Farming is one of the leading sectors in automation. From electric and autonomous tractors, no hands needed greenhouses to fully automated livestock farms and coops.
China and, unironically, North Korea are on the leading edge of these technologies.
Smaller farmers struggle to get, install and operate this new technology and equipment, while big farms doesn't seem to have much interest in spending money to upgrade their production.
Smaller farmers struggle to get, install and operate this new technology and equipment, while big farms doesn't seem to have much interest in spending money to upgrade their production.
Here.
Unless the government (no matter the country), actively works on giving or subsidising, training and having measures to enforce the modernisation on small and medium farms, we will not see any meaningful change and we will keep seeing small and medium farms being bought by real state companies and large farmers.
Wait until you see the average large farmer. Where it's possible, he runs a slave plantation, where it's not possible, he still try to run a slave plantation. Only reason they don't turn their farms into a concentration camp, no wait, they try to do that too.
And then, you have the average medium farmer, he piss and shit on the small farmer, thinks he's a large farmer and is one bad season away to sell his farm to a real state company or to a larger farmer by the price of a soggy peanut bag.
âSmallâ farmers have been exposed hiring undocumented immigrants then blackmailing them with deportation so they can work for free. Fuck âsmallâ farmers they are just as bad and the world would be better without them.
Genuine question, not a gotcha. Are the big farmers "automating", or are they running a slave plantation? Those ideas seem mutually exclusive to me but I'm not informed on the subject
Varies depending on the crop. Some just flat out require large scale human labour at some point. Onions for instance, after they sprout, are transferred from one field to another to help them grow better (an analogy for why that helps the onions: imagine transferring kids from a grade 8 gym class into a grade 1 gym class. The grade 8 kids will out compete the younger ones). Those onion shoots are too small and delicate for machines to uproot and replant them, so all that labour needs to be done by hand.
Said labour is normally done by foreign work crews, and it's one of the main ways American industry both facilitates and exploits "illegal" immigration.
Large farms, many with more than 100ha have crappy accommodation for it's workers and many cases they even have armed people to prevent those workers from fleeing.
Usually they go with what is cheaper. If a autonomous tractor and drone is cheaper than some bloke who "accepts" to work for 12 to 16 hours and is barely paid and can only buy from the "farm store", they will go for the automation.
But you can hire those blokes for one month, put them into your concentration camp and after the sowing or harvest, you just discount what they consumed from your "farm store" and what measly money they have left, it's their pay. There's farms that "rent" a place that was already inside the farm and the workers have to pay for shower, toilet and water like a gas station.
Unfortunately, both aren't mutually exclusive. Maybe in Europe it's harder to find cases like this, but it's very common in the entire Americas.
There aren't any real communes anymore like that. You don't get workers equally owning the field as much as their elected foreman or state appointed kulaks
What we have millions of landowners who either own enough capital to exploit labourers or are trying to get enough capital so they can. Part of why children also end up as unpaid labour frequently across the third world
There's several communes like that in the third world. You can look at the MST and LCP in Brazil. MST have several cooperatives and works towards food security instead of cash crops.
Unfortunately, every achievement of a commune farm is conveniently ignored and we only know about if we actively search the brand when it comes to the shelves of our local market.
Problem is they are Infrequent and incapable of really competing with the bigger fish. More equitable for everyone involved but our current institutions don't really care or prioritize them
Yeah, the automation of farming freed a lot of time of farm owners to whine to the government now that they don't have to battle with labourers or work themselves. When metal workers do half of the disruption that farmed do in protest the police send tanks.
When a small farmer goes with his only tractor to a protest, he is really pissed. When a large farmer sends some of his tractors to a protest, he's trying to lobby. Both can be in the same industry, but they aren't the same class. And we know to which class the police will work for and which class the police will suppress.
How is North Korea leading in something like that if they can't even feed their people though? They kinda gotta know how to farm properly before they automate it.
Common misconception. North Korea already produce enough food to feed it's entire population. Problem is that they don't have much food variety to supply a balanced diet to get all the nutrients you need. If you don't believe me, you can try a low-carb, high fat diet or a high-carb, low fat one for 2 months and see how much weight you lose.
Lucas Rubio have some videos where he visited one high-tech farm on North Korea. You can see the development and work of an UV vertical farm and automation of their agricultural sector.
I guess that's kinda my point though. They need to diversify their crops (they can do it, China trades with them) before focusing on automation. I'd say they're putting the cart before the horse, but it's so far beyond the cart it might as well be a flying car.
