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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Farming as a business gets idealized in the US and there's often this concept of a good old days when family farming was profitable and stable.

But historically speaking farming has always been a boom and bust industry. Even during the land rush days in the US the amount of space granted per farm was barely enough / not enough to scrape by, even at that time.

Now everything is so heavily tied up with legislation to try to recreate appropriate market conditions that I suspect whatever the actual market would be without all that legislation is an unknown.

I grew up around folks trying to scrape by on their family farms living at the whims of markets that can make or break them over the course of just a few years. As much as I like the ideal of the family farm, I'm not sure it is, and not sure it ever was a good way to make a living (outside some exceptions).

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I agree nostalgia can cloud judgement but there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of farming in the last few decades.

Btw, this is a perspective from Europe - the same thing has happened with family farming here. While I didn't grow up on one, I spent a lot of time on my grandparent's farm.

Farming has never been easy but the amount of capital required (represented by land, livestock and machinery) to run an economically viable farm has increased enormously increasing the risk. By viable I mean profitable enough to provide an average family with a median income.

My grandparents raised 4 kids, putting 3 of them through 3rd level education and never really wanted for much purely on income from a 90 acre farm. All their neighbours and the entire landscape was covered with family farms of this size plus or minus. What's left now are some old bachelors barely surviving or part-timers (who generally inherited the land) with "real" jobs who keep some dry stock or rent out their land to big producers.

It's sad to see a way of life disappear but I don't see any alternative. From an economic perspective, it can only be supported by transferring income from others to small farmers. This is effectively what happened in the past through higher prices paid for agricultural produce. As a share of disposable income, spending on food is a fraction (well under 10% in the west) of what it was in the past - which hurt the poor disproportionally.

Yeah I'm fairly skeptical about trying to turn the tide of efficiencies and market forces in this case. It really seems to just be shuffling deck chairs and with some bad consequences.

This seems fairly inextricably tied to a heavy reliance on cereal crops & soy. If fruits & vegetables were a higher portion of our collective diet, more small farmers could be supported (produce being less mechanized) and while food spending would increase, our collective health might improve at the same time.

I think hanging your hat on 'well produce will just make more' if the market shifts towards that is a bit fragile.

Generally farmers have been really good at increasing output across the board... often driving prices way down.

Probably a good idea diet wise, but generally not a tried I'd expect would save many farms for long. We've seen increases in other types of farming boom and bust time and again after flooding the market with product.

It's not really possible to produce enough calories for the population by focusing on fruits and vegetables. Only cereal and starch crops can do that. This has been true ever since humans stopped being hunter-gatherers and it won't change in our lifetimes.

Also even produce farming is increasingly automated. For example there are already working prototypes of strawberry picking robots; within 10 years those will be in widespread use on large farms.

A meager 9% of the US population hits the recommended 2-3 cups of vegetables a day. I'm not talking about doing away with grains.

It's true produce is increasingly automated. The viable scale still seems much smaller though.

Yes, if you compare farmers with actors, they seem to have similar problems with stability of employment, low pay, and hard working conditions. In both cases these are partly caused by unavoidable factors about the industry, partly caused by ruthless suppliers, customers, investors and so on, partly caused (let's be honest) by the fact that many people make a lifestyle choice to do those professions, and will put up with poor conditions to keep on doing so.

However, we constantly hear about the rough deal farmers are getting and how important it is to do something to help them. And we never hear this about actors.

You don't need Shakespeare to live

Well, you don't need steak either, but both things are considered extremely important to human life and our society.

> Farming as a business gets idealized

And I understand that in case of plant growers. In case of livestock exploiters I dont see what's so "cool" about it.

I guess I was speaking more generally but as far as livestock there's certainly plenty if idolizing that too, even if some don't.

Stinking animals, caged or fenced up, slaughter looming over their pitiful existence. Nope. No glamour there as far as i see.

Your distaste for it really doesn't have much to do with if it is or isn't idealized.

That also what I'm saying: I have a distaste for it, I cannot believe this is romanticized.

Have you heard of "cowboys"?

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