Why small farms can not feed the world anymore...

People dont want to live as they did from 1890 to 1920. They dont think they have to, and because of other areas of growth, which encourage looking to the future for all good things, they think they don't have to when it comes to food. Those that do live as such, do irt for the benefit of themselves and for others who don't want to.
I just wish ONE lottery winner would buy a million acres of farm land as it came up for sale when agribusiness farms went under, and devide it into 160 acre farms, and offer it for lease to those wanting to farm so bad. THEN, we would see on a large scale what can be the output of those size farms today. THEN We could see, once and for all, whether they are at least equal in production to agribusiness farms, and therefore more beneficial as they would have hundreds of more people out in the country than the big ag farms have, or whether they are less productive. IF less, That would tell the tale, and hopefully, once and for all end this idea that Family farms can make it today better than big ag farms.
IF They CAN produce MORE than the big ag farms, AND ESPECIALLY, IF they could do it with less diesel, then, hopfeully the Gov would wake up to the idea of converting agriculture to that size farms.
Seems like, IF hundreds of people were on a million acres where theres only say 50 now, That would revitalize small towns to where people would move out of big cities and into small towns. Seems like, if a small town had a packing facility, or a canning plant, that processed food wouldn't have to travel so far to reach the big cities.
IF they put jitneys back on the tracks again, then people could ride the rail to go to work in the big towns without all having to drive their cars.
IF the million acres was devided in so many 40s, so many 60s, so many 80s, and so on, to suit just what an individual wanted to handle, then, there would be more horse powered farms. IF THERE WERE, another industry in many small towns would be harness making and repair, welding and blacksmith shops.
A new farmer might start out on a 40 to build up his or her skills and confidence, and then opt out to a larger acreage later on, the 40 having gone back to another new farmer.

There would have to be rules, to where, a farmer couldn't go into town to the coffee shot mornings, and while away a couple hours.
Maybe another would be that they had to raise all their own vegetables and mean + Raise that amount again for sale. Doing that, each farmer would be raiseing not only his or her own food, but food enough for a family in any givin town, NOT TO MENTION The extra grain and livestock the farm would generate in a givin year.
IF there was a rule to where the farmers HAD to do their business in small towns, buying and selling, and the small town shop keepers would be pickup points for the big cities to gather the food, livestock, grain, ect. That would ensure the growth and productivity of small towns.

BUT, You aren't going to see this happen
Small farmers are troo lazy to grow their own food
Small farmers like to do all the socializing that their city cousins do. School events, clubs, activities, hanging out in town, ect.
Farmers will always try to get the TOP dollar for every grain or animal they raise. IF That means dealing directly with individual countries to secure top dollar, and bypass many middlemen, so be it.
Farmers have lost the sense of community, or/and the need for it, and generally, they like it that way.

Farming is like playing the card game Pitch. Big Ag is the ace. When a player has the ace, they generally lead out with the ace. The Gov will continually back the ace that is Big AG.

Yeah, I think so myself, but now I'm getting up there in years and not sure I want it to happen before I leave this Earthly plane

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Apocalyptic and Survival Fiction - Readers and writers welcome

Ernie,

Until I can get word to system admin I ain't hitting the quote button until we better understand what is going on with posts 3, 27, 28, 36 here and how its switching back and forth and it gets fixed.

As far as computer technology and dependability, I have such confidence in it that I keep a 3 by 5 inch Dragnet style memo book and mechanical pencil (because I hate ink pens that either don't write or leak) in my pocket as my critical back up memory.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

I'm not smelling what you're stepping in. And, I think (assuming that I understand what you're trying to say), that I disagree with pretty much every point you posit.

First, I don't think there really is a question of whether small-time/brow-sweat farming can output as much as "BigAG". The little guys may be able to bring up produce of better quality, but the experiment you're wanting to run would have to have some sort of an empirical result - and quality isn't empirical. The little guys will never put out more volume than the big guys, and volume is what a fascist pantry needs to run.

Second, I hope that the "rules" just exist in your experiment because that is what you think it would take to level the playing field, and not just the way you think things should be. Is someone that wants to farm any less of a farmer because they enjoy certain modern amenities? I'll tell you right now, I am a Starbucks whore. "Venti Pike, no room" is my battle hymn. Sure, if it went away tomorrow, life would go on, but enjoying a quality cup of store-bought coffee does not compromise my integrity in any way.

And, last, the broad generalizations that you make about small farmers are so broad that they render themselves irrelevant. Most small and micro farmers that I know have gone out of their way to pursue that lifestyle - and not because it is easy. Getting a super-market frequent-shopper program card is easy. Growing food for your family, any amount of it, is rewarding. They are mutually exclusive goals. If someone with a full-time day job spends their evenings and weekends planting, tending, harvesting, and putting up the produce of a couple hard-worked acres so that they have better food to put in their daughter's belly, and still manages to find time to take her to soccer practice and the occasional movie, then I say God bless him!

Heh. It seems to work sometimes and fail other times. A slightly better success rate than my spacebar.

One of the main reasons for the failure of family farms - and continues to be the reason for migration of rural populations to cities all around the world - is that the jobs pay better in the city. Large families made family farms possible. And there is only so much land available. If you have several children on a small farm who gets to inherit and make a living? One, maybe two. The rest hadto move on or continue as endentured servants.

