@@Bleilock1Sort of. It is quite Adam Smith 'capitalist', but quite different from modern finance driven capitalism. And to make it even more murky, a lot of finance was originally created to solve problems farmers have. Oh, and lots of farming can still be viewed as almost feudal. Except these days the peasants have been replaced with automation and/or migrant labour.
This is one of those clever-cloggs retorts people always pipe up with any time someone talks about farming economics. You should provide attribution as this is a well known quote, rather than your own insight (it was John F Kennedy)... It's also not true - I'm a farmer and I don't buy any of my inputs retail - and I don't know any that do. Only an idiot would (e.g.) but their seed from a hardware shop in town, or would not be VAT registered etc.
@@tidyttt The problem here is that this isn't from Kennedy, it's a bad translation of a older observation which has been popularized in German in the late 1800s. Retail is used to translate Konsumentenmarkt/consumers market. It refers to when the demand side of the calculation has more power in the price finding process than the supply side. Wholesale is a translation of producers market. It's when the supply side has more power than the demand side. One doesn't just shelf the tractor because the hydraulic pump broke to wait for a better price on that hydraulic pump, one pays whatever is asked to get the tractor running again. The starch factory in contrast doesn't really care about you wanting more money for your potatoes, since there's more than enough suppliers that are willing to let them dictate the price.
Small farmer in Ontario Canada here. Good thoughts all through the video. I feel the primary obstacle facing new entrants into farming is the valuation of farmland. It has been divorced from any realistic return on investment in the agricultural context. The acre of agriculturally zoned land is now predominantly valued as if it were a residential or commercial building lot up for grabs by the highest bidder by developers. Prices of between 10,000 - 30,000 dollars an acre do not pencil out. You cannot expect to ever service that debt by farming the land...let alone make a profit to live on. Offshore and domestic speculators, residential developers, are both hungry, wealthy, and prepared to essentially steal farmland away from ordinary farmers, or potential future farmers. Once it is covered with houses or shopping centers it is forever destroyed for food production. Then the farmers who give in and sell their multimillion dollar land near urban areas, proceed to outbid local farmers in lower priced areas and thus prices everywhere get driven up endlessly in a sort of societal suicide. None of it is sustainable. Enormous land holdings, amassed by established corporate farms over many years, are beyond the reach of most younger/newer/potential farmers or ranchers. And so the only buyers for those farms of several thousand acres are speculators and consortiums from other places. Think Bill Gates, China, etc. If the agricultural economy were allowed to exist apart from the larger real estate economy, and land was valued according to what it is truly worth as farmland, then most agricultural land here would sell for 1000-2000 dollars per acre, you could get a loan, farm the land, make the payments, and pay it off in ten years then begin actually making money farming it.
I started back in the game 10 years ago after being out for 8; I rent all my land, I'm regularly booted by the landlords for a better dollar after I spend the money on the farm it needs; small claims court for farmers is a joke; I have another job and honestly it's not really worth it; the public doesn't care, they want Walmart cheap instead of something local and tasty; look at other parts of the world and how they've killed the family farm; you won't see capitalism, you'll see as mentioned in the video a company offsetting profits....
In fact saying that something is overvalued is very misleading. Farming does have risks associated with it but owning the land does not. Simply put for a rich person with not so talented descendants liquadating your assets as you age and buying houses, shops and farmland, that your children can then rent is the ideal way to make sure they live a good life materially after you pass away. The payoff of investing in such assets is not comparable to business but the stability is much much better.
Your points are all well and good, but do any of them really suggest that farmers aren't capitalists? Farming might be regulated and subsidised and weather-dependent, and there might be more lucrative ends to their capital - e.g. housing - but even being able to talk about liquidating an asset means farmers are in a position to use capital to their desired ends. Assuming they own the land (i.e, not tenants) and sell their produce, this is materially no different to a factory owner, or a car dealership. You have assets, whether that's a factory, a sales-room and stock, or a farm, and use them to produce goods that are then sold. Farmers have capital - wealth in the form of land, available for the purpose of growing crops which they sell for profit or subsistence.
yes farmers could be viewed as capitalists. but the return for the input is low and rarely tracks inflation or not at all. unless a farmer owns a lot of land selling some of it might not be an option.
@@goodgod77 Sure, but that's true for most capitalists. Most small business owners don't have much capital. The title of this video is 'Why Farmers are Not Capitalists', which was not answered.
@@goodgod77 whether or not they get a rough deal in the prices they are still making decisions based on capitalism. Just because someone’s getting screwed in business doesn’t mean they’re socialists.
I came here to make exactly that point. I think this guy is a little bit loopy as he hasn’t really proposed another economic model that farmers would fall under other than briefly talking about socialism which they do not fall within. Just because there’s some differences in the way these businesses operate. It doesn’t mean that they are not operating within the economic model of capitalism. They buy and rent land at market prices. They sell their commodities at market prices and sometimes actually often under contract these days. An overproduction of wheat in the global market reduces prices and underproduction of wheat increases prices. If a farmer wants to sell his eggs for four dollars he can but he’s competing with other people who are selling theirs for three dollars. The government is not selling the eggs for three dollars, and they are not sharing the profits with the people… I think this whole thing is a little bit silly, and we could make arguments about the small details, but in the end, there is no other economic model that he can make a case for that would not hold up to scrutiny.
@pgf289 probably the fact that they're on a faraway island in the south pacific meaning it's vastly more expensive to import anything than it is elsewhere helps A LOT
There is no "free market". In almost no area of economics. Capistalism is not " free" . Not in a sense that privates trade with privates without state interference. Privates (mostly big ones) influence politics so politics rule in their interest. Agriculture is not a free market, at all. Its one of the most regulated and subsdize economic activities. Love your videos. Loved this one. But the title is misleading. Tanks anyway.
