Farming Today

[The Riff-Raff Element]

And how big is the Blossom hill farm in Italy?
I'd wager its closer to 1000 acres than 100

I don't think that they have one as such - they just buy grapes from small producers with a few acres apiece. It's an approach that's pretty common in winemaking. The champagne region is probably the best known example of the practice though there are plenty of other companies that do it too. It makes a lot more sense from a capital expenditure point of view. Minimises the risk to the winemaker if a vineyard is a poor producer one year: it is the owner who bears the risk, not the vintner.

[contadino]

There are different types of vinyards here. I'd expect that they buy from ones that cover about 10ha, and have contract agreements to buy the whole crop subject to quality. The same arrangements exist in Spain, and I expect France too.

I buy my grapes from a similar-sized vinyard (just over 7ha), but they sell to the public (subject to an introduction) and to wholesalers (again, I expect the likes of Diageo buy from them.) Typically here vinyards of less than 2ha are for personal consumption of the owner, and those larger than 5ha belong to cantine who make and sell their own wine. I have yet to come across one of greater than say 15ha.

Puglia is Italy's largest producer of wine.

Cultivation of grapes is probably the least 'normal' of types of agriculture as so much of the work cannot be automated. The plants are perennial, and it is pretty skilled work (compared to growing, say, cereals, or raising pigs.)

...and you'd never see a 200hp tractor working a vinyard.

[ina]

Just found another good article on the subject:


Royal but essentially right
Whatever the merits of Prince Charles' invective against GM crops, intensive agriculture is to blame for the food crisis

..."The World Bank report merely confirms what shrewd farmers have always known – that small, mixed family farms produce more food per hectare than large farms. This applies equally to northern, industrial countries as to the south."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... nvironment

[DominicJ]

Ina
Moonbat says that every other week, but has never produced the figures to back it up.

Even the article you just linked to says, actualy, intensive farming grows more per acre, but it cheats, so we should pretnd it doesnt really.

"This system of food production is inherently unstable. It relies on huge inputs of fossil energy in the form of pesticides, nitrate fertilisers, diesel and machinery. And it steadily degrades the soil, making farmland less and less productive."

"it concludes that the present system of food production – and the way food is traded – have led to an unequal distribution of benefits and to serious ecological damage."

"The widespread adoption of GM crops may well threaten the world's food supply. It will probably throw millions of small farmers off the land, and it will almost certainly produce shanty cities of the sort he calls "unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unimaginable awfulness". While GM technology may not be the direct cause of such horrors, it will perpetuate the system of industrial agriculture that makes them inevitable."

Sounds very bad, and no doubt gets the Guardianistas knickers in a twist, but does not, at any time, say intensive farming grows 4 tonnes an acre, small farming grows 5 tonnes an acre.
Which would be proving small farms are more productive.

[ina]

You are making the same mistakes a lot of industrialists have made over the past few decades: you are looking at the individual area unit, not at the whole farm system. There's a lot of difference in that. And since I haven't read the World Bank report, I can't quote from it direct...

[DominicJ]

I'm not trying to argue that it will always be best, or even possible, to farm 10,000 acres as a single unit, instead of 1000 seperate farms, although, the Latifunda (I think) system implemented by the Roman Empire gives some pretty compelling evidence that it may be, Soviet collectives give some it may not.
I am simply saying that basing a farming system on how it worked under fuedalism is madness. Because that is where measurement like rods and acres come from, how much land a man could plow in half a day, how far a knight could patrol in a day and so forth.
We no longer use man power, we use fuelled vehicles capable of generating whatever power and torque we want, maybe we should adapt.

[contadina]

Considering the Roman system of farming depleted the land to such an extent it necessitated continued growth and the eventual decline of the empire then I don't think they provide the best example of farming on an industrial scale.

Today farming on a large scale tends to be monocultured and as profits are the prime motivator farming practices tend to ignore how they effect local communities, the land and environment.

Large single crop farms yield more of a single crop but the production of a variety of crops and animal products, as practiced by smaller farms, would seem to be a far more efficient and more environmentally-friendly use of land.

[DominicJ]

Contadina
"Today farming on a large scale tends to be monocultured and as profits are the prime motivator farming practices tend to ignore how they effect local communities, the land and environment.

Large single crop farms yield more of a single crop but the production of a variety of crops and animal products, as practiced by smaller farms, would seem to be a far more efficient and more environmentally-friendly use of land."

All of which is very interesting, but has absolutely no bearing on "that small, mixed family farms produce more food per hectare than large farms."

[contadina]

I mention it as higher yields of a single crop are the basis by which the agrichemical industry bases its argument that larger farms produce higher yields. This is true of a single crop but is rather selective as it does not take into account all the other produce a smaller mixed farm produces.

