4 ms·

Wow, my uncle in the same boat. He actually now rents land back to the large farmers and is making more than when he was farming it himself. The new farm is m

Wow, my uncle in the same boat. He actually now rents land back to the large farmers and is making more than when he was farming it himself. The new farm is massive, similar number of cattle, methane collectors, manure pipelines...but the owners are far away and the people doing it are just your rural farmhands doing the work because they like it and it's. All that's available. The owners are making $$$$. Modern farming is a mess from head to toe, been in the making for 40 years.

thaumaturgy 8y ago
One of the benefits of living in a semi-rural area btw is that you can easily participate in changing this situation. During the Spring, Summer, and Fall months I can go and pick up fruits and veggies from a local grower -- just show up on their property during regular business hours, go and pick it yourself if you feel like or just pick up one of the boxes they've prearranged. I can get meat from a good local ranch too. I don't think there's any nearby dairy though. Mega-agribusiness is one of the consequences of increasing urban living. To support really large, dense cities, everything has to be scaled way up. A dairy farm is no longer producing for the 100,000 people in a 20 mile radius, it's producing for millions, and the waste it creates scales up too. In an ideal world, these mega-producers would be less harmful to the environment than the equivalent number of small producers, because there would be some benefit from economies of scale. But in this world, the mega-producers largely see regulation and environmental caretaking to be cost centers and they pursue the cheapest solutions, which usually involve hiding the problem or paying somebody off or buying themselves some legislation. Smaller producers meanwhile have a harder time getting away with that.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  ...economies of scale. The other thing is local carrying capacity. A small herd might not have anything done to the manure, and through the wonders of bacteria and fungi not harm local streams at all. Once the operation is big enough to more closely resemble a Kansas feedlot, that shit's toxic waste.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  During the Spring, Summer, and Fall months I can go and pick up fruits and veggies from a local grower City dwellers can do nearly the same thing through farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture services. (except instead of picking yourself, the farmer does the picking) Mega-agribusiness is one of the consequences of increasing urban living. To support really large, dense cities, everything has to be scaled way up Isn't it more a factor of how many people there are to feed rather than density? A million people in a dense city will need (roughly) the same amount of food as a million people spread over half a state.
  - mgarfias 8y ago
    A million people will likely have more land each. They’ll be able to have gardens and maybe even raise their own animals.
    - Johnny555 8y ago
      Is that a net environmental win? Rural housing is much lower density than city housing -- so if these million people each had one acre plots and devoted half that land to gardens (which would feed roughly half a person for a year), they'd have a population density of around 0.4 people per acre (assuming 2.5 people per household). Most of the rest of the land would be covered with houses and landscaping. And that's assuming that each of these people are willing to work a half acre backyard farm, which is a lot of land to maintain as a hobby. So they are consuming 400,000 acres (625 sq miles) of land, with half of it replacing dedicated agriculture, but the other ~300 square miles is going to low density housing. (which is impossible to serve effectively with transit so everyone has to drive to go anywhere) In contrast, San Francisco houses 800,000 people on 49 sq miles of land. (which doesn't include the roughly 250,000 workers that commute there every day)
- wwweston 8y ago
  If there's an oversupply problem, that suggests that perhaps the point where further industrialization was necessary in order to support the population is somewhere in the rear view mirror. And if the economics of megaproduction involve externalizing costs of dealing with waste, then somewhere we've broken something about pricing and/or regulation.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    There's been an oversupply of consumption in the US of most foods grown in the US for decades of course (witness the endless media stories of giant stocks of us govt cheese surplus). With exports we have soaked up much of that oversupply. There are some years when there is less production but generally we have too much; milk seems to be especially bad. My uncle is a farmer and works for the us govt somehow administering crop price supports. A few years ago, he told me that the price supports mostly guarantee that there is a stable supply for food, almost pushing for greater production, thus keeping us close to oversupply (which keeps the prices lower). I'm not a farmer, I wonder if this idea that us govt price supports for farming leads us to have constant oversupply? And then what if they went away?
darpa_escapee 8y ago
> Modern farming is a mess from head to toe, been in the making for 40 years. Longer than that. The Grapes of Wrath springs to mind.
ghettoimp 8y ago
As a total outsider, I wonder what are the efficiencies that these huge operations get, which let them crush the little guy? Is it that they can arrange huge contracts with distributors/chains/whatever so there is less overhead in the selling part? Is it less scrupulous environmental or animal welfare practices that just mean they are more exploitative and creating more externalities? Is it something else? I wonder if there'd be some way for the little guys to band together. I'm sure there's already a lot of this with co-ops and such. What's stopping these co-ops from reaching the next level and crushing the big guys?
- GalacticDomin8r 8y ago
  Economies of scale like everything else. An example is big farms have their own veterinarian staff. Much of the government management eg subsidies are also favorable to big operations. The expertise of knowing about them, filing and complying correctly, and in some cases even qualifying all are weighted to large players.

