but add in transaction costs and you can be talking 5+% higher food costs ignoring subsidies.

It's not just that, certain pieces of equipment (combines in particular) are needed at the exact same time in multiple different places, and a delay of a day or even a few hours can be ruinous (if you don't harvest wheat at exactly the right time it can be more or less destroyed by the weather)

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

#85

Post by javiramos »

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...

Leafy greens production is quickly being standardized and automated in a highly controllable format. e.g. [0]

It would be reasonable to assume that the farming of many other crops will eventually transition to fully automated indoor formats.

[0] https://infinite-acres.com/

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

#86

Post by estsauver »

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...

I commonly hear farming described as "Geographically distributed manufacturing" in the industry. It's a lot closer to a uniform process than people think.

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

#87

Post by tkdubs »

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.

Agreed. I this trend has made us all a lot more wealthy (and obese) as more people spend less time farming their day away.

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

#88

Post by joubert »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #66
ovi256 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The huge ones are also private, FWIW.

Sure, obviously these are not state-owned, but I meant it in a different sense - like when you compare a multinational hotel chain to a family-maintained hostel. I wish I knew a better word for this.

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

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

#89

Post by iguy »

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…

> Historically agricultural workers were slaves or at best serfs.

This was certainly common, but e.g. England hasn't really had serfdom for 5 centuries (after a gradual decline). Quite a lot of the labor was hired servants, perhaps a majority, although (IIRC) the median servant worked alongside only one or two others. So not family, but still a lot of family-sized groups.

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

#90

Post by qwerty456127 »

joubert wrote: post #88
qwerty456127 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, obviously these are not state-owned, but I meant it in a different sense - like when you compare a multinational hotel chain to a family-maintained hostel. I wish I knew a better word for this.

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.
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