4 ms·

Under this heading, > Myth 2: Large farms are more efficient The author cites two studies, one from 1989 and and one from 1992, to claim that large farms are

Under this heading, > Myth 2: Large farms are more efficient The author cites two studies, one from 1989 and and one from 1992, to claim that large farms are not more efficient. I feel like 30 years of technological advancements might have changed that. So the evidence seems very weak to me. P.S. I would really want to live in a universe where small farms were more efficient than large ones. But evidence is evidence.

Ensorceled 5y ago
It's also a bit weasel wordy .. "While large farms excel at producing a lot of a particular crop – like corn or wheat – small diversified farms produce more food and more kinds of food per hectare overall." I believe in the movement and have seen what factory farming does to a place first hand, but I always cringe when movements try to turn cons into pros with misleading comparisons.
- goda90 5y ago
  I think we just don't have a settled definition of efficiency. I've seen farmers claim that using the right rotations, edible cover crops, and grazing cattle and free-range chickens leads to more calories per acre, more diverse crops and all without fertilizers or pesticides. But no claims about farmer and machinery time per acre. Factory farming is probably fewer farmers and fewer tractors per calorie.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    Agreed. My grandfather raised 20-30 dairy cows on 200 acres. Horse and plow. Little fertilizer. Crop rotation (pasture/clover/hay). Lots of child labour. Wood lot for firewood at the back. Better for the land, but I wouldn't be that kind of farmer for anything. Now large dairy farms are running hundreds of head of cattle with only a couple of full time workers but tend to use quite a bit more acres per cow (or just plain buy hay and other feed from other places).
    - goda90 5y ago
      Technology is probably getting to the point where we can have better farms but less work than our grandparents needed to do. A tractor can still be used for sustainable planting and harvesting. Rotating a herd of cattle to promote soil growth can be done easier with an ATV and extra fencing than a guy on horseback.
colechristensen 5y ago
The author also doesn’t define efficient. Food produced per unit area? Energy? Effort?
- searine 5y ago
  Exactly. You can produce a ton of food if you are fretting over every leaf in what amounts to a large garden. Large conventional farms can cover thousands of hectares with the same amount of labor.
- mellavora 5y ago
  also, over what time span/# of crop cycles? effects on other aspects of the system?
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I think that's the key point in both 'sides' of the argument (if any) in the comments under this article. It's sustainability vs min/maxing (expenses vs effort vs yield). I mean, it's obvious that small scale eco-conscious farming is "better" than large-scale industrial farming using genetically optimized crops, fertilizers, and pest control, but only if your definition of "better" focuses on sustainability, if it's cost vs yield and the like, industrial farming may be "better". The eco-conscious way of farming is more labor intensive and will most likely lead to higher prices in store shelves. But on the other hand, there's plenty of people who would want to work as a farmer, as long as the wages and working conditions are good.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Wheat doesn't care how big is the farm it's growing on. Same techniques can be used on any farm. Look at official statistics for olive production of Spain, smaller farms have better results, but the difference is tiny, a few percent. Also a 'large' farm for spain is 'medium' in UK and 'tiny' in US. Usually people who say small mean family owned, not corporate. This is simply a matter of capital and land allocation/distribution/policy.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  My friend is literally a family farmer, and all she grows is corn and soybeans, in heavily-mechanized monoculture, with all the fertilizer and pesticides you'd expect. It seems like who exactly owns the farm doesn't bear much on what is the most profitable thing to do with the farm. But this is a world I'm not very familiar with and I'd like to hear from people who actually know what they're talking about.
snarf21 5y ago
How do you define efficient? There are lots of ways to slice the data. Large farms need economies of scale to pay for $1M tractors. I don't see anyone paying for something that expensive and raising a family on 40 acres.
- 7952 5y ago
  Exactly. Eeking out every ounce of productivity from land is different to getting the highest return on a financial investment. My hunch is that small farms are cash poor but time rich and that has implications. At some point the bottleneck switches from cash to available time of talented people.
ciconia 5y ago
According to Our World in Data [0]: > Smallholder farms (farms with less then 2ha) use 24% of agricultural land, produce 29% of crops, providing 32% of the world's food. That means that the larger ones use 76% of land to provide 68% of the world's food. Looks to me like small farms are indeed more efficient... [0] https://ourworldindata.org/smallholder-food-production https://ourworldindata.org/smallholder-food-production
zzzeek 5y ago
I'm there with you. I belong to a food coop and purchase from small local farms all the time, but that's as an affluent tech professional where I'm under no illusions that the current state of this food community would be able to sustain the entire US population at its current rate of consumption. Things like producing millions of acres of corn to produce corn syrup and animal feed for fast food burgers are things that the "artisinal" food community sort of looks down upon, things like that would likely have to change if the farming system were de-industrialized and replaced with small independent farms. It's an extraordinary claim that small family farms could feasibly replace industrial scale farming as a whole without changing things like that, so you'd need some extraordinary proof. While I can see how maybe you can show that a small farm is more productive per acre compared to an industrial farm, OK, now try to scale up that small farm, by either expanding it or adding many more such small farms, to produce the same amount of food as the industrial farms do. Then what happens?
- p_j_w 5y ago
  >Things like producing millions of acres of corn to produce corn syrup and animal feed for fast food burgers are things that the "artisinal" food community sort of looks down upon I know you were just providing one example, but this doesn't seem like an outrageous position to me. That's a lot of resource use for some food that causes myriad health problems in our society. Seems like we'd all be better off just eating the corn and then would be able to use a lot less food. I don"t disagree with your wider point about industrial vs. family farming, though.
  - zzzeek 5y ago
    oh, I 100% agree that the practice is awful, corn syrup shouldn't exist and animals are mostly supposed to eat grass, not corn. I was just pointing out that these are things that are enabled by industrialized farms, so if they went away (which would be great) then the overuse of corn would have to go away too. that is my larger point is, if small farms can feed the US, it's likely that US food culture / economics would need to change pretty radically for that to happen.
hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
efficiency is a misnomer. is it more efficient to grow some veggies in your backyard, or to have an industrial system? currently we have efficiency, but do we have health? do we have the lifestyle we want? do we have the future secured? No, No, No. How do I want the future? Really tasty fruits I cant get in the shops. And I have many. Now that is something efficiency cant get me. PS, Im not so sure evidence is evidence! :) Did you see the article on how smoking increases fitness? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29728175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29728175
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Well... Those studies aren't the only ones. How about having a look at these, or that site in general? https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/articles/ https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/articles/

