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.

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 without 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’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?

> 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 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...

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.

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.