Everything this comment above says is also detailed in the book Sacred Cow. Large corporations are, again, the problem. But people come out of the woodwork to defend them under an article that vilifies them.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
My perception at the time of posting the comment was correct. If I could edit the wording now, I would, but I can't. Weird flex.
Proper regulations are good protection against lawsuits. Without regulations your responsibilities to keep the environment clean are vague. OTOH, following regulations in good faith makes your responsibilities very clear.
Where I am, the grain district of Western Australia:
ALMOST two-thirds of the farming population in the agricultural area of Western Australia live on farms of 1,000 acres or more in size.
The average farm size in WA is approximately 4500 hectares (11,000 acres).
https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/sites/gateway/files/Grain%20prod...
Both those statements are true, most farms are greater than 1K acres, and the average size of a grain farm is 11,000 acres.
My neighbour shoots ULR targets at 5,000 yards across his property.
Most of the grain growing here is family dynasty type ownership.
Cattle stations get much much bigger.
50 beef cattle is hobby farm size. It wouldn't provide enough revenue to support a family. We needed grains, oilseeds, pigs and chickens in addition to the 50 beef cattle to support ours.
11,000 acres in Saskatchewan (and presumably Australia) is family farm size. It will have 0 or 1 employees.
I'm ok with the definition that most farms just aren't small. Certainly ok with the idea that a small farm is still giant compared to any other "small" business. But I find it odd that Clarkson's Farm, a show many are probably familiar with today, is literally 1/10 the size of what you are calling a small farm. Is that just a tiny farm?
Edit: Finally tried clicking around your links, I think you messed up the WA one. At any rate, I see a "small" farm is designated by revenue of about 28k. https://cms.agr.wa.gov/WSDAKentico/Imported/641-WSDAAgInfogr..... shows that "63% of farms are less than 50 acres" So, I can see how your average number can work, as that is how statistics work. That said, most farms are clearly not 11k acres.
Edit2: Annoyingly, that link I put up indicates the "small" revenue is 250k. It was an exemption of some sort that I closed the link on that indicated 28.
And all real farms have at least 6 figures of revenue. They also have at least 6 figures of expenses. A small combine harvester costs $500,000, for example.
I'm curious what the exemptions are on runoff regulations. That was the driver for what got me asking.
If regulations under discussion were applied equally to all farms, then most small farms would cease to exist, because our neighbors would sue us into oblivion.
Not because we are doing anything as egregiously wrong as CAFOs, but because we cannot afford to defend against spurious lawsuits from city folks that have moved to the country.