Ensorceled 5y ago

It's also a bit weasel wordy .. "While large farms excel at producing a lot of a particular crop – like corn or wheat – small diversified farms produce more food and more kinds of food per hectare overall." I believe in the movement and have seen what factory farming does to a place first hand, but I always cringe when movements try to turn cons into pros with misleading comparisons.

goda90 5y ago
I think we just don't have a settled definition of efficiency. I've seen farmers claim that using the right rotations, edible cover crops, and grazing cattle and free-range chickens leads to more calories per acre, more diverse crops and all without fertilizers or pesticides. But no claims about farmer and machinery time per acre. Factory farming is probably fewer farmers and fewer tractors per calorie.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  Agreed. My grandfather raised 20-30 dairy cows on 200 acres. Horse and plow. Little fertilizer. Crop rotation (pasture/clover/hay). Lots of child labour. Wood lot for firewood at the back. Better for the land, but I wouldn't be that kind of farmer for anything. Now large dairy farms are running hundreds of head of cattle with only a couple of full time workers but tend to use quite a bit more acres per cow (or just plain buy hay and other feed from other places).
  - goda90 5y ago
    Technology is probably getting to the point where we can have better farms but less work than our grandparents needed to do. A tractor can still be used for sustainable planting and harvesting. Rotating a herd of cattle to promote soil growth can be done easier with an ATV and extra fencing than a guy on horseback.

colechristensen 5y ago

The author also doesn’t define efficient. Food produced per unit area? Energy? Effort?

