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I think the danger in our agricultural policy is that large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.) to an extent that small farms ca

I think the danger in our agricultural policy is that large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.) to an extent that small farms can't exist profitably, even charging higher prices at market. While there is a minimum viable farm size (given the need for modern machinery to automate the process), most likely, it probably isn't nearly as large as what our current set of incentives enforces. And, historically, there were farming coops that made it possible for communities of farmers to share expenses for those tools (and some states and communities still have legal infrastructure and such to enable those kinds of organizations), but federal policy and mega-store purchasing policy makes it a moot point. There's a lot more to the story of what our agricultural system looks like, and this article only touches on it from one personal, anecdotal, perspective, but it's simplistic to dismiss this perspective and the concerns it raises about our food supply. Michael Pollan has been writing compellingly on the subject for many years, and I recommend you check out The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. They provide a well-research view of why things are so skewed in our food system, and why that is dangerous to our current and future health. "If they're truly in demand, one would expect wages or profits to signal that." On that point, we're agreed...there has to be a way to correct the incentives so that a competitive agriculture market can exist, given the fact that we all need to eat, and ethically speaking, it'd be good if the most affordable foods were among the most healthy and least damaging to the environment. That's not the way things are incentivized currently. As it stands, there's a strong cartel of very large farms and animal agriculture companies that stack the deck in their favor. It isn't merely a story of efficiency of scale, it also includes lobbying, anti-competitive practices, etc.

rahimnathwani 11y ago
"large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.)" Can you share any examples of these things that specifically favour large farms? The two books you mention seem to be focused mainly on different issues (corn subsidies, large scale feeding, food labelling, ethics, ...).
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  The subsidies obviously don't specifically say, "big farms get this benefit, fuck the little guy!". It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smaller the farm), or have been designed to favor farms in specific regions (where the majority of farmable land is already owned by a few large farm corporations). This is one of the better sourced articles on the subject I could find in a quick googling (interestingly, it comes from a libertarian think tank, which makes them interesting bed fellows with the food justice and local farms movement): http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies Here's one from another, more left-leaning, source (but with almost no references, just opinion): http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/dont-end-agricultural-subsidies-fix-them/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/dont-end-agr... The Michael Pollan books (specifically, The Omnivores Dilemma) do actually cover this in some detail, as well, and with good references, though it is a small part of the book. I'm surprised so many people on HN think it is even a little controversial to suggest that large farms are favored by current regulation, enough that several people are requesting references. I kinda thought it was widely known. So, that's an interesting bit of news for me.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Can you provide sources for the claim that government support for farming is inaccessible due to bookkeeping and compliance expense? I'm a local food person (for reasons other than "food justice") and an investor of sorts, and nobody in this field in Chicago has ever told me that before.
    - SwellJoe 11y ago
      http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Crop-subsidies-found-to-help-largest-farms-most-3189756.php http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Crop-subsidies-found-... http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2011/08/kernel-watch-9-farm-subsidy-myths http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2011/08/kernel-watch-9-farm-subsidy...
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I don't think that small-scale farming can regain its position of a significant contributor to the food production. And even if it could, I'm not sure that it should. Food production scales up nicely, and it has many other potential benefits than just being cheaper. Say we fixed incentives that promote low-quality food (we have to do it either way, since small farmers are as much incentivized to sell crap as big ones; a big part of "organic food" industry seems to be about that). The big AgriCorp, if incentivized to make good food, can actually care about it better. They have more money to get top-of-the-line tools, or build their own. They can use them more efficiently. They have enough resources to monitor and control the farm in much greater detail. They have more expertise on hands. Am I seriously supposed to trust a Joe Random Farmer more than a professional biotechnologist or agriculturist from Monsanto or DuPont? If so, why bother with this whole thing called "science" at all? It seems to me that the work needed to restore the quality of our food makes big farms an even better option than they're now. The issues are, ultimately, with economic incentives that promote everything but health aspects of food.
- knughit 11y ago
  Why do you assume a random DuPont agriculturalist, who pushes papers all day, understands food better than a professional farmer our their in the empirical field?
  - vacri 11y ago
    Back in the real world, BigCo agriculturalists also go out into the literal field. I used to work for a company that did agricultural telemetry, and our clients were big and small, and our BigCo contacts were frequently contacting us from somewhere other than an airconditioned office.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Why do you assume that professional farmers out in their empirical fields aren't intensively trained in much the same manner as the employees of Dupont? People get degrees in agriculture.
CountSessine 11y ago
through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc I'm genuinely curious whether this is actually the case. Can you cite some examples? My google-skills don't seem to be adequate.
- cmurf 11y ago
  google: 'sugar subsidies''corn subsidies''milk subsidies' In particular, sugar should be taxed like tobacco, with a sin tax, rather than subsidized. But that's not what we do.
  - briandear 11y ago
    Why should sugar be taxed? Why not just eliminate sin taxes altogether? You people that want to tax everything that you feel isn't "good" is just obnoxious. There's something called freedom. Ridiculous nanny state proponents that want to use taxes to discourage behaviors that they consider 'bad' yet like to consider themselves 'pro choice' or interested in 'diversity.' --except when they disagree with those choices. Everything should either be taxed equally or by at all. The American system is about protecting people's rights and protecting freedom. The Founders never had any intent to become the parents of the American people. I sure as heck don't appreciate Washington, DC telling me how I should live my life, including dictating a diet using taxation as a tool. It's nobody's business what I eat.
    - digler999 11y ago
      > Everything should either be taxed equally or by at all. So cigarettes and alcohol should be taxed equally with baby formula ?
      - SwellJoe 11y ago
        Well, to be fair, having kids does have a negative impact on the environment, and some studies indicate that having children makes people unhappy, so maybe it should be discouraged via taxation. (I'm joking. I think.)
tptacek 11y ago
Can you provide more support for the argument that "mega-store purchasing policies" make farm co-ops a "moot point"? It looks like even Whole Foods, one of the largest mega-suppliers of produce in the US, readily sources from co-ops. A bigger possible reason farms tend not to join co-ops is that they integrate vertically and do direct marketing both to chains like WF and to farmers markets and, particularly, restaurants. For vegetables, there are a lot of farms like this in the Midwest. Obviously, if you're growing soy or corn or wheat, it's a different story. But I think nobody is particularly surprised that you can't readily make a living selling crops that are standardized and bid on in commodities exchanges.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  Whole Foods does it as a part of their "local" and "organic" brand identity, but even they don't buy from very small providers. Walmart and the major grocery chains generally do not. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/04/171051906/can-small-farms-benefit-from-wal-mart-s-push-into-local-foods http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/04/171051906/can... http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/08/08/where-does-your-grocery-money-go-mostly-not-to-the-farmer/ http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/08/08/where-does-your-grocery-...
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Sure, Walmart is not buying bespoke crops from small family farms. But it's not my argument that small family farms are likely to supply a significant portion of all the produce the median American buys at a grocery store. Rather, my argument is that there are steady, high-volume buyers for small family farmers. Whole Foods can constitute a tiny fraction of the produce sold in the US (though: they don't; they're extremely popular) and still be one of several means by which it is viable for small farmers to be in business. And, I guess my point is, this seems to be the case. When you read this Salon article, you didn't get a bit of a "Brooklyn" vibe from this particular "mid-20s, early-30s" farmer outraged that their watermelons and lavender flowers buttered by the Sacremento sunlight on their less-than-one-city-block farm plot couldn't pay all their bills?
wglb 11y ago
Having grown up on a dry land wheat farm, a farm that had subsidies along with everyone else, I think your argument that large farms are favored is flawed. From the time that my grandfather homesteaded in 1911, productivity of all farms, large and small, increased by almost two orders of magnitude over the next 50 years. Increases in technology, including mechanical, chemical, and electrical drove the price of wheat and other crops down. So it is simply a matter of scale. It should surprise no one on hn. For me, my parents saw the writing on the wall and sent me off to engineering school. There is some romance associated with "going back to the land" but you know we haven't been there all that long. What I wonder, in the sense of sustainability, if the ecology of the earth will be able to withstand the savage damage caused by agriculture.