Pedant here. Under its original definition coined by Adam Smith, 'Free Market' Originally referred to a market free of rent seeking and monopolistic behaviour, not a total vacuum of governmental regulation. When investors chase rents, they do so at the expense of profits. Every dollar a company pays in rent - licenses for IP, rent for a building, etc - is a dollar that can't be extracted in profit, and then reinvested in the production of more goods and services.
@@jackbucher2049The market for land was predicated on homesteading, and therefore does involve arbitrary amounts of rent seeking. We need something like Georgism to address rent seeking through land ownership.
You need to start with defining your terms. You claim farming doesn't work in a free market and then go on to describe all the laws and government regulations that made it not a free market in farming.
Landlords , climate and all variables organizing crops , as well as fix constraints that can't adapt rapidly to the market are not linked to government
If farming wasn't feasible why do farmers remain in agriculture? If farming wasn't feasible why do manufacturers make equipment for farmers? If farmering wasn't feasible why don't farmers sell up? Farmers have had a BOOM since the end of WW2 and their LAND and the FARMSTEAD has seen a HUGE increase in values, it is the hidden wealth/gold mine that farmers don't crow about when farms do come up for sale. If in my business I bought an industrial unit for £20,000 in 1960, today it would probably be worth £750,000 to £1,5MIllion subject to condition, yard area, access and other key features. Also, farmers escape a lot of tax, one of them being they can run on rebated diesel (red diesel) unlike the construction industry which has to suffer the use of white diesel in plant machinery. Farmers are feather bedded where other industries are ignored!
Here in NZ we call it asset rich cash poor. But some come unstuck because there’s not enough cashflow to pay the expenses. They have to carve off a small piece and sell it to keep the wolf from the door.
I am a capitalist dairy farmer I produce a niche product (raw guernsey and Jersey milk). I sell it for as high as I think I can. I don’t have my hand out every month taking whatever the processor decides they want to pay me.
You’re an analysis of farming is very impressive and you speak very well as most Brits do. However, I think you’re overthinking the farming thing and you’re leaving something very important out of the equation; the love of farming and the land, plus family and faith. there are many, very young farmers in their 20s and even teens who are buying their own land, yes, going deep into debt because they love farming. Certainly they realize they will never become wealthy and will work much harder and put in many more hours, than say an industrial or retail job. I follow 30 or so farming families in the US and many say that the income from these RU-vid videos has built their homes and purchased farm equipment allowing them to survive as farmers.
NZ farmers receive no subsidies and thrive selling their produce on the open market. Why do you British make farming so complex for? Improve your logistics, cut off the handouts, no complaining about eastern EU farmers, and compete. Socialist theology is for universities, not farms.
Farmers subsidies are not for the farmer. It is for the food industry to have cheaper raw material to work on , they are the one making the big buck out of it.
1. Land cannot be in a free market. Ownership is government controlled. Lets say you were a German who own a castle and lands in WW2, if it was in Bavaria, you probably get to keep it, but if it was in Koenigsberg, then for sure you no longer own it. 2. Humans need food. We don't get to opt out of food. We can opt out of consumer electronics, concert tickets, luxury items, but not food. 3. Agriculture and everybody else have opposing incentives. A farmer actually profits during a famine (assume he has crops left to sell). An abundance of crop is actually detrimental to the farmer but a wonderful thing for everybody else. 4. Farming food takes lots of time. We cannot simply turn on the factory and make food instantly. 5. In order to make sure there is a steady supply of food for the population, we must ensure an abundance of crop. That means forcing farmers to overproduce. Economically, that hurts the farmer because the product will have low prices which may not cover costs. So, we must compensate farmers so that they overproduce. Its like the military. We compensate servicemembers for risking their lives for our mutual defense. If we leave it to the free market, volunteers and charity, there may not be enough defenders since the volunteers and suppliers of the effort would be at a loss while the non-contributors gain.
If you own the means of production and sell your goods on a market -> You are by Definition a Capitalist. Now, not every "Farmer" owns his own means of production, there are Farmers who only have rented the means of production from a owner. They don't really own the Farm yet manage it. There its like CEO and sahreholder. Either way you work on a market and you produce things to sell them on it. This means all capitalist pressures and Laws apply to you just like any other industry.
I think you are misunderstanding capitalism. Simply having a free market does not make something capitalist. It is all about who profits the most from the labor, the workers who do the work or the person who put up the capital. The market does not make any difference there are just as many if not more forms of socialism that allow for a free market as there are capitalist systems that have no market be it state controlled economies or monopolies. But you are somewhat right poultry and pig farming as well as dairy are often capitalist enterprises in the factory farm system but at the same time most of those factory farms are not selling on the open market.
@@FakeSchrodingersCatYou are incorrect. Capitalism is the investment of Capital, in order to increase income and build wealth. A sole-operator who employs nobody is a capitalist. A small-businessman who rents his premises is still a Capitalist… both have invested their own money - be it in land, livestock, machinery, tools or trading-stock - in order to increase their wealth. Renting farmers are no different, as you would know if you’d ever gone through the exercise of stocking a farm, buying machinery and sowing a crop. You spend the money FIRST and (hopefully) make a profit LATER. That is how Capitalism works. The people you envy just do it on a larger scale.
@@peterwebb8732 there are cases where Farmers hardly can live from their income and are in debt. They don‘t own anything and could with enough oversight paranoia die on hunger while working on the basic food system. I would classify them as a modified form of lumpenproletariat. They produce food yet can‘t live from the food they create cause they have to sell it immediately to cover their debts and would get punished for stealing their own produce cause, for example, the chickens they produce are technically not their property from egg to slaughter. They are by all metrics merely workers and nothing more. Farmers who own are all capitalists.
@@peterwebb8732 So all socialism is capitalist. Again you don't understand capitalism it is about ownership. Socialists setting up a business also require investment the difference is that investment does not automatically convey ownership.
