I share your concern Julian. We may be hitting a global food crisis soon, not helped by the virtual loss of the US corn crop this summer. On the other hand, economic collapse as we see in Greece is driving people, including the young, back to the land because there are no jobs in the city. But we do need to pay more for food and ensure farmers have a liveable income. What happens when the price of oil rises is another matter. Some farmers spend $150,000 on diesel a year to run machinery. Will they be able to plant and harvest if oil costs double? Meanwhile, we have to stabilise population numbers as a matter of urgency. It's a simple case of mouths to feed, or supply and demand. Let's focus on the demand side (i.e. stabilise demand) as well as the supply side.

As an example of this in 1950 40% of Australian voters were rural. Now rural voters only amount to 7% because of the drift from the land.

OK, we hear you and we share your concern. But concern alone does not produce a solution. What are the alternatives to a free market economy? Imposing tarifs on imports leads to isolation. Increasing Government subsidies only delays the inevitable. United Nation supervision / control? They have a poor records in managoing world affairs! Allocating production quotas? These things have been tried before, normally with dismal results
Criticism of a system without some form of viable solution to the problem is not much help.

Yes a good essay. Unfortunately there is probably nothing that anyone can to about the unsettling process.
Wendell Berry has been addressing this issue for over 30 years now.
His book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture is a classic.

I also share your concerns Julian. Farmers are suiciding at the rate of 4 a day?
Small farms and small farmers are significantly more productive than the corporate model.
Small farms produce less carbon than the corporate model.
Small farmers probably pay more pro rata tax?
All those things identified Julian, are what one might expect, when the inmates take over and run the asylum.
Howard and other complex rationalists acted to shut down farmers'co-ops, as the Nats simply rolled over and begged for a tummy rub?
Honest John, would have better spent taxpayers funds, assisting diversification?
Farmers have few choices, in the face of the mineral boom, which robs them of the workforce they need.
We hear that the margins for too many farmers is as low as 3%; meaning, they could literally double their returns
by simply investing in term deposits.
The solutions are farmers' markets and co-ops, where they become price fixers!
They need surety of water and low cost fuel supplies, to remain viable on the driest inhabited continent on earth.
The NBN will assist them in ways not yet conceived, allowing them to operate other commercial enterprises that allow them to stay on and enjoy the independent lifestyle, self sufficiency, and the personal freedom that they love.
This is what keeps battling farmers on the land, not the often illusionary returns.
Some farmers need to get smarter and put some of the income earned in the better years into income earning off farm assets, rather than tie it up in brand new machines, simply to short-sightedly reduce their better years tax burdens, when what they already have is both serviceable and adequate?
We do need to assist our most productive people to remain on the land and encourage family members to carry on the tradition.
The Murray/Darling as a case in point, could be completely rescued as a wealth creating productive area; for town and farm, by the assisted transition, to very low water use algae farming and on farm bio-diesel production!
Rhrosty.

When the ownership model takes hold (whether ownership be corporate or private) what happens to the "inefficient" farmers is that they are pushed off their land by industrialisation.

In industrialised & industrialising nations, people who for generations past had enjoyed at least the basic security of a roof overhead and a patch of land for food must then win a place in the globalised market place. In the cities where employment is increasingly more competitive, they must rent from an owner. The communal model which had provided land security for them and for future generations is being replaced by an ownership model in the name of efficiency. No compensation can replace that security.


There are growing numbers are living in slums (right now 863 million people, a considerable increase compared to the 760 million in 2000)

Under the welfare provisions in some industrialised nations, welfare recipients are demonised & welfare is under threat from the competition (now global) which is intrinsic to the ownership model.

I think that at the very least, the advocates & beneficiaries of the ownership model have a duty to build an alternative to "welfare" or cold charity into their model.

My suggestion is for an urban public land provision in a model to create better urban environments for all. see http://www.ntw.110mb.com/NTWmodel/NTWModeloverview.htm

Chris Baulman
@landrights4all