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Coming in from a country (India) which even today has a large agricultural community which still uses ancient tools for farming (tractors are pretty much the mo

Coming in from a country (India) which even today has a large agricultural community which still uses ancient tools for farming (tractors are pretty much the most many get up to, with proper cold storage facilities, greenhouses etc practically a pipe dream), looking at countries improve their techniques in such a manner makes me wonder what it will take to move my country to similar scale. Is it simply technical, or is there a major push by government involved? Is it the community embracing technology, or is it other factors which make farming unsustainable without technology? Is it simply that farmers in these countries are overall more well to do? Or is it a combination of all of this? Especially in India, farmers have been moved even to suicide [1] during times of drought and flood, which seems to come up every other year (and farming is a very climate sensitive field anyway), I really wonder how tech can work to improve the status quo [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India

bbvnvlt 9y ago
I only scrolled through TFA (added to read later list). I am Dutch though. A lot of these systems require enormous (and growing) up-front investments, not feasible for small independent operations. There are a lot of family business in Westland, but they require massive mortgages and/or loans to keep up with the times (and the investments that they require). There are fewer and fewer small farms and more and more 'mega-barns'. Little space is needed, but a lot of it is high carbon and high capital.
- WJW 9y ago
  Also needed is a very stable environment, but infrastructurally and politically. A lot of these investments would never be feasible without for example the stability of the electricity network or the road network. It can be argued if this is caused by the government, but the Dutch seem more maintenance-minded than most other countries I visited. Probably caused by all the dikes: if not maintaining something properly will kill your entire village, you have a lot of incentive to become very good at it.
  - bbvnvlt 9y ago
    We have, in fact, a dedicated form of local government for water management [1], and: > These regional water authorities are among the oldest forms of local government in the Netherlands, some of them having been founded in the 13th century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands)
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  To add to your point about economies of scale, Indian farmers are a reliable political bloc. Turning a million unproductive farmers into 10,000 highly-productive ones is, from a political perspective, disastrous if you rely on that bloc. It's a similar phenomenon to public union political capture in certain American cities.
- pakitan 9y ago
  Yeah, I was wondering about that. Some of those farms look like they have million(s) dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure. And farming isn't exactly a high-margin industry so starting a new farm must be quite a risky venture. Are there government programs that help with the financing or it's all private capital?
  - bbvnvlt 9y ago
    There are both subsidies and loan programs. As far as I know (I am not a farmer, nor do I know any greenhouse farmers very well), lots of it is private capital though. One of the biggest banks in the Netherlands (Rabobank) has a (positive) reputation for financing farmers and other agricultural firms. (also a negative one due to the LIBOR scandal, incidentally)
  - gpvos 9y ago
    We have a bank (Rabobank) that is extremely good at financing agricultural investments.
- davedx 9y ago
  Lots of natural gas and coal to keep those greenhouses warm, indeed! This will probably change though: https://blog.maripositas.org/horticulture/greenhouse-systems-built-from-2020-will-be-energy-neutral https://blog.maripositas.org/horticulture/greenhouse-systems...
  - ricardobeat 9y ago
    > The growing environment is kept at optimal temperatures year-round by heat generated from geothermal aquifers
QAPereo 9y ago
The answers are simple to pose, difficult to even consider implementing, and troublesome in general. The problem in general is that we need more resources, or fewer people, but most rational people recognize the pitfalls in pursuing a "solution" to the latter, the and the former requires innovation or luck.
harigov 9y ago
We are still struggling to get away from dependence on monsoons for our farming, forget actually moving away from dependence on soil or other resources. Also, some of this is self-inflected because of our insistence on farmers owning land. By trying to force socialism at the level of property ownership in a capitalist market, we are making ourselves poorer.
avar 9y ago
The single biggest contributor is probably GDP per capita. You don't have the same economic pressures for efficiency and infrastructure if you can replace them with cheap labor, and without a high GDP you won't have the money to invest in all this infrastructure. Both of those are chicken & egg problems to some extent.
solatic 9y ago
Part of the problem in India is that land ownership is extremely fractured. You can't build infrastructure for high-output if you don't have rights to build the infrastructure. You can't achieve economies of scale if your property system is designed to prevent scaling. You can't ship price-competitive products to market if dozens of middlemen (and all their land) are all taking their cut before it ever reaches consumers. There isn't an easy answer. Unifying property under a co-op system won't solve the problem because you can't have every decision deliberated by committee which is content to play politics as opportunity passes it by. People simply need to sell, and they simply need to accept that the land will be worth more after they sell it. People will simply have to surrender control, one way or another. People will simply have to adapt to a new economy. Creative destruction is the price and the engine of progress. The alternative is the backwards system that exists today, and it is not sustainable, not in the face of foreign competition, not in the face of the people who suffer from starvation caused by mismanagement in poorer years, and not in the face of the persistent, rampant poverty that farmers keep themselves in as they cling to the control of what they know rather than the fear of uncertainty.
jcfrei 9y ago
In my opinion a big problem in developing as well as developed countries is the idea that farming should be a family business. Here in Switzerland the government is very slowly introducing legislation that favors big farms over smaller ones. This is usually one of the hardest things - convincing society that farming is better done as a profession within a company rather than by a family as a sort of vocation. Usually farmers will lobby against laws that favor bigger farms thereby limiting the productivity of agriculture while maintaining their traditional socio-economic status. The Dutch society might have a different historical understanding of farming (being a seafaring nation that heavily relied on trading) which made the introduction of these new laws easier - but I'm just guessing on that last point.
RealityNow 9y ago
It's simple - if the private labor market is failing to provide something, then the government needs to step in to make it happen. This could be via subsidies/grants, creation of research institutions (like the university in the article), and/or creation of state-owned enterprises. Unfortunately we've all been brainwashed by neoclassical economists and such to believe that free markets should dictate everything.