I've been going through all of your videos and it's amazing how this perspective is so rare in any mainstream "left" discourse. Between the academic left and the "online" left there seems to be very little interest in actually engaging with production as a concept, especially domestic production. Stuck between techno-optimism and non-scientific organic farming fantasies. Surely anyone concerned with third world exploitation must realize that globalization in a "post" colonial world will lead to more exploitation and third world economies that can't diversify while being locked into comodity export markets. And if we want to take our collective foot off the neck of the developing world we have to substitute their exports with domestic production. All this to say that I wish more people on the left were exposed to these ideas and realities, thank you for making these! Looking forward to the next one.
What do you mean by non-scientific organic farming fantasies? I am work living on a permaculture installation and its really hard, but we find it totally possible to do it fruitfully. It just takes a lot of work. I live somewhere with a large hippy culture and they seem largely resistant to the level of work that it actually requires. You still need concrete. You still need diesel and gasoline. You absolutely still need electricity and automation electronics, grow lights, etc. But it is actually organic, and actually productive.
My view of capitalism would be closer to the idea of democracy . In any workplace there is no democracy. Sure, unionisation. However those that make all the decisions on what happens with the capital, what is produced, what people are paid etc is usually at the whim of a small number of high paid board members or a small number of share holders with votes. The workers who build said company have no say if, after decades of service, that company decided to move to the third world in seek of greater profits, devastating said community, leaving them with largely no means (machinery, tools, infrastructure, capital) to seek some other form of production and livelyhood for their community Any sensible country would have laws in place that either allow the majority and minority vote in a SME organisation and laws that allow the purchase of said company by the citizens, under loan, or some other subsidy.. however, countries often let their citizens be left the short end of the stick when these companies make decisions that negatively impact them. There is no democracy, there is no good from companies. They care about profits, their shareholders, not those that serve and sacrifice for them to become successful
If farming didn't work under capitalism, we'd all have starved to death by now. It operates differently, but is held together by the same forces as all work. That doesn't deny tenant farmers have it hard - but that is a separate issue.
Capitalism is about profits, and most food, if produced at profit, would price out the poor. So the government subsidises most food. China is the world's biggest producer of cheap food, and their work is almost entirely supported by the government. In the US, the government in the past intervened when there was excess food, so farmers would not make a big loss.
Farming as an industry is dependent on subsidies tariffs import quotas and every other interventionist policy you can imagine and this is the case worldwide. When countries fail to protect their farmers from foreign competition they fail see Haitian rice as an example.
Hidden landowners. 17% of land in England and Wales remains undeclared at the Land Registry. Someone owns it - we just don’t know who. There is a strong likelihood that the owners of this undeclared land are members of the aristocracy and gentry, meaning that their combined share of the country may in fact be far higher than 30%. Because aristocratic estates remain in families for centuries, they are not generally sold on the open market, and will not have needed to be recorded with the Land Registry. According to Anna Powell-Smith, the Land Registry has committed to comprehensive registration by 2030, though it is unclear how this will be achieved. Powell-Smith and Shrubsole propose a government requirement to make all land registered, with details of its beneficial owner, before it can receive farm subsidies. Given the amount of land used for farming, it is hoped that this would incentivise owners to register the land and help solve the mystery of England’s undeclared land.
"...and then you have to buy tractors and implements and stock..." sounds to me that farmers require quite a bit of capital. Farmers need the land, the crops and the tools to work, I'd argue a farmer is already a capitalist. Even closer to the model of a free market, less the oligopol we've today. Oligopol as in a few companies rule the market, behaves a bit diffrently than the ideal. Also quite a few rules and regulations (some quite needed, other more akin to barriers or tools of big corps vs little ones) with subsidies being the deciding factor. Concerning farming I'd say we`ve arrived at the opposite of the free market, we've got state controlled farming via the subsidies. In that sense I'd agree farmers are not capitalist, as there is no free market.
Here in New Zealand we call dry stock farms: ‘large lifestyle blocks’. And we call small lifestyle blocks: ‘Life Sentence Blocks’. The poor return on investment here is crazy. The dairy farmers here are more capitalist in the way they think, but even they don’t make much money now. It’s a miserable industry at the moment.
Wow. I think I need to send this to the Education Department at Lloyds Bank! This is a fascinating and coherent appraisal of our English Farming System at least. Thank you for your efforts, and how thrilled I am to see a younger man's passion for our industry at work.
Again i'd like to object to the use of the political terminology here. A socialist is someone with socialist political leanings, independent of their occupation and class, while a proletarian/worker is someone who sells their labour in exchange for a wage. A bourgeois/capitalist is someone who owns capital, which includes farmers though as explained in the video they have different needs and modes of managing their business compared to an industrialist with a monocle and top hat. If anything, from what you described a farmer resembles an artisan the most, who's both the owner of the tools for his labour and the one doing the actual work
Interestingly, the futures and commodities markets are developed out of the uncertainty of farming before capitalism became a concept...which points to their inherent capitalist nature...
The fundamental problem with capitalism is that it considers land as capital. Land is not capital; land is the SOURCE of all capital. In other words, it is the source for ALL resources. And since each human has a right to life in our systems; we all also have an implicit right to the resources needed to sustain our life. Those resources must either be provided without cost to the people who have been denied access to land thru land deed schemes, or they must be allowed to live on the land and gain their own subsistence without obligation to ANY landlord. This principle is demonstrated in prisons where people have been denied the right to obtain their own resources, therefore necessary resources are provided to them… and demands that they work to attain those resources would be considered a forced labor encampment. Common Law had no provisions for remote land ownership. You had to occupy the land to “own” it. This makes logical sense when it comes to adequate resource allocation for everyone on the planet. The planet is the common inheritance of all who abide on the planet; that is why land “ownership” is a work of fiction that exists only on paper, backed up by the guns of the lazy and powerful. ✌🏼
By definition, if you are producing more product than you need to feed your family in order to sell it, you are working under capitalist thinking. This would only apply to a homesteader who farms to feed their family, and trade to fill the gaps of what they don’t produce.
