One Man to a Thousand Acres

[DrWazzock]

The above is touted as some kind of achievement.

To me, there is something a bit sad about it.

Then we wonder why the public are disconnected from agriculture. We wonder why we work for hours alone with nobody to share problems and successes. We wonder why there is a shortage of new blood.

Did it have to be this way? Did we have to put people off the land? Was it really worth it?

Not everybody wants to work on the land but undoubtedly many have been denied a rich and fulfilling experience. And that just isn't good in my opinion.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Nothing beats a farmer in the race to cut his own throat.

It's all relative, the man on his thousand acres is just as lonely as the man with 5000 who buys him out!

They both go in the ground in the same fashion; personally I'd rather be a human being, than a human doing, but I ain't half odd!

Life is to be lived.

 

[DrWazzock]

Being v Doing.

I like that.

 

[kiwi pom]

The above is touted as some kind of achievement.

To me, there is something a bit sad about it.

Then we wonder why the public are disconnected from agriculture. We wonder why we work for hours alone with nobody to share problems and successes. We wonder why there is a shortage of new blood.

Did it have to be this way? Did we have to put people off the land? Was it really worth it?

Not everybody wants to work on the land but undoubtedly many have been denied a rich and fulfilling experience. And that just isn't good in my opinion.

If you've one man to a thousand acres its not being used very productively either is it.Fair enough if its rough hill country but good food producing land. Probably just feed wheat and OSR. Basically the least possible effort for the farmer. Don't want to bring up the s word, it does happen to be paid by the acre though.

 

[caveman]

Yeah.
I could probably do enough on four acres to keep myself and mine from starvation through out the year and spend a few days knocking some bread out of the other 996 acres for however many.
But will that however many pay me enough clear a margin to live the kind of life that they aspire to for, say 300 days, whilst I feed them?
Thought that was the deal when the seed drill and the spinning jenny were invented and hoards moved off of the land and into the factories?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

If you've one man to a thousand acres its not being used very productively either is it.Fair enough if its rough hill country but good food producing land. Probably just feed wheat and OSR. Basically the least possible effort for the farmer. Don't want to bring up the s word, it does happen to be paid by the acre though.

Skiing is a race to the bottom kp

Is that the s word?
When I do it, I pay by the day though

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

This thread and the one which mentions that one man cannot look after 2,000 ewes efficiently are I am afraid irrelevant in the present climate and probably always have been.
The reason food prices have not risen over the years have been because of massive efficiency improvement and to a subsidised agriculture in some areas.

For many farms the most costly input is labour so it needs to be used efficiently. The exit from the EU will exacerbate this issue with the loss of free movement of labour.

I worked in the Australian wheat belt in the early 70's and the first farm I worked on had 17,000 acres, planting around 12,000 acres with one extra person for ploughing and two at seeding, a lot less than one person to a thousand acres. However this farm went bust after a period of successive droughts!!

If you have sheep that need looking after all the time then you have the wrong sheep. High levels of care (disturbance) in sheep can be counter productive, which is why in NZ the sheep are left undisturbed at lambing time.

 

[beefandsleep]

It’s very sad and the worst aspect of modern agriculture.

 

[Hilly]

There are acres and acres though.

 

[Spud]

With work we do for others included, we work a sniff under 1000acres. 300 of it potatoes, 70 beet, 30 s oats, 50 w beans, 70 spring barley 120 w barley 300 wheat. 1200 b&b pigs. Two full time staff, plus me, then 5 seasonal self employed tractormen (1 here more than just spuds) and 4 casuals on the grader. No where near one man per 1000ac! (how boring?)

All this scare mongering over labour supply post brexit is a strange one. We are not short of people. We are short of work ethic. It is too easy for folk not to work. There are always jobs to do. Make it financially attractive to work by reducing the incentives not to work, and we might get somewhere.

 

[suffolksmallholder]

I've seen plenty of one man one thousand acres, not nice places. OK a bit of a generalisation but there's no getting away from acres of monoculture, few trees, little wild-life or their habitats & of course the inevitable grant-aided margins. Not a lifestyle I'd like to emulate or for that matter one that I'd be envious of.
SS

 

[DrWazzock]

Different models for different end goals.

Conventionally we strive to produce food for lower and lower cost, competing with fellow farmers round the world. I understand that. Then we complain that food is too cheap. But isn't that the price of wanting to have it all and do it all yourself?

We never seem to approach the situation by asking how many livelihoods this land could provide? How many people could get a living from these acres?

I know how it works presently but what about a different economic model?

 

[Henarar]

The exit from the EU will exacerbate this issue with the loss of free movement of labour.

is there really going to be such a loss
is the UK really going to stop folk coming here to work
I think not but we will see

 

[Henarar]

Conventionally we strive to produce food for lower and lower cost, competing with fellow farmers round the world. I understand that. Then we complain that food is too cheap. But isn't that the price of wanting to have it all and do it all yourself?

think there is to much striving to produce more and that leads to cheap

 

[Clive]

1 man per 10.000 ac will be the next step looking at the rise of the autonomous machines at Agritechnica this year

 

[Henarar]

1 man per 10.000 ac will be the next step looking at the rise of the autonomous machines at Agritechnica this year

well I don't want to be that one man
f**k that

 

[Yale]

Ring fenced,1000 acres is a good size around here and one man could farm it.

However you try finding a farm like that not cut up by country roads,footpaths,houses,people and..........cars double parked.

 

[David.]

Why would you even want to play that game?
If that is what it takes to provide raw materials to the people who are going to take all the profit, let them go without.
That one man could lay the 10000ac aside and live of 5 acres.

 

[Clive]

well I don't want to be that one man
fudge that

that man will be a trained computer and robot technician - not a farmer as we know it

the farmers role (decision making) will (and already is being) increasingly replaced by computer modeling

I agree, its a shame but its going to be as big a change as the invention of the tractor when it replaced horses in our fields

 

[kfpben]

With our one man to 40 acres we must lower the average a bit!

That doesn’t include contract labour either.