What are the effects of Organic Food Production?

Is this true? [big farms reduce food production]?

• everyone knows, & has no trouble agreeing, & laughing at the fact, that russia's food production went down a lot with communism's big farms policy - i have read that small to medium farms are 16 times more productive than big farms - in the world book of rankings, it says that the agricultural efficiency [food per acre] of the sudan & china are 30 times that of the [big farm] usa - okay, china has the high productivity of the yangtse area - but sudan? - usa soil & weather conditions have got to be better than the sudan's - does that mean that with small farms usa cd produce 30 times as much food? somehow we have come to believe that big farms are more efficient - are they only more 'efficient' in reducing food production & increasing scarcity & profits? are the five global food corporations who control most food doing us wrong? are they also buying up small farms & throwing farmers into the cities making cheap labour, urban stress & disease, slums, crime, as britain did 200 yrs ago?

• Answer:

  Small farms are a significant part of American agriculture. While a focus on production may have been a legitimate orientation in the past there is no longer any significant benefit to be gained from increasing the productive efficiency of agriculture. First, the American consumer no longer spends 40%-50% of their income for food as they did when the USDA and Land Grants were established but instead spends a little more than 10% – a dime of each dollar and the farmer only gets about a penny from that dime. The rest goes for farm inputs and marketing costs. Even if farming were perfectly efficient, if farming cost nothing, consumers would only save a dime of each dollar spent for food. Further improvements in the efficiency of farming simply cannot make food much cheaper. Consumers no longer benefit from making farms bigger. Most real farmers are small farmers. Many of those census entities counted as farms are hobby farmers and rural residences. But many are not. The census asks farmers to provide their primary occupation – the occupation at which they spend more than half of their working hours. When considering only those whose primary occupation is farming and who are not retired, more than half of these real farmers would easily be classified as small farmers. Well over half of these primary-occupation farmers have less than $100,000 in annual gross sales and nearly half have gross sales of less than $50,000 per year. A small farm can support a family and successful small farmers pursue a fundamentally different approach to farming than do big farmers. They reduce their reliance on purchased inputs by substituting labor and management for capital and purchased inputs – they are low-input farmers. They focus on creating value, as well as reducing costs – they are niche-marketers. They give individual consumers what they want rather than produce bulk commodities for mass markets. They do the things they do best, the things they have a passion for, and as a consequence, do them better. They build relationships with their customers and thus are less vulnerable to the ups and downs of commodity prices. As a result of all these things these new small farmers can earn far greater income per dollar of sales than do conventional large farmers. A farm with $50,000 gross sales may well contribute $25,000 or more to support the family; a farm with gross sales of $100,000 can be a full-time family farm. Small farms that report little if any net income may still be very important economically to small farm families. First, many families on small farms live simply. They do not live in poverty, but their economic standard of living is not as high as that of their urban neighbors. To them farming is truly a way of life as well as a business. The farm provides them with a home, much of their food, a good place to raise their family, a place for recreation and relaxation, and a place for learning and teaching – as well as a place to work. Many of these smaller farms are not obligated to report any net income from farming because many of the costs of living on a farm qualify as “farm costs.” Many small farms, if they are part-time farms, need not earn an income; their non-market value to the family is sufficient to justify the farming operation. Technologies are not scale-neutral and industrial technologies developed for larger, commercial farming operations are not appropriate for small farms. Agricultural technologies of the past have provided means of specializing and standardizing production processes thus industrializing the management function and allowing farms to grow larger. Successful small farms must be management intensive – they must earn more returns per acre, per dollar invested, per dollar-value of production. The higher returns to management from intensively managed farms comes from the efficiency with which the various practices, methods, and enterprises on the farm are integrated together – not necessarily from the efficiency of each individual practice, method, or enterprise. A cow or a stalk of corn has a very different role in a diversified integrated small farm system than in a large, specialized beef herd or corn farm. Small farmers need research and technology that will enhance their human capacity to manage things – to understand, to think. They need technologies that will allow them to manage more intensively. Publicly funded programs are not adequately meeting the legitimate needs of small farmers yet small farmers have found ways to survive and persist in spite of the lack of research and educational support, and in spite of government programs that have supported and promoted large farms and corporate competitors. Small farmers, using any reasonable definition, make up more than half of all primary occupation farmers. This is not a fantasy but is a statistical fact. These are not farmers of the past, these are farmers of the present, and they deserve the respect and attention of their public institutions. Small farm advocates are in touch with the realities of today, but perhaps more important, they are looking to the future. They are not opposed to technology; they simply want technologies that are consistent with long run sustainability as well as short run profitability. The future of human civilization depends not only upon food, but also on a healthy environment and a civilized human society. There is no better means of sustaining human life on earth than to have people of the land who are intellectually capable, socially responsible, and ethically committed to meeting the needs of both present and future generations through farming. An industrial agriculture is not sustainable. There can be no better investment of public dollars than in keeping the land in the hands of small farmers who are committed to the sustainability of agriculture.