Joel Salatin and Richard Perkins (among many many others) have done great work by applying permaculture principles to farm scale. The ”movement” is called regenerative agriculture but you can also find lots of bullshit under that term (ie. Monsanto has used that term in their marketing)

While I have a lot of time for those people (Gabe Brown is well worth adding to that list). I fear that for the most part those people are successful by selling the dream of better quality produce to people with the disposable income to afford to buy it, mostly direct to consumer. I suspect there isn't enough space in this market place for every farmer.

There is certainly more space available than is currently being filled. I.e. I have lived in more than a dozen places around the EU and Africa and have never had access to one of these types of farmers, despite being heavily inclined to buy from them.

I don't doubt that direct to consumer regenerative agriculture will never be 100% of the market, even in wealthy societies. But it still has tremendous potential to grow.

direct to consumer seems like a huge growth field to me actually, there's much less need for a middle man (grocer) now that everyone can buy and sell via their preferred marketplace app.

I don't think the problem is in output-per-acre (really, increase in yield per acre is shockingly low in the past 50 years), but rather in the amount of labor required. That, plus the inertia of vested interests codified as bureacratic regulation and protected by lobbyists. Essentially: intensive agriculture uses monocultures, extremely large machines and herbicides/fertilizers/pesticides in order to reduce or displace labor costs, which dominate. And it still can't really exist without heavy subsidies.

Any kind of regenerative practice in the current market situation needs to be competitive on a labor per output basis in the first place, not on the output per acre. Lightweight machines and robotics are part of the equation for sure, but will not be sufficient.

However, agriculture in Europe is already build on subsidizes and heavily regulated. So we have the tools, we just need to use them and defeat agro corps lobbying efforts. Not easy, considering a political party from an Agro PR firm won the elections in the Netherlands, and legitimized a toxic blend of corporate disinfo, conspiracy theories and populist violence.

Moving beyond the path of destruction seems as hopeless as ever.

There are some interesting approaches to regenerative agriculture that somewhat sidestep the problem of labour cost. I.e. Mark Shepard runs a 46ha farm in US mid west that he says has been profitable basically from year one. Very small degree of mechanization (basically a tractor and some implements) and no use of chemical fertilizers or any other inputs (pesticides, herbicides, irrigation). They basically cut out a huge share of conventional farming's cost structure to be able to compensate for increased labour costs.

I live in a rural place and the typical farmer here has mid to high seven figures invested in machines and implements and spends a lot of money on inputs, which in turn has contributed to farms getting bigger and bigger, which in turn requires more investment in mechanization, etc. On the other hand, we have founded a non-profit CSA market garden on 4.000m2 that can pay 1.5 people a decent salary. My personal impression is that for farming to become financially attractive to the practitioners again, we need to reduce size, reduce inputs, reduce capital expenditure and put quality and diversity back into focus.

> permacultural practices can compete in terms of output, it's just harder to industrialize

Then they can't compete – yet.

I think they meant competitive in land yields, not prices.

If I need 50 workers instead of 1, I can't compete.

Doesn't that just depend on whether income can pay for the 50 employees, and that you can find 50 people willing to work the job?

This is framing premises so that only this conclusion appear relevant.

It's not a predefined unavoidable destiny that is to go through, that is all about what policies are chose with which agenda in mind.

Unemployment didn't reach 0% anywhere last time I checked, and as it was already mentioned, no actor out there is playing without some public subsidiaries.

This is all political decisions. Local short term optimisation of plutocrate revenues is one possibility. Perennial national sustainability is an other one. These two agendas however probably don't overlap much.

Many of the practices proposed to reduce the impact on the environment are nonstarters because of low land yields (and indeed might actually be worse on the environment because you need to convert more land to farmland).

If this method has equal land yields and less environmental impact but is highly labor intensive, perhaps there is scope for mechanization to make it competitive.

Maybe we could do three good things at once:

- switch to this better method of farming

- end the corporate oligarchy controlling food by having smaller farms

- shift people out of net negative “services” into farming

I don’t see the downfall of industrial farming as a bad thing — they’re a whole problem all on their own (including the recent push to take away family farms from the Dutch).

Because the Great Leap Forward was such a smashing success, we need to do it again?

This is why the West has such ossified systems. If you propose any systemic change, people dont actually evaluate the suggestion on it's merits. They just go China/communism!

The proposition is to expropriate landowners (sorry the “corporate oligarchy”), force people to move to farming and rationalise production methods with a top-down approach. The comparaison to the Great Leap Forward is not far fetched. I think it’s legitimate to point to disastrous precedent when people suggest things.

Rural landowners who didn't had a marketable crop/produce (wine) already got expropriated, and their land already incorporate 'rationalized' ag. I know of 6 person in my mother's village who killed themselves between the 80s and late 90s, because of 'revolver' credits (aptly renamed), and tbf the rest of their family (4 different families) got it worse imho, until the state swoopt in and forgave the debt. I think only one independent farmer still exist in the area, his wife work at the local post office/bank, so they probably were more difficult targets.

It's not the great leap forward, it's the small choking of those left behind.

No idea where you are from but I'm French and my family has owned a farming equipment dealership for close to 50 years. I haven't seen this mass incorporation you speak of.

Farms have indeed grew larger through consolidation (no one got expropriated - farming is now capital-intensive and economy of scale kicks in with larger farms - small owners either bought their neighbours and became big, sold or went bankrupt) but nearly all of them are still privately owned by people whose family history is in farming.

I find the nostalgia for small scale farming somewhat amusing personnaly. In my experience, it mostly comes from urban people doing white collar jobs. The reality of managing a small farm is not fun.

