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Comment by zmgsabst | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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 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?

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