Reply #21: Less than 5% of arable U.S. land is owned by corporations.

[Xithras]

I live in farm country, and most of the farmers I know with smaller properties ALSO have full time jobs working for other people. Why? Because you can't make enough money on 10-20 acres to pay the bills, much less live a modern lifestyle. Smaller farms, at best, make enough money to pay for themselves. Many don't even do that.

In order to make money in agriculture nowadays, you need to start with the largest farm you can possibly afford, and plant the densest crop possible to maximize your per acre yield enough to generate a profit at the end of the year. If you can't do that, life is going to suck for you.

There are 350 million Americans living in 112 million households in the U.S. There are 400 million acres of arable land in the U.S., and according to the U.S. Census Department, only about 5% of that land, or 20 million acres, are owned by corporations. If you seized all of that land and chopped it into 50 acre parcels (the minimum you really need to be economically viable and sustainable, though you'll still be very poor), you would end up with about 400,000 new poor farmers in this country.

112 million American households. 400,000 farms. Unless you plan on taking land away from private families to redistribute to others, a wide-scale anti-corporate "back to the land" movement just isn't going to work.

And, FWIW, I have many farmers in my family. My dad owns cattle land. My home is surrounded by farms. I worked on farms and dairies in high school as a summer job. Personally, I wouldn't even consider dedicating my life and future to a farm unless I had at least 200 acres to work with. I have no interest in living like a pauper just so that I can call myself a "landowner". It's one thing to own a couple of acres and run a "hobby farm" for larks and to make a few extra bucks in addition to your day job, but actually making a LIVING at farming requires a lot of land, a lot of equipment, a massive amount of hard work, and a lot of money.

Most people, including virtually all young urban people, have zero clue about the realities of modern farming. Hell, most successful farmers either grew up on farms, spending decades learning the ropes from their parents, or have college degrees in the various agricultural fields. Many have both. Becoming an econmically viable farmer who makes enough from the land to lead a reasonable comfortable lifestyle isn't something that you can just learn from a book or a YouTube video.