rahimnathwani 11y ago

"large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.)" Can you share any examples of these things that specifically favour large farms? The two books you mention seem to be focused mainly on different issues (corn subsidies, large scale feeding, food labelling, ethics, ...).

SwellJoe 11y ago
The subsidies obviously don't specifically say, "big farms get this benefit, fuck the little guy!". It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smaller the farm), or have been designed to favor farms in specific regions (where the majority of farmable land is already owned by a few large farm corporations). This is one of the better sourced articles on the subject I could find in a quick googling (interestingly, it comes from a libertarian think tank, which makes them interesting bed fellows with the food justice and local farms movement): http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies Here's one from another, more left-leaning, source (but with almost no references, just opinion): http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/dont-end-agricultural-subsidies-fix-them/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/dont-end-agr... The Michael Pollan books (specifically, The Omnivores Dilemma) do actually cover this in some detail, as well, and with good references, though it is a small part of the book. I'm surprised so many people on HN think it is even a little controversial to suggest that large farms are favored by current regulation, enough that several people are requesting references. I kinda thought it was widely known. So, that's an interesting bit of news for me.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Can you provide sources for the claim that government support for farming is inaccessible due to bookkeeping and compliance expense? I'm a local food person (for reasons other than "food justice") and an investor of sorts, and nobody in this field in Chicago has ever told me that before.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Crop-subsidies-found-to-help-largest-farms-most-3189756.php http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Crop-subsidies-found-... http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2011/08/kernel-watch-9-farm-subsidy-myths http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2011/08/kernel-watch-9-farm-subsidy...

