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southern MN | Poultry went there a long time ago.
Canning crops did also.
Hogs went there some decades ago.
Dairy is soon there.
Beef seems to hold out the longest, tho the packer side of things is forcing the issue with control by what, 3 buyers across the country?
Row crops will be there when driverless tractors and combines hit mainstream. So far we still need an idiot to make the corners at the end of rows, and so we need labor, and so farmers can still exist. But once automation hits fully, we will have investors wrapping up all of farmland and custom operators doing the work and it will be nicely integrated into 3-4 operations across the country.
Coops as you suggest were tried 100 years ago, are there still 2 left or have they integrated each other by now? Cenex/Harvest States, and what's the other one? Was good idea, but the economies of scale and buy out rather than out compete the competion hit them too, and they enlarge to become one and no longer offer value to individual customers.
There are different ways to gauge efficiency. If you get big enough a little waste of a few 100 acres here or there and a little middle management overlap is offset by the better deals you can cut, but you certainly are not more efficient on the production and waste management side of things.....
Anyway, progress is progress and we will get where you are suggesting. You and I will be the $10 an hour joystick jockey watching over the 10 machines manuvering themselves across the fields, we sure won't be the millionare owners of the two or three county farms being worked. :)
You had one humorous part there - "to keep greed out." Yea, that will happen. ;)
Paul | |
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How long before this happens?
