3 ms·

> The economics are just too strong. This is really the crux of the issue. Farming sucks. Farming at small scales really sucks. There is a massive incentive

by bsder 3y ago

> The economics are just too strong. This is really the crux of the issue. Farming sucks. Farming at small scales really sucks. There is a massive incentive to consolidate. Even when left alone, farmers tend to form co-ops in order to mitigate risk. I had a long talk with a local producer of "Hormone free, antibiotic free, grass fed, grass finished" beef (need it because of family member with corn allergy). The economics are brutal. Corn finishing a steer nets you 3x (or more) the weight. Grass is highly dependent upon rain. etc. Basically, the best thing I could do was commit to buying a whole steer every 6 months and let them sell what I can't deal with. Effectively, I gamble that they can sell the extra meat or I eat the loss. It generally works, but how many people can float a $5K-$10K loan every 6 months? And, even if they can get enough customers to float the loan, it will quickly saturate the number of customers who can buy the "extra". It's really a tough problem. Everybody talks like farmers don't know what they are doing. Go talk to one and prepare to be surprised--you'll find out really quickly that most farmers know their business extremely intimately and can tell you how every single dollar is put to work.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Oh yeah, farmers are engineers of the land and nature for sure. They know their processes, their dependencies, and procedures in extreme depth and they are complex and unforgiving. Farming isn’t gardening, and every farm is a business end to end - and a risky one with low payouts and huge downsides that are often entirely out of your control. Modern farming techniques aren’t that way out of some sort of malevolent spite, they actually work and make farms profitable reliably. That they blast the earth and poison the populace is sad and most farmers don’t relish destroying their land.

by bsder 3y ago

fnordpiglet 3y ago

Oh yeah, farmers are engineers of the land and nature for sure. They know their processes, their dependencies, and procedures in extreme depth and they are complex and unforgiving. Farming isn’t gardening, and every farm is a business end to end - and a risky one with low payouts and huge downsides that are often entirely out of your control. Modern farming techniques aren’t that way out of some sort of malevolent spite, they actually work and make farms profitable reliably. That they blast the earth and poison the populace is sad and most farmers don’t relish destroying their land.