thaumaturgy 8y ago

One of the benefits of living in a semi-rural area btw is that you can easily participate in changing this situation. During the Spring, Summer, and Fall months I can go and pick up fruits and veggies from a local grower -- just show up on their property during regular business hours, go and pick it yourself if you feel like or just pick up one of the boxes they've prearranged. I can get meat from a good local ranch too. I don't think there's any nearby dairy though. Mega-agribusiness is one of the consequences of increasing urban living. To support really large, dense cities, everything has to be scaled way up. A dairy farm is no longer producing for the 100,000 people in a 20 mile radius, it's producing for millions, and the waste it creates scales up too. In an ideal world, these mega-producers would be less harmful to the environment than the equivalent number of small producers, because there would be some benefit from economies of scale. But in this world, the mega-producers largely see regulation and environmental caretaking to be cost centers and they pursue the cheapest solutions, which usually involve hiding the problem or paying somebody off or buying themselves some legislation. Smaller producers meanwhile have a harder time getting away with that.

jessaustin 8y ago
...economies of scale. The other thing is local carrying capacity. A small herd might not have anything done to the manure, and through the wonders of bacteria and fungi not harm local streams at all. Once the operation is big enough to more closely resemble a Kansas feedlot, that shit's toxic waste.
Johnny555 8y ago
During the Spring, Summer, and Fall months I can go and pick up fruits and veggies from a local grower City dwellers can do nearly the same thing through farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture services. (except instead of picking yourself, the farmer does the picking) Mega-agribusiness is one of the consequences of increasing urban living. To support really large, dense cities, everything has to be scaled way up Isn't it more a factor of how many people there are to feed rather than density? A million people in a dense city will need (roughly) the same amount of food as a million people spread over half a state.
- mgarfias 8y ago
  A million people will likely have more land each. They’ll be able to have gardens and maybe even raise their own animals.
  - Johnny555 8y ago
    Is that a net environmental win? Rural housing is much lower density than city housing -- so if these million people each had one acre plots and devoted half that land to gardens (which would feed roughly half a person for a year), they'd have a population density of around 0.4 people per acre (assuming 2.5 people per household). Most of the rest of the land would be covered with houses and landscaping. And that's assuming that each of these people are willing to work a half acre backyard farm, which is a lot of land to maintain as a hobby. So they are consuming 400,000 acres (625 sq miles) of land, with half of it replacing dedicated agriculture, but the other ~300 square miles is going to low density housing. (which is impossible to serve effectively with transit so everyone has to drive to go anywhere) In contrast, San Francisco houses 800,000 people on 49 sq miles of land. (which doesn't include the roughly 250,000 workers that commute there every day)
wwweston 8y ago
If there's an oversupply problem, that suggests that perhaps the point where further industrialization was necessary in order to support the population is somewhere in the rear view mirror. And if the economics of megaproduction involve externalizing costs of dealing with waste, then somewhere we've broken something about pricing and/or regulation.
- Latteland 8y ago
  There's been an oversupply of consumption in the US of most foods grown in the US for decades of course (witness the endless media stories of giant stocks of us govt cheese surplus). With exports we have soaked up much of that oversupply. There are some years when there is less production but generally we have too much; milk seems to be especially bad. My uncle is a farmer and works for the us govt somehow administering crop price supports. A few years ago, he told me that the price supports mostly guarantee that there is a stable supply for food, almost pushing for greater production, thus keeping us close to oversupply (which keeps the prices lower). I'm not a farmer, I wonder if this idea that us govt price supports for farming leads us to have constant oversupply? And then what if they went away?

darpa_escapee 8y ago

> Modern farming is a mess from head to toe, been in the making for 40 years. Longer than that. The Grapes of Wrath springs to mind.

ghettoimp 8y ago

As a total outsider, I wonder what are the efficiencies that these huge operations get, which let them crush the little guy? Is it that they can arrange huge contracts with distributors/chains/whatever so there is less overhead in the selling part? Is it less scrupulous environmental or animal welfare practices that just mean they are more exploitative and creating more externalities? Is it something else? I wonder if there'd be some way for the little guys to band together. I'm sure there's already a lot of this with co-ops and such. What's stopping these co-ops from reaching the next level and crushing the big guys?

GalacticDomin8r 8y ago
Economies of scale like everything else. An example is big farms have their own veterinarian staff. Much of the government management eg subsidies are also favorable to big operations. The expertise of knowing about them, filing and complying correctly, and in some cases even qualifying all are weighted to large players.