• @TropicalDingdong
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    5920 days ago

    Turns out land is still cheap and sunlight still generally free.

    • @ChicoSuave
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      20 days ago

      The idea is to remove weather as a risk for farming. It’s remarkably hard making reliable predictions for yields with climate change on the horizon.

      • @[email protected]
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        1520 days ago

        Yes that’s the idea, but perhaps it’s not actually a good idea.

        I think the plummeting market price per pound of cannabis in Colorado is an interesting case. It has become so cheap that the cost of goods for indoor grown cannabis is higher than the market price. The outdoor growers are the only ones with a favorable balance of costs and product price for the long run.

        Anyone want to buy some used lights?

        • @[email protected]
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          920 days ago

          It’s been the same in Oregon for years. The only reason why this crop was ever expensive and grown primarily indoors is that it was illegal and now with enough distance from illegality and enough competition, the price plummets. Your state may start implementing license and growing restrictions to counteract this as they’ve done here because the state loves their tax revenue and wouldn’t want to jeopardize this cash cow.

    • @[email protected]
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      1420 days ago

      Cheap land? Where? Areas around me are crazy expensive, and that’s without buildings or utilities.

      • @[email protected]
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        2720 days ago

        Agricultural land specifically. Growing stuff in the city is just not a great idea from a land use perspective.

        • @[email protected]
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          820 days ago

          Agricultural land isn’t cheap either which is why most farms are owned by massive corporations these days. They’ve bought up most of the good growing land.

            • @[email protected]
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              1320 days ago

              Those numbers can be quite skewed considering their definition of a “farm” is one that generates as little as $1000 in revenue per year, so anyone with a few chickens in their suburban backyard that sells eggs to their coworkers would fall under this definition. They even outline that 80% of these small family farmers have full-time jobs outside of farming. They also claim giant companies are “family owned” simply because a few family members control a majority stake. One could call Walmart or News Corp “family owned businesses” using this same definition and claim Walmart is a tiny portion of the retail space because there are 500k individuals selling keychains on Etsy versus their single company.

            • @Nalivai
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              419 days ago

              By your link, 90% of farms produce 21% of producs. So yeah, most farms are owned by corpos, if we apply the meaning correctly

              • @ikidd
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                019 days ago

                You aren’t reading that correctly.

                • @Nalivai
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                  219 days ago

                  “Small family maps” correspond to almost 90% in the “number of farms” graph and 21% in “value of production” graph, how else can anyone read it?

                  • @ikidd
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                    119 days ago

                    Take family farms in total. A 3000ac farm run by 2 brothers is still a family farm that the kids are inheriting. Nobody here has a clue how farms in us and Canada work.

      • SeaJ
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        620 days ago

        I was curious how cheap land was here in Washington. There is a posting of 570 acres for $815k in Riverside or if you want only 20 acres, there is land in Tonasket for $60k. Not really many people in either of those towns (not even sure Riverside qualifies as a town).

      • @XeroxCool
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        120 days ago

        Farmland? Or near-residential plots?

    • @Nalivai
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      419 days ago

      Even if it is true now, it is changing and very rapidly.