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I don't think that small-scale farming can regain its position of a significant contributor to the food production. And even if it could, I'm not sure that it should. Food production scales up nicely, and it has many other potential benefits than just being cheaper. Say we fixed incentives that promote low-quality food (we have to do it either way, since small farmers are as much incentivized to sell crap as big ones; a big part of "organic food" industry seems to be about that). The big AgriCorp, if incentivized to make good food, can actually care about it better. They have more money to get top-of-the-line tools, or build their own. They can use them more efficiently. They have enough resources to monitor and control the farm in much greater detail. They have more expertise on hands. Am I seriously supposed to trust a Joe Random Farmer more than a professional biotechnologist or agriculturist from Monsanto or DuPont? If so, why bother with this whole thing called "science" at all? It seems to me that the work needed to restore the quality of our food makes big farms an even better option than they're now. The issues are, ultimately, with economic incentives that promote everything but health aspects of food.

knughit 11y ago
Why do you assume a random DuPont agriculturalist, who pushes papers all day, understands food better than a professional farmer our their in the empirical field?
- vacri 11y ago
  Back in the real world, BigCo agriculturalists also go out into the literal field. I used to work for a company that did agricultural telemetry, and our clients were big and small, and our BigCo contacts were frequently contacting us from somewhere other than an airconditioned office.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Why do you assume that professional farmers out in their empirical fields aren't intensively trained in much the same manner as the employees of Dupont? People get degrees in agriculture.

CountSessine 11y ago

through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc I'm genuinely curious whether this is actually the case. Can you cite some examples? My google-skills don't seem to be adequate.

cmurf 11y ago
google: 'sugar subsidies''corn subsidies''milk subsidies' In particular, sugar should be taxed like tobacco, with a sin tax, rather than subsidized. But that's not what we do.
- briandear 11y ago
  Why should sugar be taxed? Why not just eliminate sin taxes altogether? You people that want to tax everything that you feel isn't "good" is just obnoxious. There's something called freedom. Ridiculous nanny state proponents that want to use taxes to discourage behaviors that they consider 'bad' yet like to consider themselves 'pro choice' or interested in 'diversity.' --except when they disagree with those choices. Everything should either be taxed equally or by at all. The American system is about protecting people's rights and protecting freedom. The Founders never had any intent to become the parents of the American people. I sure as heck don't appreciate Washington, DC telling me how I should live my life, including dictating a diet using taxation as a tool. It's nobody's business what I eat.
  - digler999 11y ago
    > Everything should either be taxed equally or by at all. So cigarettes and alcohol should be taxed equally with baby formula ?
    - SwellJoe 11y ago
      Well, to be fair, having kids does have a negative impact on the environment, and some studies indicate that having children makes people unhappy, so maybe it should be discouraged via taxation. (I'm joking. I think.)

tptacek 11y ago

Can you provide more support for the argument that "mega-store purchasing policies" make farm co-ops a "moot point"? It looks like even Whole Foods, one of the largest mega-suppliers of produce in the US, readily sources from co-ops. A bigger possible reason farms tend not to join co-ops is that they integrate vertically and do direct marketing both to chains like WF and to farmers markets and, particularly, restaurants. For vegetables, there are a lot of farms like this in the Midwest. Obviously, if you're growing soy or corn or wheat, it's a different story. But I think nobody is particularly surprised that you can't readily make a living selling crops that are standardized and bid on in commodities exchanges.

SwellJoe 11y ago
Whole Foods does it as a part of their "local" and "organic" brand identity, but even they don't buy from very small providers. Walmart and the major grocery chains generally do not. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/04/171051906/can-small-farms-benefit-from-wal-mart-s-push-into-local-foods http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/04/171051906/can... http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/08/08/where-does-your-grocery-money-go-mostly-not-to-the-farmer/ http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/08/08/where-does-your-grocery-...
- tptacek 11y ago
  Sure, Walmart is not buying bespoke crops from small family farms. But it's not my argument that small family farms are likely to supply a significant portion of all the produce the median American buys at a grocery store. Rather, my argument is that there are steady, high-volume buyers for small family farmers. Whole Foods can constitute a tiny fraction of the produce sold in the US (though: they don't; they're extremely popular) and still be one of several means by which it is viable for small farmers to be in business. And, I guess my point is, this seems to be the case. When you read this Salon article, you didn't get a bit of a "Brooklyn" vibe from this particular "mid-20s, early-30s" farmer outraged that their watermelons and lavender flowers buttered by the Sacremento sunlight on their less-than-one-city-block farm plot couldn't pay all their bills?

wglb 11y ago

Having grown up on a dry land wheat farm, a farm that had subsidies along with everyone else, I think your argument that large farms are favored is flawed. From the time that my grandfather homesteaded in 1911, productivity of all farms, large and small, increased by almost two orders of magnitude over the next 50 years. Increases in technology, including mechanical, chemical, and electrical drove the price of wheat and other crops down. So it is simply a matter of scale. It should surprise no one on hn. For me, my parents saw the writing on the wall and sent me off to engineering school. There is some romance associated with "going back to the land" but you know we haven't been there all that long. What I wonder, in the sense of sustainability, if the ecology of the earth will be able to withstand the savage damage caused by agriculture.