You are conflating markets and capitalism. Capitalism describes the organization around the system of production (e.g. privately owned production & wage labor). Markets describe the exchange of goods and services. You can have markets without capitalism!
@@howardroark3736 the person i replied to said that it is capitalist behaviour to make money from trading goods and services. Also implying that producing surplus is a capitalist endeavour. I just wanted to clarify that simply 'making money' or 'turning a profit' is not reserved for capitalism. We have documentation of surplus production way before capitalism. Also, following market principles is not sufficient grounds to describe a system of production as capitalist behaviour. I did not say capitalism has no (free) markets. I simply said markets can exist outside of capitalism. Which in return does not mean that markets dont exist in capitalism. Markets exist in various (political &) economic systems, not just capitalism. Do you think the forum romanum (e.g. in 200 BC) where goods are exchanged for a price is an example of capitalism in action? Aspects people actually agree that capitalism is predicated on is 'private property' and 'for profit operation' thereof. Please look up the definitions for capitalism and market economy.
There are a few other main actors in food. The consumers don't really have the power to not eat food, but they can slide sideways into cheaper brands and they retain the power to vote. "People who eat food" is probably a pretty large electoral block. Distributors are both chains and wholesale traders. Sometimes they have both roles, a wholesale trader can own a chain. Food gots to reach people. This can include some competition or a trust. The fewer they are, the more pressure they exert. They are in turn more or less pressured by consumers. Industry processing is closer to industrial production. There is room to abruptly change suppliers, to evaluate competing ones. Sometimes the industry is independent, sometimes owned cooperatively. How much processing varies. There is a negotiation with distributors on a market.
Agriculture still relies on seasonal labour, in usa mexican illigal labour and in europe eastern europeans, eith al the labourlaws being ignored for that time of year
As usual you open up another overlooked chapter in farming history to very illuminating effect. Fascinating about Orwin and you explain beautifully what an unusual market chain farmers are located in. But I disagree with you about capitalism. As the post-War Marxist historians argued (Hill, Hobsbawm et al) capitalism first developed in English farming. Aristo land owners became rentiers, while their tenants were small scale capitalists who hired labour (former serfs) to work the land, even if they usually mucked in too. Crucially, and this is what defined farmers as capitaliists, they extracted surplus value from their workers. Today, as you say, many farms are worked solely by family members because of the development of ag. tech. But they remain small capitalists - even the 14% of farms which are still tenanted require expensive equipment. Strikes me that British farmers are classic petiit-bourgeois, squeezed by big capital, monopsony, nature, the vagaries of government policy ... .
You need to reexamine your understanding of capitalism. It is the investment of “capital” in order to increase income and build wealth . Every small businessman (petit bourgeois ) and owner-operator is, in fact, a Capitalist. Employing others who are paid a wage is NOT the criteria. Also, employing people is not “extracting surplus value”. It is a recognition that the employee does not create the whole value of the product. The person or persons who provide the raw material, the premises, the means (tools and machinery) and market the product also contribute to the value. Wages and profit are simply how the value of the product are apportioned.
My view of capitalism would be closer to the idea of democracy . In any workplace there is no democracy. Sure, unionisation. However those that make all the decisions on what happens with the capital, what is produced, what people are paid etc is usually at the whim of a small number of high paid board members or a small number of share holders with votes. The workers who build said company have no say if, after decades of service, that company decided to move to the third world in seek of greater profits, devastating said community, leaving them with largely no means (machinery, tools, infrastructure, capital) to seek some other form of production and livelyhood for their community Any sensible country would have laws in place that either allow the majority and minority vote in a SME organisation and laws that allow the purchase of said company by the citizens, under loan, or some other subsidy.. however, countries often let their citizens be left the short end of the stick when these companies make decisions that negatively impact them. There is no democracy, there is no good from companies. They care about profits, their shareholders, not those that serve and sacrifice for them to become successful.
In short, the capitalism we have today is merely exploitation. And you get a vote every four years for some shcmuck who's gonna finish his term 10x richer than when he started. That's why most politicians, at least here in Australia, all go and work for large corporations and get paid the big bucks for all their hard work and knowledge at screwing over regular citizens What a sought after skill that is haha
@@samh-smith2931 A very false understanding…. one that despises wage-earners as having zero agency or understanding of their decisions. Firstly, the employee has as as much right to leave the company, as the company has to sack him. In fact, he has more right. There are very few legal restrictions on withdrawing your labour, no matter what the implications are, the costs of replacing you and teaching someone else the skills that you have acquired and are taking with you. Secondly, you very much DO have control over your wage. You exercise that control when you agree to take the hobby, and you exercise it every time you continue to sign on instead of going elsewhere to find a job with a higher wage - if you can convince someone else that you are worth it. Thirdly, if the company goes bust, those who own it lose the results of year’s of effort, maybe a lifetime’s. Your loss is limited to the costs of finding other employment. Fourthly….. what on earth gives you the idea that ever floor-sweeper should have as much input into managing the company, as those who built it from the ground up? If you want to run a business, go start your own. That is what Liberty is…. not demanding a say in something that somebody else built. Just be aware that if you DO work for yourself, you will work longer hours with no overtime rates and no holiday pay. You will rapidly find that the “Boss” who looks back at you from the mirror, is a bigger slave-driver than any foreman you’ve ever met.
