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This quote is from a report, which itself is based on a FAO report: http://www.fao.org/3/ca7036en/ca7036en.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/ca7036en/ca7036en.pdf Quot

This quote is from a report, which itself is based on a FAO report: http://www.fao.org/3/ca7036en/ca7036en.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/ca7036en/ca7036en.pdf Quote with context: The results show that, worldwide, farms of less than 1 hectare account for 70 percent of all farms, but operate only 7 percent of all agricultural land. Slightly larger farms between 1 and 2 hectares account for 14 percent of all farms and control 4 percent of the land. Together, farms of less than 2 hectares account for 84 percent of all farms, but operate only around 12 percent of all agricultural land. Farms in the range of 2 to 5 hectares account for 10 percent of all farms and control 6 percent of the land. Interestingly, the largest 1 percent of farms in the world (those larger than 50 hectares) operate more than 70 percent of the world’s farmland. (there are 608 million farms in the world)

opinion-is-bad 6y ago
The profit share for those largest 1% of farms is even greater than 70% as well. I believe it’s around 93% of profits are made from the large operations.
- jtuente 6y ago
  For reference, 50 hectares (123 acres) is a small farm for an ag community/family. It's not the least bit surprising that they are low profit. Several members of my extended family farm at and above that acreage and a majority of my grandfather's farmland is leased out to a larger family operation since he's retired. Those family members mostly have regular 40/week jobs, since they're just hobby farms.
  - opinion-is-bad 6y ago
    Absolutely, the cutoff to be a large farm is quite low. I am a farmer myself, but we have a very large plot compared to the cutoff point (~10,000 acres, half of them permanent and half row crops). There are enough difficulties to managing our operation, I would never advise someone to go into the business unless they had an almost religious calling to it.
jcranmer 6y ago
To put some numbers in perspective: In the US, the sale of public lands for everything west of the Ohio River was on the basis of the Public Land Survey System. The smallest saleable parcel was a "quarter-quarter section", or 40 acres (~16 hectares) of land. The Homestead Acts would grant (at various times) 160, 320, or 640 acres of land to free for anyone who would farm out. In other wards, the "small" pioneer farms of American history are in the top 1% of all farms. Put differently, the large number of small farms is driven by the size of subsistence farms in the intense rice-growing areas of Southeast Asia (rice being more productive per acre than wheat, especially if you're not dealing with industrial inputs). Then, you have the subsistence farms of less-productive crops like wheat, mostly in Africa.
mainstreem 6y ago
Isn't this just pointing out that farms follow a Pareto distribution, like a lot of creative domains? It's a really common emergent pattern. It doesn't diminish from the observation the article makes, but it does make it somewhat less surprising when you're used to seeing Pareto curves all over the place.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  There are other comments in this thread about Pareto. Personally, I think it's a very different distribution because its basically misleading. The very vast majority the 608 million "farms" are the equivalent of a small house and a yard. There may be more classic Pareto distribution if you change the statistics - basically the title and newspaper article are misleading in trying to point out inequality. Its a trap. Advocates of Pareto like to downplay inequality by invoking Pareto distributions as being "natural". Both points of view are flawed in this specific case (but are valid in other cases) because the statistics don't mean much - it's like playing a rigged casino game against a player where it's the house that wins.

opinion-is-bad 6y ago

The profit share for those largest 1% of farms is even greater than 70% as well. I believe it’s around 93% of profits are made from the large operations.

jtuente 6y ago
For reference, 50 hectares (123 acres) is a small farm for an ag community/family. It's not the least bit surprising that they are low profit. Several members of my extended family farm at and above that acreage and a majority of my grandfather's farmland is leased out to a larger family operation since he's retired. Those family members mostly have regular 40/week jobs, since they're just hobby farms.
- opinion-is-bad 6y ago
  Absolutely, the cutoff to be a large farm is quite low. I am a farmer myself, but we have a very large plot compared to the cutoff point (~10,000 acres, half of them permanent and half row crops). There are enough difficulties to managing our operation, I would never advise someone to go into the business unless they had an almost religious calling to it.

jcranmer 6y ago

To put some numbers in perspective: In the US, the sale of public lands for everything west of the Ohio River was on the basis of the Public Land Survey System. The smallest saleable parcel was a "quarter-quarter section", or 40 acres (~16 hectares) of land. The Homestead Acts would grant (at various times) 160, 320, or 640 acres of land to free for anyone who would farm out. In other wards, the "small" pioneer farms of American history are in the top 1% of all farms. Put differently, the large number of small farms is driven by the size of subsistence farms in the intense rice-growing areas of Southeast Asia (rice being more productive per acre than wheat, especially if you're not dealing with industrial inputs). Then, you have the subsistence farms of less-productive crops like wheat, mostly in Africa.

mainstreem 6y ago

Isn't this just pointing out that farms follow a Pareto distribution, like a lot of creative domains? It's a really common emergent pattern. It doesn't diminish from the observation the article makes, but it does make it somewhat less surprising when you're used to seeing Pareto curves all over the place.

thinkingemote 6y ago
There are other comments in this thread about Pareto. Personally, I think it's a very different distribution because its basically misleading. The very vast majority the 608 million "farms" are the equivalent of a small house and a yard. There may be more classic Pareto distribution if you change the statistics - basically the title and newspaper article are misleading in trying to point out inequality. Its a trap. Advocates of Pareto like to downplay inequality by invoking Pareto distributions as being "natural". Both points of view are flawed in this specific case (but are valid in other cases) because the statistics don't mean much - it's like playing a rigged casino game against a player where it's the house that wins.