Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Gedankenexperiment

Efficiency
steves — (archived)

Farming equipment is very expensive and so are those storage bins for grains. Combine that with high fuel prices, seeds, insecticides and fertilizer that large farming corporations patent and control (monopolize) along with unusual weather and production contracts (more corporate control) and you will occur a loss. The corporate farming businesses can absorb it making up the difference on later years of boom production and higher commodity prices, but the small family farmer keeps putting their land up as collateral to make the loan payments on equipment and growing cost but that soon has its limits and the banks end up foreclosing on the farms. When large corporations control the seed, pesticides, fertilizers and how much you can sell your product for the small farmer is no longer a free agent and at the mercy of the large corporation.

It has nothing to do with efficiency of the farmer but the controls which have been put on them by large corporations.

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