@@peterwebb8732 well aware mate - was once like you.. I'm not talking about small business owners I hear your point , your free to fuck off elsewhere, I know the sentiment well Same goes for plenty of people moving countries, out of oppressive regimes, they go elsewhere - it's a thing as old as human civilisation and common as air That's not my point at all My point is closer with the idea that large multinational companies aren't held accountable for the economic damage they do in societies Case in point: in Australia over the last 25 years our manufacturing and industry has been decimated - companies take all their profits and just ship to other countries, leaving a long strew of damage in communities , environmental damage , and completely divesting in our youth education etc Our governments do nothing to prevent the harm done which far exceeds their costs Now, we must rebuild an entire sector with taxpayer money - over 300 billion of it I might add It's a vicious cycle. If people had a say in what a branch of a company did in its local community These economic and environmental damages just would happen, rarely, if at all.. Sure the small business owner should be able to do what he wants, I was one myself But when it came to expanding, my only motive was profit, not training, not helping my community - so yes I would be looking in the mirror at the slave driver - but is that what we really want? Is what I began to ask myself.. money is great But long term prosperity, independence, and sovereignty for my countrymen, My children, and the benefit of my community And that should be the goal of everyone and every government Not to let some big company come in, harvest our minerals, work out people and then leave when they can make more without consequence, only an insane person would allow that I agree, people have the choice everyday, but oh how they sell themselves short for a quick buck in the short term There are no victims only volunteers, the sad truth.
Dreamworld farmer and realworld anti-capitalist here. Farmers are people who dance across the entirety of the same policital spectrum as every other occupation in society. This video is a good introduction, though I didn't feel as though it really got to the point of what the title was advertising and would like to see you pursue the concept of farmers and political systems further. Perhaps it would be good to discuss the ways in which farmers of the past, present, and future who operate(d) under a capitalist system are harmed or have their efforts corrupted. Perhaps you could try discussing the ways in which a capitalist system makes decisions for a farmer. Ordered a copy of Orwin's book and subscribed to the channel. Looking forward to reading the historical perspective and seeing where your videos end up.
Great video. Perspective changes everything. Fair I think to say that there should be restrictions on who/what can own land. It certainly shouldn’t ever be allowed to be an investment.
Hi, farmworker here! I appreciate and subscribe to this channel :) Around 8:45 you seem to imply that methane is not a form of carbon in the atmosphere, which it most certainly is. Furthermore, the result of methane decay is just more atmospheric CO2--as I am sure you are aware, so the idea that this somehow separates agriculture from other industries seems off to me. I think you make a much better point with the comment that agriculture is situated within the carbon cycle. Aside from the fossil fuels burned by farm vehicles and embodied emissions in farming inputs, the rest of the movement of carbon that happens in agriculture follows natural processes of primary growth and metabolism that are all part of the natural carbon cycle.
Actually not. Methane (CH4) contributes with the production of ozone (O3) on atmospherci sublevels. Its 20x more aggressive than carbon dioxide (CO2) but lasts 12 years instead of 150 of CO2. If you dont have enought trees your cattle operation is not carbon negative (as you implied as "natural carbon cycle). Study about it
I think you need to check your definition of Capitalism. If it is the investment of "capital" in order to create income or wealth, them I am definitely a capitalist. Because I DO own my own land, and I am constantly investing in improvements, infrastructure, technology and genetics. All of this investment is targeted at building wealth. The fact that that wealth may not be realised until a subsequent generation sells the land, or the fact that the return on investment is subject to considrable risk and variability, does not detract from the basic principle. Capitalism is not a dirty word. It has been primarily responsible for lifting the majority of people out of deep poverty over the last several centuries. It can be done poorly and it can be done well. The moral and economic failings of *some* who have tried it, do not detract from the principle.
To further develop the argument, the argument that Capitalism either is - or tends toward - the concentration of wealth, is to fail to distinguish the difference between wealth-creation and wealth transference. That argument fails to distinguish between he who builds things for which people give him money , and he who takes from others without return, by force of arms. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. There is far, far more wealth (and less utter poverty) in the world now than at any time in the past.
The point that poverty has been vastly reduced, should not be ignored. In the past, the poor were those living in dirt-floored houses , lacking windows and doors, in which their livestock (if the had any) also sheltered. The really poor had little food, no education, no medical and no lighting and heating that they did not scrounge for themselves. Now the average “poor” in developed countries have adequate food, fully enclosed and heated housing, heating and access to medical help, entertainment and some form of rapid transport. You can argue all you like about “the rich getting richer”, but the lower classes access many things that were not available to the wealthiest when my Great-Grandfather was alive.
Farming here has largely self-organized collective solutions. They have their own insurances, cooperative plants etc. Farmers occupied an odd spot. They were not industrial capitalist and middle class, but also not typical labour union men. They were already divided by scale of operation from minor family farms to manors.
@@SusCalvin What I find, is that those who farm better, tend to be more profitable and are therefore more able to increase their holdings. There are no "manors" here, but quite a few farmers who own more than their fathers or grandfathers. As for cooperation.. that's common in communities where voluntary mutual assistance works well without compromising the principles of private property ownership in the slightest.
@@peterwebb8732 Farmers here usually have their cooperative member organizations. A lot of collective efforts are not necessarily state efforts. Farmers in 1910 were going through the early motorization here. They were still enough that they formed a voting block. That's a feature with land though? We are generally not making more. It gets concentrated or traded around. There aren't large tracts of unused land in Europe.
I would somewhat agree if you follow traditional agricultural models the way it's taught at colleges. There's been many agricultural innovations in the last 40-50 years where many of these issues are minimized. Even the issues tenant farmers face can be mitigated by using things like movable infrastructure. I'd suggest looking at some of the work done by Joel Salatin, Mark Sheppard, Richard Perkins and Darren Doherty. Personally I think the key to the success of farming is not more specialization in farming but more generalization. Joel Salatin has a great talk he gave about fiefdoms, which is available on youtube. I highly recommend watching that as a starting point.
I think the conclusion should be farmers are not necessarily capitalist. Owner-operators are consistent within a socialist system, but a tenant farmer on privately held land is clearly proletarinized labor. This is especially true in colonized lands where the tenat farmers are likely the original owners of the land they now work for others. Large farms that employ wage labor are capitalist because of their relation to labor and the means of production. Here in the united states that wage labor is usually done by highly exploited racialized labor, I'm not sure of the conditions elsewhere. And of course, being an annoying vegan I ask what is the class position of the cow in animal agriculture. Ultimately farming does create unique class positions that are not directly analogous to industrial class positions.
