Hey Dan

[Shannow]

Particularly seeing as taking steps to ward off climate change mean that our fossil fuel reserves last us longer !!!

There is no downside to conservation of fossil resources.

 

[Goreripper]

There is no downside to conservation.

 

[Dän]

HEY DAN


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/09/25/1190486311840.html

HOW THE FUCK IS THIS GOOD ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT?

I think it was refering to relocation? Economies of scale, smaller farms are more inefficient as their total average costs are high, help them relocate to better farming areas.

 

[Dän]

that is the most exeggerated bullshit I have ever heard. The whole climate change/global warming thing is the most over blown thing ever.

That is the only good thing you have ever said man.

 

[Kem]

Temperature is half the problem. The other is carbon dioxide levels and how it might effect things like acidity in the oceans.

When you consider the previous environments on Earth compared to now, it's pretty reasonable to expect some rather large changes in the coming centuries. The world used to have a shit load of CO2 in the atmosphere, which was over time locked up by photosynthetic plants into the fossil fuels, like over millions of years. We are now burning and releasing this back into the environment at a fraction of the time. Now combine that with increased deforestation, making it harder for the plants to trap atmospheric CO2 again. You do the maths.

 

[FerretallicA]

but c'mon guys think of the benefits of getting the farmers off their land and into the city, we can halt immigration for a while.

 

[Shannow]

I think it was refering to relocation? Economies of scale, smaller farms are more inefficient as their total average costs are high, help them relocate to better farming areas.

We're moving them to Brazil ?

Dan, there are no better farming areas at present. All the good spots are dry.

Howard said a few months ago that there would be no food shortage, we could import all that we needed...that's a great fucking plan, from an economic genius.

As to "economies of scale", it is the massive farm that has lead to the U.S. using five times as many calories (i.e. oil) than the food that makes it to the table.

Although it's not "economically viable", small family farms produce a net positive energy balance, which is exactly what caused humans to be able to create societies, and ultimately be able to discuss economies.

When we run out of oil, western agriculture fails entirely. Consumption of oil hastens the process.

So we pay farmers to leave the land, other countries to feed us, and when they are struggling to feed themselves, we get cut out.

Not sure whether "champ" is the word, more likely "chimp"

 

[Shannow]

LOL, I just had another think about Dan's "economies of scale".

Maybe we need a huge single "Australia Farm", controlled and managed by the Federal Government, and supplied water by the Federal Government. Fed Govt could control the wages paid to the employees of the State Farm.

Sounds good, doesn't it Dan ?

And while we are there, the Feds can control healthcare and schooling, better enabling the next generation to fit in with the new way of things.

 

[Dän]

Read this please

FINANCIAL REVIEW
2006/06/09

End of the road for family farms
Alan Mitchell, Economics editor

Really, there are two agricultural economies in the country. There are the top 10percent of farms that produce 50percent of total agricultural output. Then are the rest, with the bottom 50percent of farms producing only 10percent of the total output.
The top farms are big, professionally managed and offer investors rates of return that are comparable with those available in the rest of the economy.
Despite the drought, the top 10percent of broadacre and dairy farms (as measured by total farm capital) earned an average profit of about $290,000 a year over the past three years.

The annual rate of return - including capital gains on the land - averaged 13percent.
That is the side of the farm sector that city television watchers rarely get to see. The farms that feature on the early-evening current affairs shows are more likely to come from the second agricultural economy.

And when they appear it is usually with background music, lingering shots of dead animals, and tear-choked farmers telling of the latest blow to befall the brave men and women who work our wide brown land.
A substantial proportion of these farm businesses are not viable and should be taken over by larger and more professional operators.
In the past three years, the average annual cash income of the bottom two-thirds of broadacre and dairy farms was only about $30,000, and the average annual loss was just over $24,000.

Many of these farms are too small to be efficient. Increased farm productivity comes from professional management and new technologies, such as advanced mechanical harvesters and automated feeding systems. But these technologies are usually better suited to larger-scale farming. Larger farms are more able to finance the use of new management and farming practices. Farming is on a productivity treadmill.

Farmers have to live with a long-term decline in their terms of trade: the prices of agricultural products are rising slower than the cost of farmers' inputs. They can survive only by increasing their productivity. But, of course, higher productivity and increased supply of farm products puts yet more downward pressure on global prices and the farmers' terms of trade.
This, in turn, means that the farmers must find yet more productivity gains.
The death of the non-viable, inefficient farm has proved agonisingly slow.

Why? The small, loss-making farms are often close to the towns and cities. This has enabled the owners to gain off-farm income. A study by the Productivity Commission published last year found that the proportion of farm families deriving income from off-farm wages and salaries has increased from 30per cent to 45percent since 1990; off-farm average earnings have risen from $15,000 to $33,500 a year.

 

[Winmar]

LOL, I just had another think about Dan's "economies of scale".

