6 ms·

It's common for one farmer to plant and harvest thousands of acres pretty much by himself, at least in North America. Labour, particularly up in Canada, is ofte

by cal5k 5y ago

It's common for one farmer to plant and harvest thousands of acres pretty much by himself, at least in North America. Labour, particularly up in Canada, is often in short supply which makes moving livestock around impractical - and not all of them even keep livestock, because it's not profitable unless you're keeping thousands of head.

CuriouslyC 5y ago
The conventional ag model where you have one farmer monocropping a thousand acres are the reason the #1 thing most farmers grow is debt. That requires expensive specialized equipment, and much heavier application of pesticides and fertilizers than a balanced system, so both your fixed and variable costs are high. If you want to see a profitable, productive mid sized farm, check out Polyface. Joel makes a good living while treating his land and animals well.
- randomdata 5y ago
  Thing is that conventional farming, as you call it, and startups have a lot of in common. The goal is not to earn a tidy profit each year, but instead to build up massive capital for one huge payday when you get bought out. I suspect nobody really cares to see a profitable mid-sized farm as that kind of misses the appeal of farming. If you just want a steady income there are much better paying and less stressful jobs out there.
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago
    The interesting thing is that there are a lot of young(ish) people interested in farming, who really do want to run a profitable mid-sized farm. Most of these people just don't have the resources to buy into land, so most of the ones that do it have inherited derelict farms. A few of them do it with leased land, but that's risky as regenerative ag requires a time investment and getting the rug pulled out from under you can be a real bummer. I'd argue that our mega-ag model is a big part of the problem, it's given us stupidly cheap corn/soy while causing a lot of health and pollution problems, and basically ruining farming as an actual profession.
    - randomdata 5y ago
      Corn and soybeans are cheap because they're really easy to handle. The process is almost entirely automated at this point, allowing one person to do what would have required thousands of people in the past. Other areas of agriculture have not been so easy to remove the human element, requiring nearly as many people today as a century ago. With reduced scaling potential, you don't see the same cost reduction.
      - CuriouslyC 5y ago
        The problem is that the cost reduction is a bit of an illusion, since your fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide costs are going to go up over time as your land turns marginal, and since there are so many mega-farms running huge GPS controlled equipment you're never going to be cost competitive at a smaller scale for corn/soy, but you have to accept the market price, which leaves a razor thin margin (if any at all). The economics of farming are all fucked up, because our current farming practices have a lot of externalities that aren't priced into conventional produce, and producers who try to improve things to remove these externalities either have to take a loss versus the producers who say "fuck the future, fuck everyone who isn't me" or create new markets for their goods (which is where the whole farmer's market movement and the local food guilt thing come from).
        randomdata 5y ago
        > you're never going to be cost competitive at a smaller scale for corn/soy, but you have to accept the market price, which leaves a razor thin margin (if any at all). You don't really need to be able to compete if you aren't looking for a massive exit, though. My ~150 acres (most of it rented, no less) of corn/soy/wheat provides enough for me to live off of comfortably enough. For about a month's work a year, that's wonderful in my mind. It seems you're just getting caught up in the capital building frenzy that I talked about earlier. If you want to have the huge payday when you sell then you take on huge debt, grow to massive scale, use all of your income to service the debt and then you're sitting on a fortune at retirement. This is what attracts most people to farming, seemingly you included, which is fair. If you are content to stay small you can avoid the debt and what the big guy is giving to the bank you can pocket and live well off of. That's where I've settled and it works fine. I won't have the huge payday later, however. It's a tradeoff.
- toast0 5y ago
  If you're running multiple crops, don't you need specialized equipment for each? Making it a bigger investment in equipment, or more likely to not have the right equipment at the right time if you have to rent/borrow it?
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago
    That depends on the crop. Tree shakers and orchard/tree nut related equipment tends to be pretty standardized, and a lot of crops can share a small(-ish) common pool of tractor attachments, but if you choose your diversifications poorly you could be on the hook for some hefty equipment costs. Also, I would lean on cash crops where the SoTA is harvesting by migrant labor. There is definitely a knowledge/planning component to multi-cropping.