As mentioned before, it also goes against the findings of the World Bank and, I might add, the National Research Council who compared the two types of farming in the US in 1989. Although the study was on farming efficiency, it also found that yield were not lower. 'Well-managed alternative farming systems nearly always use less synthetic chemical pesticides, fertilisers and antibiotics per unit of production than conventional farms,' the NRC found. 'Reduced use of these inputs lowers production costs and lessens agriculture's potential for adverse environmental and health effects, without decreasing - and in some cases increasing - per-acre crop yields and the productivity of livestock management systems.'

[The Riff-Raff Element]

We no longer use man power, we use fuelled vehicles capable of generating whatever power and torque we want, maybe we should adapt.

I'd argue that the adaption may shortly need to be in the other direction: ie, that we have to get considerably more clever in cultivating adequately using considerably less energy than we do currently.

People are always hesitant to put dates on the point when hydrocarbon will cease to be a viable commodity for widespread use as a primary energy source. Outside of the oil industry those who consider themselves well informed drone on about coal-to-oil technology, shale oil and tars sands giving us oil for hundreds of years. They have very little idea what they are talking about.

Within the oil industry the estimates range from 30 to 100 years of practical use, but most people who are in a position to make a worthwhile judgement would agree that the effective end will be within 50 years. Beyond that extraction will of course be possible but only at excessive cost.

A point will be reached where human labour is cheaper than machine cultivation over a certain scale. That will set the future size limits of farms.

Horticulture of a given crop will normally produce a higher yeild than field scale cropping for the simple reason that plants can be given more individual attention. Few people would contend that. My potato plot is small, but based on what I have so far dug up I'm yeilding about 45 tonnes per hectare; best commcerial yeilds come in the low thirties tonnes per hectare as I undestand, but I could not extend what I do in 100m2 to 10,000m2 because I have not got enough hours in the day in which to do so.

The point where horticulture becomes agriculture depends simply on the amount of labour available and the cost of that labour. Hence a small farm that learns hard on human labour and relatively lightly on machine cultivation can quite easily produce more nutrition per acre than a large-scale monoculture.

The writings of both Colin Tudge and Graham Harvey examine this and the extensive references they cite give more specific detail.

[ina]

We no longer use man power, we use fuelled vehicles capable of generating whatever power and torque we want, maybe we should adapt.

Out of interest - are you a farmer?

[contadino]

Horticulture of a given crop will normally produce a higher yeild than field scale cropping for the simple reason that plants can be given more individual attention. Few people would contend that. My potato plot is small, but based on what I have so far dug up I'm yeilding about 45 tonnes per hectare; best commcerial yeilds come in the low thirties tonnes per hectare as I undestand, but I could not extend what I do in 100m2 to 10,000m2 because I have not got enough hours in the day in which to do so.

The point where horticulture becomes agriculture depends simply on the amount of labour available and the cost of that labour. Hence a small farm that learns hard on human labour and relatively lightly on machine cultivation can quite easily produce more nutrition per acre than a large-scale monoculture.

Exactly. The other thing you need to consider is the fossil fuel footprint of other inputs beyond labour. Fertilisers and pesticides, on which intensive farming is so dependent, will become more expensive. Small scale, mixed farming is impacted by these price rises to a much lesser degree.

[ina]

Exactly. The other thing you need to consider is the fossil fuel footprint of other inputs beyond labour. Fertilisers and pesticides, on which intensive farming is so dependent, will become more expensive. Small scale, mixed farming is impacted by these price rises to a much lesser degree.

It is also a lot more reliable in terms of food security: if one crop goes wrong, there's no disaster - we'll all just have to eat something different for that year. Food security will be getting more and more important in the near future again, seeing that all our mountains and lakes of surplus food have disappeared.

[DominicJ]

Why not large scale mixed farming? Instead of small scale mixed farming? Again, I'm trying to argue a farm should grow 10,000 acres of corn every year for ever, thats utterly wrong. But, a 2500 acres farm dplit into 5 500 acre fields is going to be more productive than a 250 acre farm split into 5 50 acre fields.

I am not personaly a farmer, but I'm a managment accountant and I work for a company that owns several hundred farms, and, wih a few exceptions, the bigger the farm, the more profitable it is.

[contadino]

I am not personaly a farmer, but I'm a managment accountant and I work for a company that owns several hundred farms, and, wih a few exceptions, the bigger the farm, the more profitable it is.

Ah, there lies the crux of our differences. I think lowering risk and increasing sustainability without impacting productivity is important. You are paid to help intensive farms make money however they can, if needs be at the expense of jobs and the environment.

I think maybe you'd be better qualified to have a valued opinion if you'd had more hands-on experience of farming.