3 ms·

What farmers did when I was growing up was they divide their lot into 4. Farm on three - put compost on other and rotate yearly.

• chii 5y ago
  but that cuts your yield by 25%. Wouldn't a competing farm be more profitable to add fertilizers to the soil to replenish the loss nutrients, which means they can price out the crop rotation farm?
  • reedciccio 5y ago
    In most of western world agriculture is subsidized: that 25% of farm land that's on a break will be paid by the government. The gov mandates and pays also for crop rotation.
  • HPsquared 5y ago
    Profit includes changes to asset value; it's not in the farmer's interest to destroy his soil.
  • mschuster91 5y ago
    In the short term such a farm would indeed be more profitable, but in the long term? The "less profitable" farm would close shop and be replaced by a fertilizer farm... and then, as a net result, society is worse off. This is why regulations (and to combat their evasion by other countries, anti-dumping tariffs) are needed.
  • kingkawn 5y ago
    It doesn't, because you will get no yield if you don't let a field go fallow once in a while
  • thehappypm 5y ago
    You would see a 25% cut in revenue (yielded crops to market) but also would see a cut in your costs (you aren't tilling, planting seeds, harvesting, putting wear and tear on tools, transporting to market) that would offset it.
    • chii 5y ago
      The economies of scale of industrializing farming means that cutting the planting and harvesting by 25% doesn't cut the cost by the same 25% (i.e., the same economies of scale works against you when you try to decrease your scale!).
      • thehappypm 5y ago
        I did not mean to imply that costs would drop by exactly 25%, just that you might not see the hit to your profit margin you would expect due to your costs also decreasing with decreasing revenue.