searine 5y ago
Exactly. You can produce a ton of food if you are fretting over every leaf in what amounts to a large garden. Large conventional farms can cover thousands of hectares with the same amount of labor.
mellavora 5y ago
also, over what time span/# of crop cycles? effects on other aspects of the system?
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I think that's the key point in both 'sides' of the argument (if any) in the comments under this article. It's sustainability vs min/maxing (expenses vs effort vs yield). I mean, it's obvious that small scale eco-conscious farming is "better" than large-scale industrial farming using genetically optimized crops, fertilizers, and pest control, but only if your definition of "better" focuses on sustainability, if it's cost vs yield and the like, industrial farming may be "better". The eco-conscious way of farming is more labor intensive and will most likely lead to higher prices in store shelves. But on the other hand, there's plenty of people who would want to work as a farmer, as long as the wages and working conditions are good.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Wheat doesn't care how big is the farm it's growing on. Same techniques can be used on any farm. Look at official statistics for olive production of Spain, smaller farms have better results, but the difference is tiny, a few percent. Also a 'large' farm for spain is 'medium' in UK and 'tiny' in US. Usually people who say small mean family owned, not corporate. This is simply a matter of capital and land allocation/distribution/policy.

nerdponx 5y ago
My friend is literally a family farmer, and all she grows is corn and soybeans, in heavily-mechanized monoculture, with all the fertilizer and pesticides you'd expect. It seems like who exactly owns the farm doesn't bear much on what is the most profitable thing to do with the farm. But this is a world I'm not very familiar with and I'd like to hear from people who actually know what they're talking about.

snarf21 5y ago

How do you define efficient? There are lots of ways to slice the data. Large farms need economies of scale to pay for $1M tractors. I don't see anyone paying for something that expensive and raising a family on 40 acres.

7952 5y ago
Exactly. Eeking out every ounce of productivity from land is different to getting the highest return on a financial investment. My hunch is that small farms are cash poor but time rich and that has implications. At some point the bottleneck switches from cash to available time of talented people.

ciconia 5y ago

According to Our World in Data [0]: > Smallholder farms (farms with less then 2ha) use 24% of agricultural land, produce 29% of crops, providing 32% of the world's food. That means that the larger ones use 76% of land to provide 68% of the world's food. Looks to me like small farms are indeed more efficient... [0] https://ourworldindata.org/smallholder-food-production https://ourworldindata.org/smallholder-food-production

zzzeek 5y ago

I'm there with you. I belong to a food coop and purchase from small local farms all the time, but that's as an affluent tech professional where I'm under no illusions that the current state of this food community would be able to sustain the entire US population at its current rate of consumption. Things like producing millions of acres of corn to produce corn syrup and animal feed for fast food burgers are things that the "artisinal" food community sort of looks down upon, things like that would likely have to change if the farming system were de-industrialized and replaced with small independent farms. It's an extraordinary claim that small family farms could feasibly replace industrial scale farming as a whole without changing things like that, so you'd need some extraordinary proof. While I can see how maybe you can show that a small farm is more productive per acre compared to an industrial farm, OK, now try to scale up that small farm, by either expanding it or adding many more such small farms, to produce the same amount of food as the industrial farms do. Then what happens?

p_j_w 5y ago
>Things like producing millions of acres of corn to produce corn syrup and animal feed for fast food burgers are things that the "artisinal" food community sort of looks down upon I know you were just providing one example, but this doesn't seem like an outrageous position to me. That's a lot of resource use for some food that causes myriad health problems in our society. Seems like we'd all be better off just eating the corn and then would be able to use a lot less food. I don"t disagree with your wider point about industrial vs. family farming, though.
- zzzeek 5y ago
  oh, I 100% agree that the practice is awful, corn syrup shouldn't exist and animals are mostly supposed to eat grass, not corn. I was just pointing out that these are things that are enabled by industrialized farms, so if they went away (which would be great) then the overuse of corn would have to go away too. that is my larger point is, if small farms can feed the US, it's likely that US food culture / economics would need to change pretty radically for that to happen.

hazza_n_dazza 5y ago

efficiency is a misnomer. is it more efficient to grow some veggies in your backyard, or to have an industrial system? currently we have efficiency, but do we have health? do we have the lifestyle we want? do we have the future secured? No, No, No. How do I want the future? Really tasty fruits I cant get in the shops. And I have many. Now that is something efficiency cant get me. PS, Im not so sure evidence is evidence! :) Did you see the article on how smoking increases fitness? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29728175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29728175

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Well... Those studies aren't the only ones. How about having a look at these, or that site in general? https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/articles/ https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/articles/