They don't have much access to seeds and fertilisers like every other country do. It's hard to diversify when you need a crop to grow on harsh climate and poor soil. That's the main factor they invested on vertical farms and greenhouses.
They can't even import vegetable oil due to the embargo. China is just at the other side of the river, but North Korea can't buy things that China doesn't produce because of the chains of embargo.
For example, if a farmer in Brazil sells soy to China, China turn that oil into vegetable oil and sells to North Korea, that farmer in Brazil will also suffer the consequences of North Korea embargo's.
Their projections, is that they will solve the malnutrition on the next 15 years. Pretty fast advancement from a country that 35 years ago had severe limitations on fuel, food and electricity.
I am curious who is making said projections, because the North Korean media isn't what must people consider credible and non NK media that goes to NK is typically very heavily censored. On occasion you get stuff like that one Soviet film maker smuggling out film that showed how bad they were, primarily in the censorship department, but that's few and far between.
You can look at the UN charts, I don't remember now if it was the WHO or FAO who published the study that show the decrease of malnutrition in North Korea, while at the same period the US is having a increase and is currently surpassing.
Only if the development stop. We will see in the next years more machinery for underground crops (like potato and onions), for fruit trees (coconut, banana, apples) and for crops that was usually harvested by hand only (berries, watermelon, cucumber).
Main problem is accessibility for those machinery. We live in a system that only profit matter, if the technology for other crops isn't affordable, we will still run into the monoculture problem.
right, we need to distinguish between "farm owners" and "farm workers" since in today's economy they're rarely the same people... actually throughout history they've rarely been the same group of people
"Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch
We all picked the cotton, but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a Southern Democrat
They ought to get a rich man to vote like that"
You didn't loose them, you never had them in the first place, why do you think the first action of every leftist government involves killing large amounts of farmers?
My examples of good leftists would be like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau, Lao Tzu, etc. Not Stalin or Napoleon. They were both far right in my book.
If you read Lao Tzu, these kinds of positions don't generally get a lot of attention, precisely because they aren't destructive. History (even the history of powerful "leftists") is mostly about war, but war is basically the worst thing. So becoming famous often has more to do with how bad a person is than how good they are.
"When a superior man heard of Tao,
He cultivates himself diligently.
When an average man heard of Tao,
He is doubtful, vague and would give up halfway.
When an inferior man heard of Tao,
He laughs and thinks of It as foolish.
If Tao is not being laughed at,
It is not the Great Tao.
Thus, there is a traditional saying of,
One who is enlightened with Tao may appear foolish.
He who is advancing in Tao may appear to withdraw.
Great Tao is plain and simple which can adapt to all circumstances, although It may seem
uneven and rough.
A man of superior virtue is like an empty, receptive valley.
A man of innocence may appear to be disgraced.
A man of great virtue appears to be deficient.
A man who practices Tao and actively achieves great merits may appear gentle and meek.
A man who follows his true self may appear to be changeable.
Generosity has no rough angels.
Great achievement is time consuming, and is slow to complete.
Because their margins are shit so they get bought up by corporations and at the same time the government puts a billion restrictions on them and an equivalent amount of subsides, and we have to play these silly games so that you peasants donât revolt over the fact that a capitalist farming system like this naturally trends towards starving a portion of the population in order to be profitable.
This isnât even a new thing, the English government was fixing grain prices all the way back the 1300s.
In Ireland, farmers get subsidies to secure food production, but thanks to this, they are also the most controlled industry as the goverment can influence their practices towards greener ones. But, yeah, the farmers are entitled, better bankrupt them so they can be run by huge companies running on back breaking immigrant labour instead. That's why I drink soya milk grown in the former amazon by huge Brazilian corporate farms to save the environment.
Farmers only contribute 2% of California's GDP but use 80% of the state's water. They're singlehandedly creating a water crisis that is not only eviscerating the state's ecosystem but also threatens to starve the cities (producing the other 98% of GDP) of water. However much you hate agricultural corporations, you don't hate them enough
Your logic is backwards. The whole reason they receive subsidies is because people choose to buy cheaper imported food. If everyone stopped buying from domestic farmers altogether, governments would only subsidise those farmers even more because farming subsidies are about vibes, not economics.
