Farming productivity

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ken wrote:
>Perhaps Louis could explain what he means by small farms being more
productive.

As I mentioned to Doug, the key question is the degree to which farming is
organic rather than its level of productivity in the business school sense.
Having stated that, there still is a mountain of evidence that large-scale
farming leads to counterproductive results despite--or perhaps because
of--advanced technology. In an October 26, 1980 article on soil erosion in
the NY  Times, Stephen Black of the Soil Conservation Office in Missouri
was quoted as saying, "It's hard to contour plow or adjust to terraces well
with today's enormous equipment, so the big farmers just plow straight up
and  down the slopes, and the soil just runs right off." He added that
erosion's effects on agricultural productivity  were already measurable in
his own Monroe County. According to a survey he conducted, well-managed
fertile soil in the county yields 78 bushels of corn or 30 bushels of
soybeans an acre. The same soil, eroded, yields only 67 bushels or corn or
24 bushels of soybeans. This, of course, confirms the observation made by
Marx in V. 3 of Capital: "the industrial system applied to agriculture also
enervates the workers there, while  industry and trade for their part
provide agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil."

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/