guildfordcycads

Just a personal opinion, looking for if anyone else has thoughts, opinions, counterpoints etc. Just my shittier than WSB analysis.

Imo since globalization/industrialization began there has been a downward pressure for farmers as it’s hard to compete with those of cheaper nations. Doesn’t matter how good and efficient machines can make you if another country can produce for almost free and those nice machines cost millions.

If you were in a rich country, losing all your farmers didn’t really matter because they made such a small slice of the global pie. However this is likely going to change as countries overall become richer, and poorer countries won’t be able to supply them with enough food.

For example:
In 2000, China’s food self-sufficiency ratio was around 93.6%.
By 2020, this ratio had decreased to 65.8%.
Experts predict that this could further decrease to 58.8% by 2030.

As poorer countries get richer, the people tend to eat more, so a lot of the food surplus will go towards domestic demand. Once India, China and Africa begin hitting their strides, there isn’t going to be that much cheap food around.

Couple that with the degrading environment, fishing peaked around 1990’s and haven’t increased even though the human population increased from ~5 billion to it’s current 8, and soon projected to be 10 billion. That’s less fish for each human provided we can still catch the same amount of fish (doubtful).

Climate change is also making it harder than ever to produce consistently and will also provide pressure on food prices.

Speaking of food prices, I think there’s been a steady increase in the cost of commodities that has been hidden behind the “cheapification” of those products. If you want proper organic vegetables, that shits expensive. If you don’t want tons of fillers, that shits actually really expensive. So Tarriffs/corona/supply shocks aside, I think the increasing cost of food is most likely going to kick up a notch, and on the plus side? maybe the price that sellers can get may finally make it more feasible?

So with that said, farmland is possibly in some ways “the cheapest it’s ever going to be”. Especially in area’s with a stagnant or declining population i.e Europe, Japan etc and could provide an opportunity? Even if the farming industry itself isn’t profitable, those who are lucky enough to buy productive land will profit. Anecdotally I’ve seen tons of boomers buy farmland for cheap when they were young, and even though they were never succesful farmers, the sale at retirement was enough to make them millionaires.

I think since Covid there’s been growing interest in locally grown, organic produce, and there’s an opportunity for permaculture co-ops. Farmers made co-ops so could share large capital investments, reduce the issue of having to wear a million hats such as marketing, distribution etc, but most of those don’t/won’t deal with permaculture type products.

Permaculture-style growing seems to me to suffer from the same issue as those farmers used to, production of a single crop is never enough to produce economies of scale, especially if you’re growing several crops. Now co-ops have their issues for sure, but imo it’s probably what permaculture-style farms need more than anything, the community, and yet I’ll be honest I haven’t seen much in terms of collaboration between permaculturalists (if anyone wants to chime in here on why or thoughts on the matter).

Anyway, TLDR: I think there actually is a kind of feasible/financial future for those wanting to get into permaculture farming now and we should probably get onto it ASAP or else? Thoughts? Comments? Counterpoints?

Vous en pensez quoi ?