[rocqua]

You might counter that modern farms have massive hidden internal costs in depreciation of soil quality, with long term yields being suppressed, and vulnerability to drought massively raised.

Hence these better farms should do much better on financing costs.

[mindok]

And huge not-so-hidden costs in terms of chemical inputs. There are a number of stories in Gabe Brown’s “From Dirt to Soil” (well worth a read if you’re interested in large scale regenerative agriculture) that illustrate how financially precarious modern industrial ag can be.

[fuzztester]

Yes.

Search for videos with pattern "Gabe Brown" or "Treating the farm as an ecosystem" (a 3 part series, first one already posted here by someone), Masanobu Fukuoka (posted too), Jean-Martin Fortier / Les Fermiers video series and other videos by him, The Market Gardener book by him, Richard Perkins farm / Ridgedale permaculture in Sweden, Aanandaa Farms in North India near Chandigarh, Clea Chandmal short video about how forests harvest maximum sunlight and how that can be copied by farms, Geoff Lawton work on permaculture in Australia and consulting about it worldwide, etc., Elaine Ingham video "The Roots of your Profits", etc.

[fuzztester]

The Clea Chandmal video:

Permaculture - from forest to farm | Clea Chandmal

https://youtu.be/KI3haUOkP-I?feature=shared

[Biologist123]

I’d give this comment more upticks if I could. The hidden internal costs of the modern farm is the unit scale example for all our environmental problems. I’d add that many of these costs exist beyond the discount horizon and are therefore not factored into land-use decisions.