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"Commercial" farming is no assurance of stability either.


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More accurately, the alternative is continuing to practice subsistence farming, which is not a great alternative.

I don't know much about farming, but I doubt farms that refuse to sell their crops stay farms for very long.

It won't support the rapid, fatty growth the factory farms require, nor the overall output that the market demands.

Commercial farming is also "subsistence" if you don't have enough savings. If your crop is inedible you still have to buy food from somewhere with something ..

The alternative is the misery of completely unsupported subsistence farming.

It kinda just sounds like you're content with family farms not existing, because all of your points fail to address the economic realities for these farms.

Well a lot of conventional farms that are hyperoptimized barely make enough money to get by. It is quite weird how we can't maintain something as basic as food security with a market based economy.

But then that only means it's not attractive for the farmers either.

There are many reasons, but all the others become moot when you take into account that a return to traditional agriculture is economically impossible. It survives as a niche product, but it can't remotely compete on scale and price.

As far as I can tell, the government isn't happy with the situation, but is terrified of the farmers.

Industrial farming is a wrong idea.

In this case I really don't think that the owners of these mega-farms have such humanitarian interests at heart.

"That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill;"

I want to believe. However most food production is now controlled by large corporations.


People already fetishize agriculture that eschews "best practices".

Reality being land owners backed by the state who don't allow people to wander off and grow their own food?

Indeed, some forms of farming e.g. cotton in Australia are literally unsustainable when exposed to market forces.

Doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.


I cannot imagine its economical for anyone in South Dakota to have these "factory farms".

It's extremely hard to compete with the major farming conglomerates for one thing.

This really isn't anything new - costs and lack of scale forcing out small farmers has been going on forever.
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