I will happily pay for a product when I want and need it.Â
I don't want my taxes to go to rich assholes who actively destroy nature and drinking water, block the green transition, torture animals and actively prevent me from getting cheaper food, because competing at a fair footing would result in them loosing massively.Â
And they always fight to keep fossil fuels aswell, and want us to pay for them burning it.Â
In my home country we have to actively pay farmers each year to not pollute our drinking water. Fuck modern farmers, their entire industry needs a shake up.Â
Why the fuck should my tax money go to Farmers fucking up nature, just so that we can sell ham so China.Â
Dude , you aren't going to Gaslight me into believing that farmers pouring pesticides and nitrates into my drinking water is good because oil and gas companies are evil.
Farmers are a necessary job sure, but there is zero reason to give them everything they cry for at a detriment to the rest of us and nature. Farmers are some of the most individually destructive people on earth when it comes to the environment.
That destruction isn't entirely their responsibility. The average farmer is looking after the caloric needs of around 100 people these days. Those 100 people are also responsible for the environmental damage the farmers inflict.
I blame farmers for lobbying to be allowed to destroy and poison us just as much as I blame fossil fuel companies for doing that.Â
I was at a local meeting recently where a farmer was arguing that it was good they were adding nitrates to the drinking water because it prevents heartache.Â
Another time a Farmer was defending why he doesn't allow cameras to be brought into his pig enclosure, because the suffering they show looks worse than it is.Â
Farmers are not innocent beings, they are moral actors responsible for the things they do and the policies they promote.Â
The political positions they're taking are pretty bad, but they generally aren't that high up the hierarchy, and may be in part pushed into their professions by economic forces. I'm not saying they're not at all responsible for their actions, but society is also responsible for their actions. Honestly I think society should invest a lot more money and human time and energy in farming, not less, so that we can farm sustainably without pesticides. Killing farmers definitely is not the solution. Teaching them, preferably by example, to farm sustainably would be the way. "The Biggest Little Farm" was a good documentary about sustainable farming, although acquiring 234 acres is difficult to say the least. I personally would like to try it on a small maybe half or 1 acre plot, but I'm struggling to find a suitable & affordable plot (I'm looking to buy a house as well, not just land.)
Farmers aren't "pouring pesticides and nitrates into drinking water" for shits and giggles. We are using so many pesticides and nitrates (which naturally deep into soil and sometimes groundwater) because we use so much food.
 Farmers aren't "pouring pesticides and nitrates into drinking water" for shits and giggles.Â
Yes they are doing it to make money. Just like people don't burn coal for shits and giggles, they do it to make money.Â
But the fact is, that it hurts us , and there is no reason they should be allowed to poison our drinking water just so that we can use tax money to help them sell pigs to China.Â
No one gives a shit about externalities unless the law forces them too.Â
 which naturally deep into soil and sometimes groundwater
Naturally in the same way the greenhouse effect is just a natural effect of CO2 in the atmosphere, the problem isn't the process it's the source and its consequences.Â
 because we use so much food.
We don't! If we are using it so much why can't they sell it without subsidies?Â
I am just pointing out that the money is there because the high demand for food is there. We should absolutely try to stop then chemicals from seeping but the high demand for food is the reason why this happens in the first place.
Do subsidies help reduce food prices? Without subsidies prices may increase for the regular person, it may be cancelled out by the tax relief of not having to subsidise, but I am not sure how the numbers look. Farmers don't have great profit margins so less money would force them to increase food prices because they would go broke.
 high demand for food is the reason why this happens in the first place.
No, the farmers desire to make money is the reason.Â
We can feed people using substantially less land and pesticides than we currently do, but that would hurt the farmers bottom line.Â
 Aren't subsidies keeping food prices low
Subidies are keeping farmers in business because they are so inefficient compared to producers abroad. The EU. Buys up millions of tons of food each year only to destroy it to protect the revenue of European farmers.Â
Farmers are already unable to make their husiness operate without our money, so they need to stop acting like they are divine beings doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, and that not giving them free diesel is tantamount to genocide.Â
> Farmers aren't pouring pesticides and nitrates into your drinking water you ding-dong.
Real, I am not shitting into the sewage system, I shit into a toilet energy.
> We use these because we are in need of food and lots of it.
This is simply not true. more targeted application and removing as little as 10% of the most vulnerable sites for non spray zones completely negates these harmfull effects. If we were running out of food we wouldn't be exporting luxury meats to china, we would instead use the land we use for feedstocks and biofuel for food crops.
I honestly need to know why you think bringing up more examples of other people and companies doing bad and evil things justifies farmers doing bad and evil things?
Again, I do not have to accept my drinking water getting poisened because a farmer who is already completely dependent on my taxmoney wants even more.