Livestock farming is the only activity which remains somewhat widespread on a small scale here and it's miserable. It's a buyer market. Farmers are being squeezed out as much as possible by their distributors.

> Livestock farming is the only activity which remains somewhat widespread on a small scale here and it's miserable. It's a buyer market. Farmers are being squeezed out as much as possible by their distributors.

Exactly, people removed from farming do not understand how predatory the market actually is towards them. And they go around tilting at windmills.

No it wasn’t - you’re putting words in my mouth to justify a poor comparison.

All I said was that we should change the standards around farming to stop providing legal support to mega farms (eg the current government policy that’s failing) and allow the natural outcome of more labor intensive farming to happen — which through shifting the incentives and existing legal framework, would have people shift back into farming.

The person I was responding to said more labor intensive farming would be bad — I pointed out that the market effect of that change would actually be positive in several ways.

Comparing a change to the legal framework which leads to a change in market dynamics that’s positive isn’t anything like the Great Leap Forward.

> All I said was that we should change the standards around farming to stop providing legal support to mega farms (eg the current government policy that’s failing) and allow the natural outcome of more labor intensive farming to happen — which through shifting the incentives and existing legal framework, would have people shift back into farming.

The natural outcome is that production is shifted to countries with laxer laws and cheaper cost of labour not that people shift back into farming. Farming is not economically viable on a small scale withtout subsidies in Europe.

Mega farms already receive subsidies — why is that fine, but subsidizing a less damaging method not?

Also, that’s what tariffs are for: food security is national security.

Finally, the Dutch farmers currently having their farms seized seemed to be doing fine — except for political interference in the name of environmentalism. Why is that intervention fine, but supporting small farmers rather than mega corporations not?

> Mega farms already receive subsidies — why is that fine, but subsidizing a less damaging method not?

It's fine and might be a solution to the problem but purposefully orienting subsidies towards something and putting tariffs in place are as far removed from "the natural outcome" as you can get.

> Finally, the Dutch farmers currently having their farms seized seemed to be doing fine — except for political interference in the name of environmentalism. Why is that intervention fine, but supporting small farmers rather than mega corporations not?

I have trouble following your argument. Are you or are you not in favour of top down policies and mass expropriations by the State? If that's the case, see the original point about the Great Leap Forward. I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it too here.

I think the comment about dutch farms was that they were getting along fine with high labour costs and small footprints.

Dutch farms are massive. We are talking about livestock farming at a size where robotisation makes sense.

didn't know that. Are they massive by European standards (significantly above 75 acres)? I'm sure they're small by American standards given the size of the landmass...

> removed from "the natural outcome" as you can get.

What does this even mean?

Many varieties of crops are intellectual property, and small farms can't affprd them. The entire concept of intellectual property is unnatural and did not exisy untill recently.

Is it 'natural' to be allowed pollute as much as your want, and have waste running into rivers, or is it natural to be allowed absolutely zero pollution beyong the boundaries of your farm?

I’m not in favor.

But the present situation is brought about by those very policies, where (eg) the Dutch government is seizing Dutch family farms as part of their Green Leap Forward — and you seem fine with that status quo. In fact, you’re out here saying we can’t change policy to protect family farms from such government intervention.

> Farming is not economically viable on a small scale without subsidies in Europe.

My point is that the collapse of small farms isn’t organic market forces, but government policy such as the Green Leap Forward expropriating them — and so it’s completely ridiculous to say we can’t change policy (eg, stop doing that) to help small farms.

Policy is the problem; why would changing it not be the solution?

Was that what was proposed or is that just the least charitable interpretation one can think of?

Nobody mentioned expropriating. One can put down incentives that benefit the desired outcome in the same way we've been doing in many different scenarios.

Also I didn't see any call for some kind of localized mass mobilizations towards agriculture in the way the great leap forward might have seen with things like iron smelting & the like. Agricultures share of employment is sub 5% in most of the west. A quick look at a graph for the US makes me think sub 2%

If you push the industry towards these more sustainable tho more labour incentive practices chances are it'll be a slow change with an increase in workers in agriculture that isn't going to radically change society. It's not like half a century ago in the 60's the west was in some kind of agriculture dominant feudal age despite there being even 3-4 times as many workers in agriculture if not more depending on where you look.

And of course we're forgetting technology, options for a middleground, etc in all this.

We have something that doesn't work.

Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...

We have to change the course, or it will be selected for us and we won't have a say in it.

How does this relate to the great leap forward? I don't think he's arguing that thre be some kind of mass mobilization towards agriculture (as opposed to metals smelting or the like)

How might this be implemented without ceasing am even more powerful government along the way?

The changes sounds reasonable enough but it sounds like it's take the government to force new farming methods on us, break up corporations, and force people to leave their current jobs and lives to work land elsewhere.

Vote with your wallet.

I buy from small family farms who use better methods — and you can too.

I also didn’t say anything about “break up corporations” nor “force people to leave their current jobs”; I only said that it’s fine if we make a pivot that’s more labor intensive… we can use people rather than robots.

Vote with your wallet for farms that use permaculture or similar; the market will naturally shift in response to the changed incentives and capable people will fill the void, through the personal pursuit of profits.

We could also, eg, preference small farms or permaculture in existing government subsidy programs.

Already on that path too, we buy most of our food from local farms as well.

I may very well have misunderstood your original message. I interested how change like breaking up the corporate oligarchies or shifting people from service jobs to farming could be made without massive government intervention.

The way I see it, our whole system is based on an economy that just doesn't line up at all with a farming-first type of approach. Major industries wouldn't be able to make that shift, modern conveniences would likely fall away, and the federal debt we keep piling higher and higher could never be paid.

Thst said, I have my own preconceived notions here and am genuinely curious what alternatives I've missed.