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I think it's the former. I have relatives who farm, and for farming to be profitable requires a _lot_ of product to sell. I also have non-blood relatives tryin

I think it's the former. I have relatives who farm, and for farming to be profitable requires a _lot_ of product to sell. I also have non-blood relatives trying to start a small farm in rural Pennsylvania. They tried growing and selling oat last year. Apparently it wasn't worth the effort unless they were going to grow and sell it at at huge quantities. Farming isn't necessarily traditions-based. My established farming relatives have incredible $100k+ combines that can practically harvest on their own via GPS with little supervision required. They just need to grow a lot to be profitable (which scaling helps with of course).

agumonkey 5y ago
how is the middle man situation in Northern America ? in France, some kinds of products are made unbearably hard to produce because they'll negotiate you to death (biggest milk corp. lactalis for instance) while they make good premiums on cheese / yogurts etc Maybe with a different distribution structure producers can get a bit more profits and people nicer / fresher products ?
- spelunker 5y ago
  That's a good question and I don't have a good answer for you. I know some of my relatives produce and sell beet sugar through a cooperative, but I also know that they will sell other crops to large distributors like you mention, or even sometimes directly to grocery stores. I try to buy the coop sugar when I can.