I will agree. Large families are just not "IN" anymore. And you can't do what was done back in the day with a husband/Wife, and maybe two kids. And large farms on the world market can produce what people want. Food that is inexpensive and readily available. And not just seasonal. Now you can buy mot ANY kind of veggie, or fruit you want at any large grocery store and even Convenience stores.
And you just can not go back to the 1900's as we are not a small country anymore and nor is the world.
You basically had to make it back in the day eat everything and produce what you ate, no refrigeration, you couldn't ship stuff very far if at all.
I can not even imagine of how beer would taste today at Room Temps, like back in the day.
And the mega farms are making sure of people getting inexpensive, foods stuffs any time of the year.
And it even LOOKS appealing at that. LOL

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Oh my, dishes yet to wash and dry

See My Pictures at
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/0903/arabianknight/

How does one stop laughing when one of them posts here? I sure have a hard time stop laughing.

For me it's more of an ironic, sympathy laugh ... I did it that way for years.

I know exactly how much time they're going to waste, how much money they're going to waste, and how unhappy they're going to be until they finally break down and realize that they can do it without all that.

Heck. If you lack some skills then find someone to help you! That's what I did!

I didn't read the article yet either, but my gut reaction is to disagree. I read a lot of Joel Salatin, he is a real pioneer and there are a lot of people following his model. There are a lot of young people wanting to farm. I think it is Joel that talks about our country moving to a system where many farmers don't own the land, but rent. He talks about an environmental organization in Virginia, I think, that is working on connecting landowners and farmers to manage nature.

I think a lot of the debate depends on the definition of farming. There is a whole range of farming between large industrial ag and backyard gardening for yourself. Is it only farming if it is your "sole" income or what is it based on?

I worked with a Cambodian who had escaped the Khmer Rouge and came here and he told us of how his family of 18 not only grew all their vegetables and meat livestock to provide 100% of their food from just under 5 acres but his mother and sisters often took some of their micro farm yield and fish that he and his brothers caught as part of their larder to market to sell for money for durable goods.

Although he was a well paid engineer here, he chose to live semi-rural on 10 acres and he gardens a acre or so of it "Cambodian style" to remember his past and lost family members when they fled here for asylum and citizenship.

When I saw his garden I was amazed at how bio intensive "Cambodia style" actually was even though his garden here is confined to vegetables and he buys his rice now.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

With mechanization the way it is now, I don't know that large families would be needed. I think that large families got started because there was no way to stop them when making whoopee was a valid form of entertainment. The use of the kids on the farm was just a logical way to cause them to help produce their own food.
Kids died a lot of the time, so makeing plenty was a way to keep the name going. IF most lived, which was in no ways guaranteed, they had a handy work force ready and at hand.
Nowadays with being able to not have kids after a couple, theres plenty of mechanization to take there place.

Lemons are easy to grow as a houseplant, probably the easiest of all the citrus. Stick outside when it's warm, bring them inside when it gets cold. They just need good light when inside. On another board years ago, someone listed a variety of olive that was supposed to be a good container tree, but I can't recall the variety or find the post now. Never tried to grow sesame myself, so I have no idea what that entails.

I disagree with the premiss. My math and experience shows that small farmers can feed the world and we would be better off than with Big Ag doing it. But, as you say, most people don't want to farm and that is where the real problem is. They would choose to starve instead. Likewise most people don't want to harvest their own energy (e.g., wood for heat), build their own house, etc. Too many people want everything done for them rather than doing for themselves.

Fortunately it is a somewhat free world so people like that can choose to be dependents while those of use who want to do things can do stuff. I enjoy being a doer, a producer, a creator.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

The economic studies have shown that those promises of high wages were a mirage. With the higher wages came far higher costs of living so that people lost out in most cases rather than gaining. They also became dependent on systems out of their control.

Yet our small family (2 parents, 3 kids) has a viable family farm that is capable of feeding (our section of) the world. This proves that it doesn't take a large family to have a family farm.

There is plenty of land. Just don't buy in the expensive high value areas. Farm further out.

Another truth missed by these sorts of arguments is that not everyone needs to be a farmer. Our family produces far more food, lumber and firewood than we need. We sell our excess and buy things like roads (snow plowing, sanding, maintenance, etc), phone services, milk (we don't do dairy), steel, electric power, etc. It takes many different people to do it all. Not everyone needs to be a lawyer, farmer or doctor. Variety is the spice of life.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Both my husband and I have been around small family farmers all our lives although we lived in the city for part of it. Nearly every farmer we knew worked off the farm or his wife did in order to make ends meet. In fact we were remembering the other day and he had 5 teachers in grade school and junior high who were farmers and I had 3 and then 3 more in highschool.

My electronics and computer information systems instructor in high school during the late 1970s farmed 500 to 1000 acres of soybeans and a few hundred acres of alfalfa off the family farm and land he leased.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

But let me point out that I am not willing to live in poverty in order to provide cheap food to hundreds of unappreciative city dwellers who don't even know where their food comes from.

It's all well and fine to live a simpler life to provide for my own family. But I refuse to drive an ancient car, not have any machinery, do without any conveniences and work 14 hours a day to provide wheat for 10 cents a pound to make those Big Macs with.

So don't count on me to produce cheap food for the masses.

I'm kind of in the same mindset, though I do drive an ancient truck. And we're short on conveniences too.

At this point in the game, I don't feel that the outside world DESERVES good food. Not until they're willing to pay the farmer a living wage. I reserve the good food for the people who I want to give it to ... primarily my family.

If every small farmer's child stayed on the farms to become another small farmer, many farms would be mighty small by now. First in our family came to the US in 1866 and purchased 160 acres. Our family history is quite thorough and if only the males in the family would have been allowed to remain and live on their share, my son and I would be sharing 5/8th of an acre. Some from less prolific parents could still have up to 3 or 4 acres. Since there probably wasn't 40 acres total of cropland involved, our family wouldn't even be able to feed itself.

Martin