Small farms are inefficient though. Farming needs a diverse range of skilled labor but infrequently: the industry as a whole trends towards larger land holders being serviced by specialist labor forces which work seasonally or regionally.

And then within that bucket, it's fairly obvious that larger holders are going to be much more resilient to regional problems if they have diversified land holdings where one area can support a downturn in another.

This is all Renaissance era knowledge.

▲

jay_kyburz a day ago | parent [-]

Inefficient from an economic perspective may not be what we need as a society.

Perhaps we need more farmers living the the county, spending money in small county towns, with more work for people with those special labor skills. Get people out of the city and more people into primary industries.

▲

XorNot a day ago | parent [-]

No straight up inefficient. They produce less. More land is occupied for non productive buildings. Heavy equipment cannot be used at scale. Farms which go bankrupt and fall into disrepair don't produce, and the fields degrade.

They straight up make less food.

▲

jay_kyburz a day ago | parent [-]

According to food bank Australia, we make 3 times the amount of food we need, and 70% of the food that is wasted is perfectly edible.

Update: I also recognize that nobody wants to pay three times the price for all their groceries. I'm not advocating anything, just shooting the shit.

	▲	pfdietz a day ago \| parent [-]
		The only way what you wrote could make sense would be if it's referring to crops grown for animal feed, and comparing that to if the crops were directly consumed by people. So, the claim is thinly veiled propaganda for vegetarianism.