by cal5k 5y ago

CuriouslyC 5y ago

The conventional ag model where you have one farmer monocropping a thousand acres are the reason the #1 thing most farmers grow is debt. That requires expensive specialized equipment, and much heavier application of pesticides and fertilizers than a balanced system, so both your fixed and variable costs are high. If you want to see a profitable, productive mid sized farm, check out Polyface. Joel makes a good living while treating his land and animals well.

randomdata 5y ago
Thing is that conventional farming, as you call it, and startups have a lot of in common. The goal is not to earn a tidy profit each year, but instead to build up massive capital for one huge payday when you get bought out. I suspect nobody really cares to see a profitable mid-sized farm as that kind of misses the appeal of farming. If you just want a steady income there are much better paying and less stressful jobs out there.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  The interesting thing is that there are a lot of young(ish) people interested in farming, who really do want to run a profitable mid-sized farm. Most of these people just don't have the resources to buy into land, so most of the ones that do it have inherited derelict farms. A few of them do it with leased land, but that's risky as regenerative ag requires a time investment and getting the rug pulled out from under you can be a real bummer. I'd argue that our mega-ag model is a big part of the problem, it's given us stupidly cheap corn/soy while causing a lot of health and pollution problems, and basically ruining farming as an actual profession.
  - randomdata 5y ago
    Corn and soybeans are cheap because they're really easy to handle. The process is almost entirely automated at this point, allowing one person to do what would have required thousands of people in the past. Other areas of agriculture have not been so easy to remove the human element, requiring nearly as many people today as a century ago. With reduced scaling potential, you don't see the same cost reduction.
    - CuriouslyC 5y ago
      The problem is that the cost reduction is a bit of an illusion, since your fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide costs are going to go up over time as your land turns marginal, and since there are so many mega-farms running huge GPS controlled equipment you're never going to be cost competitive at a smaller scale for corn/soy, but you have to accept the market price, which leaves a razor thin margin (if any at all). The economics of farming are all fucked up, because our current farming practices have a lot of externalities that aren't priced into conventional produce, and producers who try to improve things to remove these externalities either have to take a loss versus the producers who say "fuck the future, fuck everyone who isn't me" or create new markets for their goods (which is where the whole farmer's market movement and the local food guilt thing come from).
      - randomdata 5y ago
        > you're never going to be cost competitive at a smaller scale for corn/soy, but you have to accept the market price, which leaves a razor thin margin (if any at all). You don't really need to be able to compete if you aren't looking for a massive exit, though. My ~150 acres (most of it rented, no less) of corn/soy/wheat provides enough for me to live off of comfortably enough. For about a month's work a year, that's wonderful in my mind. It seems you're just getting caught up in the capital building frenzy that I talked about earlier. If you want to have the huge payday when you sell then you take on huge debt, grow to massive scale, use all of your income to service the debt and then you're sitting on a fortune at retirement. This is what attracts most people to farming, seemingly you included, which is fair. If you are content to stay small you can avoid the debt and what the big guy is giving to the bank you can pocket and live well off of. That's where I've settled and it works fine. I won't have the huge payday later, however. It's a tradeoff.
toast0 5y ago
If you're running multiple crops, don't you need specialized equipment for each? Making it a bigger investment in equipment, or more likely to not have the right equipment at the right time if you have to rent/borrow it?
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  That depends on the crop. Tree shakers and orchard/tree nut related equipment tends to be pretty standardized, and a lot of crops can share a small(-ish) common pool of tractor attachments, but if you choose your diversifications poorly you could be on the hook for some hefty equipment costs. Also, I would lean on cash crops where the SoTA is harvesting by migrant labor. There is definitely a knowledge/planning component to multi-cropping.