Want To Double World Food Production? Return The Land To Small Farmers…

the only way that will happen is to return to small farms who provide locally and therefore lose less waste. You are saying the same thing. Its just that the big business producers would rather throw produce away when it cant be sold at the prices they have set than to see it being used. The world is upside down with its values. A community farmer brings it back home for us to take care of each other within a community.

Now that comment makes more sense than taking someone elses land and giving to people to farm.

That’s great, they can go to Russia with you.

Because in most places when you buy the land you have to comply with zoning and building codes if you want to live on farm land. And in most residential areas they have regulations against farming. Gardens sime places yes, farming, no. Have you priced farm land?

&My dear Melanie, yes I have owned small farms. You sound like a New Yorker or a millennial. Your comment is totally incorrect! You do not buy small parcels of farmland in cities where you have zoning and building considerations. You buy farmland in the country where there is no zoning. Please don’t waste my time educating you about such things. You should actually know what you are talking about before replying to peoples comments.

Andrew I think you are missing the point of the article. Internationally, in numerous cases, land is extorted or effectively stolen. Many people in poorer countries are being driven off their ancestral farming lands. In other cases, the families are forced to sell in times of drought or family crisis. In too many cases, the aquisition of land has been far from fair. Much international aid/support is skewed to incentivise these undesirable outcomes by favouring supposedly more efficient and modern farming methods and structures. Unfortunately their reasoning is faulty.

You missed my point, I am talking about small farms in the United States only! I cannot speak to the needs of other countries.

In numerous cases, the land is extorted or effectively stolen. Many people in poorer countries are being driven off their ancestral farming lands. In other cases, the families are forced to sell in times of drought or family crisis. In too many cases, the aquisition of land has been far from fair. Much international aid/support is skewed to incentivise these undesirable outcomes by favouring supposedly more efficient and modern farming methods and structures. Unfortunately their reasoning is faulty.

Tamsin Kelly what country?

You’re clearly not American.

Brad Adcock the vast majority are still family owned or small scale farms (in the USA), although the trend is towards bigger/corporate farms. However, large farms are unlikely to take over because small scale farmers tend to produce more efficiently. By 2050 we will have to produce 70% more food so it’s likely to come from a combination of small and large scale farming.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/march/large-family-farms-continue-to-dominate-us-agricultural-production/

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/big-farms-are-getting-bigger-and-most-small-farms-arent-really-farms-at-all/

Christopher Weeks interesting! This article states that the trend is, as I mentioned, towards bigger farms. Decentralised small scale systems are the way to go and we will also require the big players to fill the yield gap.

Have you read Joel Salatin? His model of small scale farming may offer alternatives?

No I am farming when inputs are higher than outputs simple as that just go to supermarkets see what your charged than see what the producer is getting very hard to cut the middle man out in volumes you need them or shelves be empty

Yet it is these mega farms that are causing our soils to have problems. They are adding lots of fertilizer but no micro nutrients so essentially the soil is dead.

Dawn Singleton LoL are you serious ? So small farms go out and add “micro nutrients” ??? ok I’m sure they do

Cris Ward – crop rotation & no-till farming does exactly that

i get worried when i read some indoctrinated b.s from someone who doesnt understand how to build soil or fertility that will outlast each generation, and improve the soil constantly. Instead i see farmers who plan to “subdevide the land when the city expands out here and make millions”. Artifical ferterlizers are a “temp” fix, using commercial weed control sprays kills your soils fertility, constant chopping up of the soil and deep plowing messes it up as well, breaks u pthe fungi net , mono cropping on top of that causes even more damage and increases in specifc thrats to that species (insect, fungi, bacteria, and plant virus’s) which can spread fast – i have seen whole feilds affected in days and lost, espeically with resistant moulds. Land just doesnt work the way its manipulated. You need some sort of forested area for “mining” of nutrieits to bring up to the top soil (which is either mulched or biochar to build the soil) you need crushed whole stone, like granite which has like 80-90 trace elements in it, added to the working soil every 10-25 years, a fungi net which supports bacteria which benefits the plant growth, moves nutrients and moisture amoungst them- it requres not chopping the soil up and you need to mix up your plant life in such a way the crops control the weed regrowth , the food plants become the self seeding “weeds”. (it becomes the basis for wild gardening) native poeple have “wild gardened some sites for centuries, without loss of soil fertility, these methods can even make salt damage soil usable again, making the salt inert (rather than methods of either forcing salt to rise into raised soil then removal, or washing the salt out of the soil to deeper levels, which creates more long term problems). Whats even more stupid, is how humans BUILD houses on the most fertile land, which become concrete cities. Humans are insane.

Leigh Sunders great rant but that’s all it is . No real farms are subdivided for housing . As for your knowledge on farming well I can see your not a farmer . Just look at Israel or any Arab country . All you realy need is water to make a farm productive .

Dawn Singleton rubbish

Cris Ward and the skills of course

Samantha Day Peterson Yes, and large scale industrial farming does both of these because it is the most cost effective method of maintaining soil health and crop yields.

Cris Ward Um…you obviously know nothing about Southwestern Ontario, Canada because subdividing rich farmland to build housing is EXACTLY what is going on and out of control. Why you may ask? Because a large amount of some of the richest farmland in the world is within an hours drive of Toronto. The lost farms have great soil, water & fairly good climate patterns – but we pay farmers a pittance for their hard work then complain about the price of food, complain about the smell, noise and traffic disruptions that come from living near a farm. (Trust me, I live in a rural farming community in this area & I often get caught driving slow behind farm equipment.) So when someone comes along and offers you a pile of money for your land – enough to move somewhere else and set up a new farm or retire – I can’t blame them for taking it.

Karrilyn McPhee if they were decent farms they wouldn’t be sold for a pittance and turned into houseing . It’s just small ma and pa farms that have struggled to pay the mortgage that turn into housing .