bbvnvlt 9y ago

I only scrolled through TFA (added to read later list). I am Dutch though. A lot of these systems require enormous (and growing) up-front investments, not feasible for small independent operations. There are a lot of family business in Westland, but they require massive mortgages and/or loans to keep up with the times (and the investments that they require). There are fewer and fewer small farms and more and more 'mega-barns'. Little space is needed, but a lot of it is high carbon and high capital.

WJW 9y ago
Also needed is a very stable environment, but infrastructurally and politically. A lot of these investments would never be feasible without for example the stability of the electricity network or the road network. It can be argued if this is caused by the government, but the Dutch seem more maintenance-minded than most other countries I visited. Probably caused by all the dikes: if not maintaining something properly will kill your entire village, you have a lot of incentive to become very good at it.
- bbvnvlt 9y ago
  We have, in fact, a dedicated form of local government for water management [1], and: > These regional water authorities are among the oldest forms of local government in the Netherlands, some of them having been founded in the 13th century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands)
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
To add to your point about economies of scale, Indian farmers are a reliable political bloc. Turning a million unproductive farmers into 10,000 highly-productive ones is, from a political perspective, disastrous if you rely on that bloc. It's a similar phenomenon to public union political capture in certain American cities.
pakitan 9y ago
Yeah, I was wondering about that. Some of those farms look like they have million(s) dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure. And farming isn't exactly a high-margin industry so starting a new farm must be quite a risky venture. Are there government programs that help with the financing or it's all private capital?
- bbvnvlt 9y ago
  There are both subsidies and loan programs. As far as I know (I am not a farmer, nor do I know any greenhouse farmers very well), lots of it is private capital though. One of the biggest banks in the Netherlands (Rabobank) has a (positive) reputation for financing farmers and other agricultural firms. (also a negative one due to the LIBOR scandal, incidentally)
- gpvos 9y ago
  We have a bank (Rabobank) that is extremely good at financing agricultural investments.
davedx 9y ago
Lots of natural gas and coal to keep those greenhouses warm, indeed! This will probably change though: https://blog.maripositas.org/horticulture/greenhouse-systems-built-from-2020-will-be-energy-neutral https://blog.maripositas.org/horticulture/greenhouse-systems...
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  > The growing environment is kept at optimal temperatures year-round by heat generated from geothermal aquifers

QAPereo 9y ago

The answers are simple to pose, difficult to even consider implementing, and troublesome in general. The problem in general is that we need more resources, or fewer people, but most rational people recognize the pitfalls in pursuing a "solution" to the latter, the and the former requires innovation or luck.

harigov 9y ago

We are still struggling to get away from dependence on monsoons for our farming, forget actually moving away from dependence on soil or other resources. Also, some of this is self-inflected because of our insistence on farmers owning land. By trying to force socialism at the level of property ownership in a capitalist market, we are making ourselves poorer.

avar 9y ago

The single biggest contributor is probably GDP per capita. You don't have the same economic pressures for efficiency and infrastructure if you can replace them with cheap labor, and without a high GDP you won't have the money to invest in all this infrastructure. Both of those are chicken & egg problems to some extent.

solatic 9y ago

Part of the problem in India is that land ownership is extremely fractured. You can't build infrastructure for high-output if you don't have rights to build the infrastructure. You can't achieve economies of scale if your property system is designed to prevent scaling. You can't ship price-competitive products to market if dozens of middlemen (and all their land) are all taking their cut before it ever reaches consumers. There isn't an easy answer. Unifying property under a co-op system won't solve the problem because you can't have every decision deliberated by committee which is content to play politics as opportunity passes it by. People simply need to sell, and they simply need to accept that the land will be worth more after they sell it. People will simply have to surrender control, one way or another. People will simply have to adapt to a new economy. Creative destruction is the price and the engine of progress. The alternative is the backwards system that exists today, and it is not sustainable, not in the face of foreign competition, not in the face of the people who suffer from starvation caused by mismanagement in poorer years, and not in the face of the persistent, rampant poverty that farmers keep themselves in as they cling to the control of what they know rather than the fear of uncertainty.

jcfrei 9y ago

In my opinion a big problem in developing as well as developed countries is the idea that farming should be a family business. Here in Switzerland the government is very slowly introducing legislation that favors big farms over smaller ones. This is usually one of the hardest things - convincing society that farming is better done as a profession within a company rather than by a family as a sort of vocation. Usually farmers will lobby against laws that favor bigger farms thereby limiting the productivity of agriculture while maintaining their traditional socio-economic status. The Dutch society might have a different historical understanding of farming (being a seafaring nation that heavily relied on trading) which made the introduction of these new laws easier - but I'm just guessing on that last point.

RealityNow 9y ago

It's simple - if the private labor market is failing to provide something, then the government needs to step in to make it happen. This could be via subsidies/grants, creation of research institutions (like the university in the article), and/or creation of state-owned enterprises. Unfortunately we've all been brainwashed by neoclassical economists and such to believe that free markets should dictate everything.