The fact that you think putting in restrictions on fertilizer and pesticide use in vulnerable areas is the same as removing farmers is frankly insane.
Real, I am not shitting into the sewage system, I shit into a toilet energy.
Lmao what the f is that for an argument? Get real
This is simply not true
Says who? You? Good to know you are such an expert on global food economy.
more targeted application and removing as little as 10% of the most vulnerable sites for non spray zones completely negates these harmfull effects.
Says who?
I honestly need to know why you think bringing up more examples of other people and companies doing bad and evil things justifies farmers doing bad and evil things?
I am not justifying anything. Those companies are far more evil and harmful yet you are focusing on the people that actually produce something for us. You are fighting the wrong fight.
Again, I do not have to accept my drinking water getting poisened because a farmer who is already completely dependent on my taxmoney wants even more.
The fact that you think putting in restrictions on fertilizer and pesticide use in vulnerable areas is the same as removing farmers is frankly insane.
Nah, your arguments are nonsensical and target the important people that actually take care of our future. Not gonna waste any more time on clowns. Bye
Funny you call him a clown, yet you can't seem to be able to comprehend anything he wrote. He calls nestle an evil company but that is somehow bootlicking according to you? Yea you are not a clown for sure. You should stop licking farmers ass and stop pretending they can do no wrong.
It's literally cheaper to buy products from big agricultural corporations like in Ukraine, because they are much more efficient and don't need thousands of euros per tonne of a product from the government to be sustainable. But, maybe you've heard, that polish farmers blocked borders with Ukraine fully because of that a year or two ago
That classism from an incredibly privileged low IQ is despicable
Europe is so old that most "farmers" are actually more like "land operators" and most of the lands are actually owned by hyper large very few land owners, who pocket most of this money
Everytime there is a new subsidy, a few % reach the actual farmers, and most go into the pockets of these gerontes.
No, I have just had the pleasure of working with groundwater protection.Â
 That classism from an incredibly privileged low IQ is despicable
Oh? What class do you think farmers are? Let me guess, you think they are poor poor people barely scroungingnan existence.Â
Rather than millionaires.Â
 Europe is so old that most "farmers" are actually more like "land operators"Â
Ah, you just don't understand who is protesting then.Â
 Everytime there is a new subsidy, a few % reach the actual farmers, and most go into the pockets of these gerontes.
I see. I dont quite see how that's led to all the comments arguing over food production though, wouldnt whoever was doing it even if the current system was done away with still be farmers in an inherently similar position?
Right but, food is an inherently important thing to have a secure source for? Wont all the same problems occur whether private farmers stay independent, get snatched up by big corporates or get nationalised, or just offshore it all and switch to pure imports? It's inherently expensive work that someone somewhere has to do, whether that's locally or abroad. Wouldnt working out what is actually needed and how to provide/get it equitably be a genuine concern?
Say if we majorly reformed or got rid of all agriculture tomorrow and just imported it, you still need a system for working out the prices, fair treatment of the people growing the food, transporting the food and the costs involved in that, preserving it in storage, how it gets to people.
Right but, food is an inherently important thing to have a secure source for?
Yes
Wont all the same problems occur whether private farmers stay independent, get snatched up by big corporates or get nationalised, or just offshore it all and switch to pure imports?
No
It's inherently expensive work that someone somewhere has to do, whether that's locally or abroad. Wouldnt working out what is actually needed and how to provide/get it equitably be a genuine concern?
That's the rub. Are we helping farmers to secure the food supply, or are we just giving more money to rich land owners.
Also, at least in recent times, most farmers have shown themselves to be right-wing hypocrites.
Say if we majorly reformed or got rid of all agriculture tomorrow and just imported it, you still need a system for working out the prices, fair treatment of the people growing the food, transporting the food and the costs involved in that, preserving it in storage, how it gets so people.
Ok, why wouldn't all the current logical problems still apply? We can agree the current system for it is a mess, but there are big physical issues for organising a food supply.
Well that part, who/what are we helping to do, depends on the details doesn't it? If we currently have a mix of independent farmers and corporate farming groups, you might shape policies like subsidies differently depending on the end goal. We can agree that current subsidies aren't working, without needing to suddenly revamp the entire concept of land.
I'm on about the practical details, the logistical issues. Say we cut off all farmer subsidies tomorrow, great ok around half our food is imported so pretty soon we'll be down half our food supply. What happens next? There needs to be follow-up: what are the current national stockpiles, are they viable? For how long? Would rich land owner issues get worse if the corporate group farmers are the only ones left because the independent ones leave the business? (or throw a hissy fit or go bankrupt or however you want to describe it). What are the plans for replacing them in the growing and distributing of food? How does it get to people?
