[oxag3n]

That's what happens when "family farms" rely on a large industrial complex and grow a mono-culture that doesn't have uses other than canning.

It was an easy, steady cash-positive business until it wasn't. If those farmers thought what is final product and who benefits from it most, they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally, which many California family farms do.

[pinkmuffinere]

> they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally

This is out of touch, many of these farmers are 100+ miles from a large population center. They can’t move enough produce at a local store to stay in business.

[goosejuice]

Maybe, but it's not an argument against diversification. When it comes to agriculture, the incentives should be aligned such that a single point of failure like this is highly unlikely.

That's not to say it's an easy problem to solve.

[bsder]

> That's not to say it's an easy problem to solve.

Incorrect. You simply decide that having less than 5 suppliers at any level is unacceptable and you bust companies up, repeatedly until you have those suppliers. That way when one goes bankrupt, you don't wind up with complete supply chain disintegration.

The solution is quite straightforward. However, it requires an electorate that has a couple of brain cells to rub together in order to understand the solution. And 30% of the US is willfully hostile to any real solutions while another 30% is happy to fiddle while everything burns.

[pinkmuffinere]

> You simply decide that having less than 5 suppliers at any level is unacceptable and you bust companies up, repeatedly until you have those suppliers.

This is a very extreme solution, and eliminates many of the benefits from horizontal integration even when the benefits are passed onto customers. Consider:

- insurance companies

- banking

- utilities

It’s also hard to implement. What counts as a supplier? Is Google the sole supplier for search functionality? If 4 suppliers provide 1% of demand, and one supplies 96%, does that comply? If there’s only one company offering some new service (e.g. driverless cars), do they immediately get broken up?

[bsder]

> do they immediately get broken up?

Yes. Always. At all levels. I might provide a limit below which that doesn't happen (like $50 million in revenue), but as soon as you cross that limit, scrutiny should be automatic.

> This is a very extreme solution, and eliminates many of the benefits from horizontal integration even when the benefits are passed onto customers. Consider: - insurance companies - banking

There is no advantage to horizontal integration for consumers in those industries. If anything, the value is negative. The fact that people are quite a bit happier about credit unions than Chase says everything you need to know.

Sure, there are "efficiencies" to be gained by horizontal integration. What we have seen is that the horizontal integration is so strong that the industries are sclerotic in the face of crisis or change (see: toilet paper manufacturers in Covid who couldn't switch gears). It has become repeatedly clear that we need resilience and competition more than we need efficiency.

> utilities

Should be limited to natural monopolies and strongly controlled by the government. We have seen what happens when you create hybrid-type utilities that try to have some existence in the market (rather than being solidly government regulated) and the result is poor (see: PG&E).

[pinkmuffinere]

> There is no advantage to horizontal integration for consumers in those industries. If anything, the value is negative. The fact that people are quite a bit happier about credit unions than Chase says everything you need to know.

IMO this claim is just too strong. I think you'd end up breaking up (or trying to) Lloyds of London, Spacex, Fedex, DHL, Boeing, Panasonic, ASML, Google, Apple, and many other very specialized companies. These businesses would be very expensive if they could only supply 1/5 of the market, to the point that many people would be totally priced out. The world can barely support 1 ASML, imagine if we had to pay for 5 of them. We'd be sent back to the 2000s, and that's _just_ computing.

[sophacles]

And conversely you can't grow enough food local to a large population center to feed everyone.

[TimorousBestie]

Christopher Alexander figured this one out in A Pattern Language:

https://www.patternlanguageindex.com/patterns/city-country-f...

[Tade0]

You'd have to either waste good soil by putting buildings on it, or use a lot of fertilizer.

[bix6]

Why didn’t we do this? Seems cool.

[boc]

Because it's like 1000x more efficient to move stuff on water vs land, so industrial cities clustered around ports and rivers since it's way easier to move stuff around.

[sophacles]

Because it trades most of the benefits of cities for the hassle of suburban life and less efficient food production.

[zonkerdonker]

Big cities aren't typically in such an ideal planar geological setup as that. I'm having a hard time imagining how something like that would work in the Bay area, NYC, Seattle, Miami etc

[TimorousBestie]

To be fair, Alexander was writing in the seventies, long after automobiles and the suburb had killed any hope of humane urban planning in the States.

[HoldOnAMinute]

Because of perverse incentives

[nradov]

Bullshit. Christopher Alexander didn't know much about farming.

I actually read his whole book. Most of his "patterns" are kind of quaint and twee, the sort of things that seem superficially attractive to people with no real domain knowledge. Highly overrated.

[registeredcorn]

Do you see there being a realistic alternative?

I realize we can't really go backward in time, but I would prefer if the farmers that lived close to where I am sold to people who live local to me. That can happen to some degree (open yard stands), and I like to do that for some of the smaller farms, but it's really a kind of "nice to have" rather than a "The market stocks stuff that was grown a town or two over" type thing. I feel like something probably got lost when that kind of arrangement went away.

There's still one or two local businesses that manage to make it into the local market for me which is neat to see, but that's more so because they are for frozen pastries and stuff, and can prepare a metric ton in advance, and the market can mark it up for being a "local specialty" type thing. I like to buy them when I can afford it. It just sucks that essentially every other thing on a shelf probably wasn't even made in the same time zone or hemisphere.

[sophacles]

The thing you imagine has never really been true. Rivers, seas and canals and later railroads and highways have always brought food to the city from as far as it could be transported before it spoiled.

Rome got its wheat from Egypt and its olive oil from around the Mediterranean.

Ancient egypt sent food up and down the nile to population centers in Cairo and Thebes.

And so on.

[nradov]

Why do we need an alternative? Your preferences don't matter.

[TimorousBestie]

Utopian optimism really has fallen out of style, I suppose.

[hluska]

> It was an easy, steady cash-positive business until it wasn't.

This is out of touch. Growing fruit is one of the most difficult tasks in farming.

[baggy_trough]

> If those farmers thought what is final product and who benefits from it most, they'd grow diversified crops to sell locally, which many California family farms do.

What if they can't make much money doing so?

[themafia]

Agricultural exports are a $23 billion dollar business in California alone. Which is about 1/3 of the crops grown.

This is what happens when the federal government uses a 1940s era plan to manage the economy.

[fred_is_fred]

Farmers care about making money.

[munk-a]

And farmers that don't care about making money aren't farmers any more.

Agriculture is a highly competitive business - even large scale agriculture still has very stiff price competition. There isn't a lot of fat to burn on charitable gestures and what is there isn't on the scale of maintaining such a large unproductive orchard.

It sucks - don't misread my statement. It is deeply unfortunate and we should consider mitigations for the future - but the party to throw blame at here isn't the farmers and neither should they be expected to bear the cost.

[djmips]

the private equity buyout of Del Monte, that's got to be a big factor.