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The inequality discussed by the article is a reduction to a popular political line. These popularized, almost mythical, portrayals of agriculture are uselessly
by kochb 6y ago
The inequality discussed by the article is a reduction to a popular political line. These popularized, almost mythical, portrayals of agriculture are uselessly far from reality. If you want to summarize a tremendously complex industry, it's more useful to compare in terms of the crop being produced and the region's level of economic development.
For example, in the US, mechanized row crop farming over large numbers of acres is the norm (growing corn, beans, wheat, etc). These farms are all small head count family-run operations, sized between a few hundred to a few thousand acres, with a total somewhere in the low hundred-thousands of them.
The worldwide number of farms then runs up into the hundreds of millions due to small landholders - subsistence agriculture, locally sold produce, etc.
A farmer growing corn in a remote Central American village is completely different from the farmer growing corn in the United States. A produce farmer at your local farmer's market is completely different from a wheat farmer on the Black Sea. There's a living to be made at many points on the spectrum, and humanity needs each of them.
Real problems certainly do exist. They have more to do with things like the market pressures of producing commodity products, baseline calorie and nutritional demands, distribution, and structural supply and demand inefficiencies.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoMaybe that's out of date. Iowa used to be run as described, but the 'family farm' is largely extinct. Now its all run by corporations in large blocks. This is an evolving issue, and its gone at least as far as the OP suggests.
- kochb 6y agoSpeaking as someone who provides services to the industry, your statement just isn't correct; as I originally stated it's a popular myth that is very different from reality. There are large corporations involved, but they come in at the points where inputs are supplied to the farmer and production is purchased. Production is still operated by family run farms. It's so capital inefficient that no corporation would dare bother.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoHere's some data: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2018/06/28/iowa-state-isu-farmland-farm-facts-ownership-tenure-survey-owners-debt-land-rent-family-income/742159002/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/20... Its pretty bleak. Farmers that don't farm. Family ownership has dropped drastically. Most farm owners are 65 or older, half of that women that outlived their families and don't work the land any more. Most land in production is rented. Families that keep the ol farmstead do it for sentimental reasons and hire it out to a corporation.
- kochb 6y agoLand ownership is a tangential subject, but this does portray some accurate details about modern agriculture in the US. Many children leave the family farm; they can earn more with less work, and operating a profitable farm operation is very difficult. Families don't like selling their farmland, so they rent it out to another farmer. There are funds that buy farmland to profit from rental or future resale, but again they are not the operators. Perhaps it'd be helpful if you provided a few examples of these corporations? Not incorporated family farms, but these for-hire corporations operating at large acreage scales.
- marcusverus 6y agoThe article indicates that the people who own the land are renting it out to the people who are farming it. This doesn't mean that corporations own the land or do the farming. The article you linked explicitly states that corporate ownership is very low and as not changed in 40 years. > Corporate ownership has remained relatively stable since 1982, coming in at 10 percent last year.