There is a bunch of people I class as seasonal labour. They are labourers but for one reason or another they are not working year round. Oil riggers wouldn't stand living a whole year on a platform, tourist season is a few months, crops are harvested at set periods or not at all. In practice you need to either make enough in those periods to afford going idle a few weeks or months, or have a second job.
Some areas of farming have operated within the free market for decades - pigs, poultry, horticulture. Worker ownership of the means of production would not anticipate individual workers owning their own means of production to the exclusion of others and having the freedom to sell it to whomever they wished.
Something rarely said. These three enterprises are relied on to contribute significantly to the food we eat yet has no subsidy and sells product for a fraction of the subsidised beef and lamb and, until recently, milk. The housewife knows pork, bacon, lamb, potatoes, cabbage and cauli, carrots and onions and so much more is cheap to buy and is low cost for the Exchequer.
Excellent video, thank you for your research and the time you took to present it. I am glad that I found your channel. My opinion is that we should view history in the context of it's time. In your video you are referencing a specific period when food was very expensive and hard to come by. Millions of farmers were heading off to fight the Great War and there were food shortages and rationing. Although we as farmers today may not be motivated solely by profit, we are acting on a global commodity market and and our buyers will try to go for cheaper. This changes when global supply chains are disrupted, for example in for mentioned times of war. This is why every country should keep an effective agricultural sector by subsidizing domestic agricultural production and controlling imports. Planned collectivization only worked with the Israelis and the Kibbutz system, everywhere else it was a disaster.
The argument that a farmer is a socialist because he owns the farm on which he works is a misinterpretation of the term, Socialism in its name means the social (collective) ownership of production. We get the worker ownership definition from Marx, who was looking at economics from the industrial and urban perspective, we can see the result of this in the soviet union where farmers who owned land were labeled kulaks and killed. The farmer who owns the land on which he farms is a capitalist, he aims for the improvement of his situation by expending capital and labour now for future gain, financially he may take a loss, but as you explained with the example with your father, he did so because the alternative is less satisfactory. There is more to this as well, as mentioned farming is not as massively profitable as other industries yet many remain farmers, this is because people fundementally misunderstand what profit is in economics, money is a good way to represent your gain and expendature of resources but profit is not always material, you do not buy confort items to make money but instead to gain satisfaction of a different kind, a mental kind or spiritual. Farming is not just a business, its a lifestyle and many feel satisfied with the life, routine and consistancy of that profession, to the point that monetary profit is not everything. All that is still a profit to them, even if you cant measure it.
I think "distributism" is the word you are looking for, where ownership of the means of production is chopped up and widely distributed. Not "socialism" where the means of production are communally owned as one big block and no one person or family gets the benefit from doing the work to maintain it.
You make quality content but maybe this is the difference in warm temperate farming in the Southern United States and in the UK. Corporations are most definately buying up small farms in the US. Chemical, seed and biotech are all strategizing capture games on rural America. Really just w@rfare morphology.
If farmers hire people and machinery to work on their own private land, to produce goods that the land owner will negotiate on the market, how is this not capitalist? You might be a small capitalist, with not enough cash flow to differentiate you much from your workers, but the way you make your living is essentially different from them. That makes farmers capitalists.
Hence, government subsidies. Powering the large number of cookbooks and TV how tos and fashionable spots about the trendy eateries. Almost a charity, in many ways, and not a series of accidents as subsidies are involved, in the form of contracts. Many historical equivalents. Liked the ones about why many in the Old World left because of the oppressive landowners or royalty as they were often seen to be oppressive (serfs or the equivalent) to come to the New World to become landowners themselves in the pattern which they had alleged to be fleeing. The most recent example of this is when, during the US Civil War, Lincoln started the Homestead Act that gave free of charge, certain amounts of land, often previously occupied by the original locals, it they improved cited land in an agricultural way. Lincoln did this as he had thought that the referenced War was going to last a while, and he had wanted a way to feed the North's troops.
Great thought provoking video! I do agree that land-owned farmers business should be distinguished from more extractive, monopolistic, and financialised business systems involved in the equity market. However, The land-owned farmers activities are capitalist, as they follow these activities: 1. For profit entrepreneurship 2. Private ownership of the means of production 3. Market exchange as means of allocation 4. Wage labour The main difference is that they are getting ripped off by a dysfunctional market, as well as the natural limitations of profit making that you mentioned. Socialist sectors in uk include public-owned parts of nhs and education system.
I enjoy your videos, thank you. I think of restaurants as socialist, because the people club their money together to afford what they could not afford alone, and they benefit themselves as a community by doing so. Of course people will say that I am wrong, but that is a given.
Ok so I don't know if this is an idea that's already in use BUT. What if we used to stock market to speculate on the harvest and have the investment pay the farmer a fixed amount no matter the result? They'd be pressure to drive the price up to a point where the farmer can look at their input costs and see there's profit to be made before investing a dime into it. It would also naturally push the farmer toward growing what's most likely to grow, as the market would study what has the best chance of being harvested (But would still have to accept lower returns occasionally for crop rotation). To take the capital costs out of the equation all the land and equipment is owned initially by the state and is issued to the farmer at a lease cost which should be low because they can use purchasing power to buy equipment in bulk and move machinery and storage allocation around between farmers based on need and capacity. Now to give the farmer the incentive to make sure the crop has a good yield by allowing a good harvest outcome to start to reduce the lease payments by the percentage of the assets costs. If it's a good yield, the lease costs go down by a fraction of a percent or more. If it's a bad yield (Farmer got paid more in the agreed amount speculated on the crop) then the lease cost goes up a fraction of a percent or more. Here's the kicker, the stock market has people also betting that the crop will have a bad yield, so the payments on this put is used to pay the farmer out an agreed amount (less than the payment for a good output) If the cause of the bad harvest is due to adverse weather conditions but not for any other reason, (So if it's due to planting to early or late in the season or errors in the paddock from say, adding too much fertiliser and as a result burning the crop that's on the farmer). Alternatively, if they have the capital they can purchase the land and pay it off conventionally with a bank loan and simply lease the equipment only instead. Any harvest which makes more money than the farmer gets in their agreed payment, it's used as a measure of how much less money they need to pay on their lease of equipment and/or land. Essentially if the lease cost reaches 0 they've either paid off the land and now own it. (if they've leased it to begin with or their equipment leasing costs are now 0). Bear in mind a series of bad farming harvests after this may drive the price of the equipment up again. If the farmer gets out of farming earlier the equipment would go back to the state and be repaired and reused elsewhere. Now they may choose to give up before paying the land off, they should still make money on good harvests if they had picked crops with high payments on them, less their expenses (The crop seeds, fuel, fertiliser and pesticides) I think it might add some stability into farming
There are some systems for speculation in future crops where traders buy the option to buy a coming harvest. Farmers here have their own insurances. Finance is part of their cooperative work.