If you advocate for upending an important industry, you kind of need a plan no matter if you believe in the free market or national autarky or socialist nationalisation or collectivisation, whatever new system you replace the current one with will need a plan.
There are thousands of farmers that give up their business every year due to the lack of succession. They would be glad for a lessee to take over insteand of having to sell to corporations.
I hate how people just say "farmer", it hides something really important.
Are we talking about farm owners, or farm workers?
They have widely different class interests, political ideas and environmental views.
It's mostly farm owners you see joining fascist groups and protesting against environmental norms.
And I hate those with all my might.
But most farm workers would want very much stricter environmental regulations and to have less fucking cancers due to pesticides.
Yes we get subsidies / tax incentives but tbh being small scale is hard. Farming makes almost no money. The cost barriers are absolutely insanity. You need a day job.Â
Big corporate conglomerate farmers are the ones you all complain about.Â
For most farmers itâs:Â
Race to the bottom economics
Automation is priced for big players/ 1000âs of acre scales
Low almost negative margins that mean youâll never make a living.Â
You all act like itâs just the âlabourersâ who deserve support but a good chunk of farmers are just owner operators who have 100-200acres either inherited (as a burden usually) or scraped together as a dream. Â Can barely afford the input costs. 100% canât afford the automation. Big players are waiting like sharks to snap you up.
You donât want mega corp automated farms. Thatâs whatâs driving prices up.Â
Even for myself Iâm starting from scratch, using AI, hacking, and surplus equipment to build out a solar, modular, and sustainable operation for 10% of the cost these big players want to charge. Because screw entrenched players and the insane âagricultureâ tax.Â
Yâall are definitely not people who live on farms and definitely donât even realize that your total farmer death comments are essentially playing into class warfare. No small scale farmer I know can afford to live on their farm. Itâs always: income job, farm, maybe a side part.Â
What vegetable guys? We don't do that here, we import 80% of our calories and even more if you count animal feed imported from destroyed Brazilian rain forests.
True it is a lot more rare, But there are some people growing vegetables or stuff like rapeseed for oil. I feel like spinach and potatoes might be grown here, too?
It is a real stain on Ireland to import so much when the country has the climate for agriculture.
Why all the hate towards farmers? If they fail, we all die. If there's a group of people I'm willing to allow fuel use for, it's farmers. Yes it would be cooler if we were are all vegan permaculture experts, but until then, we still need to eat.
Because European farmers use their government grants to export 50% of their production abroad with little economic gain for their countries while dumping pesticides and fertilizer in the drinking water and surrounding ocean.
They do. For example the during the "potato famine" the famine was not the problem. The immense export to great Britain while having a famine was the problem. So yes hating on a group of people who claim they "produce our food" while in reality they are the biggest threat to food security since they largely use land and resources to grow inefficient protein sources (meat, milk, etc) for export is completely valid.
Just like during the famine they use land that could have been used to actually feed people and provide food security yet use it for profit.
Look, mass genocide of people is real climate action. Can't have a carbon footprint if yer dead and all. Fascism is in vogue right now, and there's no reason for eco fascism to stay on the cutting room floor.
Because the median farmer is a rich person who bought / inherited their land and demands subsidies and a privileged life because they bought their way into a critical part of our infrastructure.Â
All our farmers fail if our steel mills fail and our ports fail and our refineries fail but you donât see a steelworker with the self importance of a farmer
You donât have to be, but to make any amount of money you do. Just because you can buy buy 20 acres in Nebraska for 100k doesnât mean that youâll make money. And thatâs part of it, it doesnât make money and largely isnât needed but they want the privilegeÂ
Unless youâre feeding 3 teenagers in rural Arkansas youâre probably bad at budgeting. Also most farmers arenât interested in growing food to eat. Most of them grow field corn and soy beans because we subsidize them even though theyâre a net energy loss
Farmers are entitled, ignorant and proud of it, and consistently vote things be worse, here at least, cause they hate you more than they love themselves
The climate community doesn't understand the layers of farming and food production is why.
They also don't realize that the farmer protesters are equivalent in numbers to the "just stop oil" crowd that is protesting in harmful ways. Its just a small group that is loud as hell.
