Wild bidding wars erupt at used-tractor auctions across the U.S.

I read an interesting book recently (Seeing like a State) that makes the claim that large-scale monocrop industrial farming is only actually “optimal” if you don’t price in the heavy subsidy, and if you ignore the non-revenue contributions of small-hold agriculture (e.g. the land might provide fuel, crafting materials, and otherwise support the farmers in a way that doesn’t show up on the balance sheet). Not to mention that the larger farms tend to be extractive, in that they are using up water from the water table and nutrients from the soil, and so they will eventually degrade the land to the point where it cannot be productive any more.

I did some digging and the farm subsidies in the US are truly eye-watering, and particularly notable is that the biggest 10% of farms take 90% of the subsidy, so we are not even subsidizing “traditional working farmers” or anything like that, just shipping hundreds of billions to huge ag corps.

I wouldn’t claim to be an expert nor to be certain about those economic claims though, and would be interested in others’ thoughts here, particularly other books you found useful on the subject.

I would add that small farmers are typically not mono culture. We used to have various fruit varieties. One neighbor is mixed veggies, another cattle and flowers.

Our farm has been forced out of fruit because of corporate mono farms who inevitably cause gluts in the market due to over supply. In my local experience, corporate farms are typically 5-10 bigger as a minimum than their surrounding neighbors.

When a small farmer loses any percentage income, he must quickly change income stream. Hence, our fruit trees are gone, and we're now raising sheep, and are forced to be double income. Our tractor & other super reliable (but very clunky) machines remain.

In the Netherlands there's renewed attention to stimulate small-scale farming and agriculture for various reasons.

For many years large supermarkets have been increasing pressure on the entire supply chain to produce as cheap as possible. It has its effect on all products, where more processed foods gradually replace 'genuine' produce. The larger margins are at the supermarket top of the chain, while farmers are the ones getting squeezed the most. To the extent that they are almost forced to scale up, but even then may find it hard to earn a decent living.

Now Netherlands farm industry is producing an insane amount of meat and vegetables. A tiny country and one of the larger exporters in the world. All this has had very detrimental effects on the environment. Our 'Green Heart' (the region circled by Dutch big cities) is basically a wasteland with little insects or birds, soil compaction. Only fertilizer and pesticides keep it all going. And we have a nitrate problem, caused by both farming and traffic, that is threatening the sparse natural reserves that are patched between argicultural lands.

All this is entirely unsustainable. It is also dangerous. A new pandemic may well find its source in the intensive livestock sector with its mega-stables.

As a result there's now a lot of political attention to doing things differently, scaling down farms, re-introducing old farming practices and experimenting with new ones. Small-scale farming is beginning to look more attractive again, and there's a growing consumer-base ready to pay a somewhat higher price for that as well.

There's very few operations running that way anymore, the "odd construction contract" market for them dried up before and faster than the farming side of those operations. USDA Soil Conservation flood control projects used to be a large source of work there.

The good news is nature abhors a vacuum and will heal if we let it. The wu Wei. Small farms will rise, food is just too important for the economy and with rapid inflation there is no way around it. We are all going to have to become farmers or know our farmers.

Ref: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC1eySW_9TiI5wnvTnIIw2Nw

At this rate, the entire planet will be ruled by a few dozen mega corporations. This sucks, but I don’t know what can be done to mitigate the situation.

While true, you can lease the land making a decent income without effort. Which is the best case scenario as many older farmers retire and leave the land to family.

On the other hand, if people still are looking to make a living, it's more focused on livestock such as cattle, chickens, pigs, etc often niche animals.

I know several people who effectively support Tyson: https://www.tysonfoods.com/who-we-are/our-partners/farmers/c...

Source is USDA (2020) America’s Diverse Family Farms.

There is value in small-scale farming. If there is one thing urban hipsters love to pay for, it's artisanal, high quality organic food. There are farms where you can see pictures and datasheets of all the animals living there and you can pre-order certain cuts of the specific animal once it is slaughtered and processed.

The problem with this is it works because it's socially acceptable unpaid child labor. I do think that there's value to the work ethic it can build, but I also worry about overwork, how it sacrifices education, and how it encourages larger families where all the kids end up being disadvantaged as adults.

The smaller stuff is still around, but from my experience mostly for "hobby" farmers in Germany :-)

I thought that big farms take advantage of newer tech on tractors using GPS RTK for sub-inch accuracy and increased productivity? Therefore, depending on the workload, the decades-old "cheaper" tractor can turn out to be more costly because the farm's yield isn't keeping up with competitors. It seems like a tradeoff between old & new.

It's not that new equipment is not affordable (if something needs a 100t Liebherr crane, it'll come), but all the emissions equipment on new vehicles is a lot more expensive to maintain, so it's simpler and cheaper to keep old vehicles running.

I can see everything on my Mom and Dad’s old Massey Ferguson tractors and every single part is available online from a plethora of vendors since there really aren’t that many parts.

The Belarus (MTZ) tractor factory [0] still produces a popular super maintainable model that hasn't changed much since the 1970's.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus_(tractor)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28827785

Edit: open source hardware design and fabrication should be a part of 4-H programs, lots of overlap with maker/hacker spaces imho

As far as why doesn't a new tractor manufacturer start up, they have to compete with a few things: first, the market for old tractors and parts (if they are repairable basically forever and the amount of land used by agriculture isn't changing, this is not a growth market). Worse, it's much more difficult to design a small engine for sale that is both reliable and will pass current environmental regulations. This is a major barrier to entry that didn't exist decades ago.

So if you're a startup in the ag space, it makes eminently more sense to make small parts for someone else's platform, which is why you see companies doing things like deploying GPS, cameras, lidar, datalogging systems. There, the market opportunity is "all tractors could benefit from this", the competition is initially "other small companies", the exit strategy is "get purchased by a large manufacturer who would rather buy than develop the tech themselves", and the regulatory environment is much more friendly.