Maybe we need a huge single "Australia Farm", controlled and managed by the Federal Government, and supplied water by the Federal Government. Fed Govt could control the wages paid to the employees of the State Farm.

Awesome, we can live in a big commune!

 

[Dän]

-BFD S vk;fhdf;ss pfgid-9d78w3 5

 

[Shannow]

Read this please.

Why bother, you don't read anything that we post.

But I did read it.

Once again, economists relying on the flawed belief that they will have unlimited resources at their disposal (i.e. oil, as that's what makes large scale farming viable).

Any industry that invests five times as much energy than the food that makes it to the table is clearly unsustainable, and any economist who thinks that it's "efficient" is ridiculously narrow minded...as economists tend to be !!

 

[phlogiston]

Now I'm not wanting to be seen agreeing with Dan here (I couldn't put up with all of the shit ) but what are you suggesting Shannow? That we stop farming all together because it's inefficient? It kind of makes sense to me (based on that article alone, mind you) that if the big farms can do it *more* efficiently than the smaller ones then getting rid of the smaller ones (and letting the bigger ones take over the land) might be a good thing (in terms of economy and environment at least, which seems to be where you're coming from).

Not so good for the individual farmer, mind you.

 

[Southy]

So long as the commune is run BY the people for the PEOPLE I am all for it.....



Yes, that does make me pinko commie scum, but I couldn't be bothered reading all the shit here, and noticed the word commune

 

[mattt]

We're moving them to Brazil ?

Dan, there are no better farming areas at present. All the good spots are dry.

that is a pretty ignorant statement. Where I am from is one of the most prosperous sugar cane growing areas in Australia and there has never been an issue with water at all. The issue is the global sugar price, not water.

 

[phlogiston]

I think Shannow's saying there is nowhere *left* to move the farms. All of the good spots are dry or already taken, not that all the land is dry.

 

[Shannow]

phloggy, exactly...the best places to farm were picked ages ago.

Dan's suggestion to move to a better place doesn't work, when there's no place left to go.

 

[Shannow]

Now I'm not wanting to be seen agreeing with Dan here (I couldn't put up with all of the shit ) but what are you suggesting Shannow? That we stop farming all together because it's inefficient? It kind of makes sense to me (based on that article alone, mind you) that if the big farms can do it *more* efficiently than the smaller ones then getting rid of the smaller ones (and letting the bigger ones take over the land) might be a good thing (in terms of economy and environment at least, which seems to be where you're coming from).

Not so good for the individual farmer, mind you.

Look at the "evolution" of farming.

It was agriculture that allowed us to form a society. Agriculture gave more energy as food than it took to produce, allowing leisure time, which in turn allowed civilisation.

Beast of burden further improved the energy balance.

Farming was essentially "solar powered", as that's where the excess energy came from.

Then we had the industrial revolution, and developed mechanised farming methods. These seem more efficient, because a hundred acres can be plowed by one guy with a tractor.

However western farming and food production uses five times as many calories than the food that makes it to the table. That's a huge negative energy balance that can only be maintained while there is cheap oil (or oil at all).

The large farms appear more productive or viable because they are using the capital of a diminishing resource, at 20% efficiency rather than over 100%. Howard's suggestion that we can import our food adds more oil to the cost. We'd get five times the food "mileage" if we ate oil.

When oil prices rise, food prices will too. When oil runs out (it has to if it's finite), and farming is totally reliant on oil, there may not be enough time to re-establish small regional farming and distribution before there are mass food shortages.

Growing fuel for farming with a 20% efficiency means that nearly 5 times as much arrable land is required than currently farmed to supply fuel for the land that currently feeds us (not quite, but I hope that you get the drift).

My point was that the larger "sustainable" farms are inherently unsustainable, and economists pointing us to bigger "more efficient" farms is fine, as long as ALL of the inputs are taken.

I don't know what the answer is other than everyone having a hectare or two, and producing what they are good at, and trading with neighbours...dunno.

By the way, there used to be, globally, around 6 months supply of grain stored. There was sufficient that if an entire crop failed, there would be enough food for another to be planted (in the other hemisphere) without impacting the food supply. Due to the market at work, it's less than a month now.

 

[phlogiston]

Ok, but doesn't mean that getting the smaller just-scraping-by farmers off the land and letting big-and-profitable farms run it makes even more sense? If they're struggling to make a living anyway, they're never going to be able to afford the next generation of efficiency improvements and will just be being left further and further behind. And while the big farms are then waiting for their solar powered tractors that are made from recycled peanut shells they can use the equipment they already have near the site.

 

[Shannow]

There's "efficient" in terms of costs (in economists terms), and "efficient" in terms of energy consumption.

an economist would have you sit all day in the office, business lunch eating snails imported from France (well at least Orange), then spend an hour at the gym to work it all off.

If you spent all day working on the family (not huge broadacre) farm, you'd be eating what you or your neighbours produced, and would have no need whatsoever to go to the gym.

entropy is something that economists don't study.