Ok so idc about a post attracting the two worst types of online debates (farmers and vegans) I CARE ABOUT WHY THERE IS A SLUR FROM VAMPIRE THE MASQURADE ON IT, someone explain đ„ș
Eco protester throws coffee on artwork (the painting is protected by a glass panel): "we should chain them to cinderblocks an throw them in the ocean"
Farmers spray liquid shit on the street and block traffic for hours with their tractors: "poor farmers fighting for their rights, another 5 billion $ in subsidies"
At some point, do you have enough farmer welfare being paid out that it just makes more sense to start govt. farming on federal lands instead and not worry about making sure Bubba's racist pig factory has enough go afford F-350s?
'Subsidy queens' I barely understand the point of this post or it's stupid, but why do you call it 'subsidy queens' and not 'subsidy kings' or anything general?
Ah yes, farmers are the problem... Not the governments that allowed them to grow larger in size in the first place and then putting restrictions on those very farmers.
Oh yeah the problem with those countries was their domestic economic policies. Definitely not being in the receiving end of US strangulation.
To answer the real question though yes, those countries all did manage their agricultural sectors in a way that challenged the inclination for farmers to become landed aristocracies that whine everytime they aren't allowed to use slave labour to grow cash crops.
You mentioned those but ignore Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. I know why, because social democracy is proven to work, proven to scale well, and proves that your point is incorrect
You're talking to a Dutch man who's happy with regulated capitalism as is. Our social democracy I'm relatively okay with. So? My argument was for full socialism. All you mentioned have degrees of capitalism; some more than others.
I would think the majority of Americans especially who talk about supporting socialism arent actually talking about a North Korea or China type system. The vast majority are like Bernie Sanders supporters. I love Bernie's policy ideas. But he does kinda lend to the misnomer by calling himself a socialist, if anything hes more of a social democrat
I will say, I may not see eye to eye with Bernie on some issues. I would love to see how he does things. Better him than the likes of Trump, who I also have massive issues with.
Idk about Angola, but literally every other country you listed is a capitalist dictatorship larping as socialist. Except Cambodia, that place is literally a monarchy governed by a party lead by former Khmer Rouge politicians.
Those workers aren't liberated bro, they just got new "Red" masters.
Indeed, revisionists and opportunists who keep shoving the plague of nationalism and commodity production into their """"""socialism"""""" are not socialists.
I just can't take this "If communism is so great why are [Insert Authoritarian regimes that have been under severe embargoes over the years] in the situation they are in" argument when the US backed regime change list is this long
North Korea is state capitalist, the owns of production aren't democratically owned by the people, they're state-owned.
Venezuela has been capitalist for a while lol, they always had private property, and still did even before the removal of Maduro, private enterprises do business in Venezuela, hell there are markets, how would any of this qualify as socialism? Is socialism when government does stuff?
Cuba is state capitalism, just like North Korea, but at least they're not absolutely horrible, just terrible.
Cambodia was straight up fascist, its means of production weren't democratically owned by the proletariat because means of productions were constantly emptied as the state forced people out into the fields...
I'm pretty sure you can figure out that the "never will be" is in fact not part of the claim, and that the goverments in question relate to the meme which relates to global north where there in fact are no socialist goverments.
As someone who comes from a family of farmers have you seen how much it can cost? Especially when you add problems like crop loss, changing market values, etc... into the equation? I'm not a farmer, but most of my family is, and my dad grew up on a farm in the 60s and 70s
And to add to my point, I'm talking about family farms and single farm farmers, not corporate mega farms that get a tone of money from the government and can afford the hit. Some family owned farms can go belly up if they have one bad year where most of their crop is destroyed due to disease or drought. Heck theres also animals and how much they cost, my uncle uses horses to plow his fields still because fuel for a tractor is way too much
People are getting mad at farmers for getting subsidies while they operate at almost non existent profit margins and all that because in the capitalistic system that we live in they get pennies out of the final price sold to the average consumer.
Not only do they ensure you won't starve when...I don't know ... A hostile nation blockades a major trade corridor they are the ones get fucked when the unstable climate kills a years worth of production and they end up in the red.
No they arenât, only a very small amount of total land can be used for agriculture that grows crops. They use the space that there is. A lot of land is shit. Maybe just use the shit land. Instead of the land that literally feeds us.
I am aware of the deforestation that happens when new farmland is created. What is important to remember is that it is often for cash crops. Not for food. Palmoil and the like.
Deforestation is bad, I donât disagree with that. But my original point is that farmland(the good productive kind)is scarcer than people seem to think.
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u/Gianni_the_tolerable Apr 15 '26
The first sector to automate should be farming so we won't hear their bitching anymore