Maybe this can be truth along UK economic specs but for the mostly third countrys like Brazil (where I'm from) the farmers are the most capitalism and wealthiest people be fair, because of the monoculture and the cheap rich soil and really vast amount of land. Lands here are 1/8 of the price of you told on UK and can produce a lot more even with the same amount of land, besides that the advance of pesticide and new types of cultures much more stronger than before really can overcompensate the weather and of course the subsidies of governament are ridiculously high, most of commodities are tax free on exportation (and some even to importation like somes pesticide components) and not enough the government subsidie the lend porcentage to 2-3% at year when the medium porcentage to borrow money is around 11% at year for any another business (industry and services). 1 milion Pound sterling is equal 7.3 milion real and with that you can buy 654.82 acres of rich soil for 4 milions reals and use the rest to buy suplements and etc.
8:45 methane does decay in the atmosphere but it gets oxidized into H2O and CO2, so it's equally harmful long term and more harmfull in the first 8 years
Does point #7 really hold up to scrutiny? Only a few years after the cited work was published, the US was hit by a series of severe dust storms that manifested as a consequence of bad farming practices that depleted the topsoil. Even just a few minutes earlier in this video crop rotation was mentioned... I don't see how point #5 doesn't apply to other businesses, either. If a large mining company decides to establish a mine to extract some mineral ore, then it will only be years later that the first ore can be sold - in that sense the mining company is still "planting a crop for the market that does not exist yet", and it's not like the mine can just change production, either. While individual farms (point #6) might be small businesses, there's farming cooperatives like Arla that are market giants able to throw around a substantial amount of capital.
I think that cooperative feature makes them different from industrial capitalism. You have a cooperative dairy plant, cooperative finance and insurance.
Global farmers union is important to fix comodity price and union to export and import now Government are exploting farmers in every country if farmers are united we will survive other wise we are in very bad situation.I am from India, Maharashtra state now every day farmers are susiding in our State.
You are no taking into consideration, that a modern society provision is made, to the support farmers with subsidies. Thus ironing-out the worst wrinkles. Also the structure of UK farming is still feudal and can't be use as a general standard.
Quick fact check: when methane oxidises in the atmosphere, it combines with oxygen to produce 2.75 times its mass in carbon dioxide. The carbon doesn't magically disappear. That's on top of the fact that in the time before it decays, it's a very significantly more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So - is it really possible for intensive farming (as in, intensive enough to feed everyone without lots more deforestation) to be non extractive? - Not convinced! Unrelatedly, I always had the impression that the classification of farming as capitalist in the popular imagination, refers specifically to the idea that lots of farms these days have landlords that are "big ag" companies who like short term returns and who pressure farmers into using unsustainable techniques to increase yield and extract dividends at the expense of the land. I always thought that this idea was being deliberately contrasted with smaller farmers who own their own land and have a long term interest in it.
Now you mentioned lower labour costs-yes, but to buy the machines you need a lot of money so you need to pay off you debt. So in the past you were regularly paying wages, now you are are paying off credits. No matter good or bad year, season or not
Depends. Many would be considered kulaks. Farmers who contribute labor towards the land but privately own the land while hiring others to assist in production, though these employees have no say in the day to day business activities.
The farmer in this case has private ownership of land, for the sole benefit of the owner where factor inputs (labour, land and machinery) is utilised for the purpose of a profit within a free market. Sounds like a capitalist to me. The farmer you describing is closer to a failing capitalist rather than anything else. The existence of factory farmers and feedlotters defeat the point of this video
Using land for solar panels is stupid we dont have enough land for houses and farms . We learnt the hard way the reliance on others for oil /gas yet we are doing the same thing with food . Each house, industrial and retail building should have its own solar not the fields.
@@PabloTBrave You are not mentioning them. But people tend to live in large numbers where food is produced. It is part of the building permit process here.
@@SusCalvin you are Seriously missing the point making up point I haven't mentioned or believe in which is highly disingenuous. if every roof had solar panels on we wouldn't need to use land solely for solar panels. Land for solar panels is highly wasteful in a country that is so densely populated . Stating" building permits here" without define where here is, is also pointless on an international platform, the statement is vague but I don't think it's true in the UK .
@@PabloTBrave Most bits of Europe have highly developed lands. Its a constant tug between forestry, tourism, mines, municipalities, agriculture etc. It's something we got to explain to Americans who suggest "just buy some land". I just think a focus on solar panels lets all the other interests get away easily. Townies think they have done their bit preventing solar or wind, but then a mine mucks up the ground water and they're nowhere to be seen. Like we are still a nice prop to pose with for a limited time.
