Small Is Bountiful

[ina]

Yet another highly interesting article by one of my favourite authors...

(I've known it all along - but he can express it so much better, and back it up with the right kind of reference!)


"Though the rich world’s governments won’t hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen(2), and has since been confirmed by dozens of further studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield."

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06 ... bountiful/

[DominicJ]

Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong

Simply not true, at all, in any way.

Bigger Farms produce more crops per acre than smaller ones, if you read moonbats report, you will see even he admits this, but then claims its only because bigger farms use more water and cause more environmental damage.

He then goes on to issue an externality charge against big farms, to represent the effect they have on the wider environment, but offers no breakdown of what this made up of or how he reached it.

You can claim small farms are better all you want, but saying they produce more crops per acre is an outright lie.

Edit - because this quote just sums it all up

"Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all(14), it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate."

So big business created a super plant that increases productivity, which a small farm could never ever do, and this apparently proves small farms produce more?

[Mainer in Exile]

From what I understand, a small farmer can work more closely with the land and actually produce more per acre, but can never match the production per man hour of the big farmer.

Under current conditions, man hours are more important than acreage, because of the cost factor. That could change as the world population grows and demand for foodstuffs grows.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong

Simply not true, at all, in any way.

Bigger Farms produce more crops per acre than smaller ones, if you read moonbats report, you will see even he admits this, but then claims its only because bigger farms use more water and cause more environmental damage.

He then goes on to issue an externality charge against big farms, to represent the effect they have on the wider environment, but offers no breakdown of what this made up of or how he reached it.

You can claim small farms are better all you want, but saying they produce more crops per acre is an outright lie.

Edit - because this quote just sums it all up

"Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all(14), it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate."

So big business created a super plant that increases productivity, which a small farm could never ever do, and this apparently proves small farms produce more?

If Monbiot has a fault it is that he tends to mix issues. It is very clearly established observation (he cites some references, there are hundreds possible) that small farms, rotating crops, mixing in livestock and farming "low tech" can easily out produce, nutrition per acre, huge, mechanised, chemical warfare style farming. He should have left out the poke at Monsanto.

Modern agriculture is not - or rather has not - been about maximising food production per acre; rather, it is concerned with producing at minimum cost. In a cheap-oil world, this was easy. Agricultural production rose mostly because oil powered machinery brought more land into cultivation and poured tonnes more cheap oil in the form of NPK fertilisers on it. That is, basically, the green revolution.

Peasent farming may not be cheap in labour terms, but it is difficult to deny that if maximising yield is the name of the game then it is best done by throwing manpower at it, not machines. Just ask the ghost of Nikita Khruschev.

[MKG]

I would have thought it absolutely obvious that a "peasant" farmer could outperform a giant. Modern fields use row spacings based upon the wheelbase of the vehicles in use. Any labour-intensive farmer would take one look and catch crop the whole field.

[AXJ]

I would have thought it absolutely obvious that a "peasant" farmer could outperform a giant. Modern fields use row spacings based upon the wheelbase of the vehicles in use. Any labour-intensive farmer would take one look and catch crop the whole field.

Not only that, but the peasant farmer's food actually tastes great!!