This argument just means you don't understand what capitalism actually is. Just listing problem in an industry when operating in a market isn't an argument. The whole point of markets is for competing people to figure out the best processes. If a farmer owns lands, or tractors or livestock and sells them to make money, he is in every sense business person the same way as anybody else. The weather, so what? Almost business has some environmental concerns. Shipping is dependent on weather. Mining can be impacted by lots of natural things. Retail can be depend on the weather. So can tourism. Farmers can't stop, this might be partially true, but not fully true. And many other industries have similar dynamics. You can't just shut down nuclear power plants. You can just close shops because costumers lose trust. Farming might be more then other industries, but its not unique. Same goes for substitution. In fact farming where you can switch from one year to the other is better then many industries. Often you have capital structures that lock you in for years and years beforehand. Again, non of it this makes farming special. About finance, I again don't see the difference. Small operation deal with banks. As operations get larger you have more options. Like any other business. Soil being infinite isn't really that special either. Many things operate in cycles and many business make use of those cycles in one way or another. Farming is just an old market, so not many new entrance, other old business have the same quality. Of course at various times in history you have large influxes, say the Post-Soviet privatization. Prices also don't operate differently from lots of other things. A mine also doesn't get to dictate price. Same for lots of business, macro conditions usually dictate the prices for most things. Also, for private business you don't have to be profit oriented to be a capitalist. Capitalism says nothing about profit. Its all about the property owner getting to decide. If you don't care about profit and all you care about in your live is having the best cows, then you can try to do that and nobody can stop you. Its just a reality that most people want to make profit. Just claiming to be socialist because the you don't like the label 'capitalist' is just marketing. If you own capital, and you operate that capital to run a business, that is literally what capitalism is fundamentally. The industry being subsidized so much is a bit strange of course. But this is not a law of the universe, is just so happens to be the case in Britain. New Zealand was heavily subsidized, they cut this and still have many successful farmers. There is tons of political science research why farm subsidizes exists that one can read. Farming can and has worked in free market. The idea that the whole world would simply starve to death is silly. The argument you are actually making is 'farming is unique'. Yes it is unique. But so are most other industry. Every industry is a special little snowflake. And every industry has lots of challenges. It also seems to me you are over-focusing on British experience. That fair because you from there. So maybe it should be 'Farming in Britain' explained or something like that. Farming threw history and across the world has operate in so many different ways. Most things don't apply universally.
Power plants are also in an odd field as regulated business. There is one power grid. I don't have a competing cable to turn to. There are different producers on it and different actors. We can't really afford to not consume power.
The problem i see is the farmer can't set the price of his own product. that's not free market capitalism. A farmer should be able to sell to who he wants and negotiate a price. Instead the commodities people found a way to legally dictate a price where the farmer has no say...
If you want to farm and make a living....you cannot be a commodity farmer. A real farmer IS an artisan....he produces something then adds valué to It before he sends It out to market. Example....you grow cacao...but instead of just selling the beans in the open market....you make chocolate and sell that!
I can tell you studied up a bit, even to an almost intermediate level, good job. There is a large number of variables you are overlooking though. For example economic profits go to zero in the long run in competitive markets. I know a great deal of unsuccessful farmers but also successful ones. I do say the successful ones are certainly capitalists.
rather muddled. it may be useful to arrive at a set of criteria that broadly define capitalism first: saving, investment, planning led by future expected demand/prices, increasing efficiencies, reacting to changing market tastes, customer satisfaction. these are all elements of "capitalism" (a poor term, most of the time), and they are behaviours carried out by farmers day in and day out, to the extent that the government is kept out of the way
The agricultural revolution and the 1870s farming did work fairly well! So under a capitalist economy!! I find it odd, you don’t call it what it is now which is just a heavily regulated market with out your description of the farm itself being socialist! the market is just more controlled by the government farm included It’s just a fact 1/3 of the world is on a mixed economic system England, included, and from 1939 to present day supported by subsidies leftist code for (Tax Dollars.) I think if the government stepped off we might reach those 1870 standards and possibly beyond.
Capitalism and socialism are both broken and very flawed. Distributism is the way it used to be back when Britain/Christendom created over the top results in the economy for all, not it’s mainly just the elites succeeding. G.K.Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc are 2 amazing Brit’s that teaching a lot on distributism.
The uncertainty of market price is solved by futures markets. This is why they were invented, so that farmers could hedge their bet. Crop insurance is the answer to the risks inherent in farming such as weather. Land can be degraded if not farmed properly. Erosion is one example as the soil is simply carried off. An example in the US is the depletion of the Ogolala aquifer in the Midwest. Within a generation this resource will be exhausted and crops that require irrigation will no longer grown there. State ownership of lands is a terrible idea. We all know of the tragedy of the commons. Private ownership of family farms the best solution to food security. Subsidy through access to loans is the public cost for locally grown.
So farms are not profitable and must be subsidides by the tax payer? being private and free market is what capitalism. Private means 1 or 2 people. I can really debunk this. By proving a libertaraian farm is outputting massive amounts of tomatoes and not using slave labour. Factory run by 2 girls at a computer. Using capitalist values he's made his product yield bigger and decreased prices. He competes with China and italy that both use slave labour. And no the farmer gets to set the price of his product. This is socialist bs of price fixing. You get nothing here because the government set prices. Just because the UK is socialist. doesn't mean that capitalism farming doesn't work.
This guy(book author) was realy short sighted on his understandi g of soil health and human biological integrity. They take human health and pound the round peg into a square hole and call it a match.
Worker ownership of the entire economy was Adam Smith's primary objective. Marx just couldn't conceive of a decreasing role for govt or the civil service, not for him was Locke's advice about Life, Liberty and Property. The individual in Smith's vision operated within an entirely open market with zero loci of economic power. Explicitly corporations, trade assoc, guilds, unions; and implicitly private business as employers or mercantilist govts. 'Capitalism' was Marx's word, he could not envision resilient worker-owned enterprises. All such workers can and have to adapt to the market price fluctuations as do farmers. The fly in the British ointment was the hereditary land-holdings of the aristocracy which needed to be white-anted into the history books.
ps: The confluence of (a) Regenerative Agriculture-based land use _gentle, ecosystem reliant, reducing inputs, flood and drought resistance..._ and (b) the Carnivore diet as the ideal human nutrition will add resilience to this sector as there are no overbearing periodic harvests.
