Commercial agriculture
Commercial agriculture refers to the large-scale farming operations primarily aimed at generating profits rather than sustaining local communities or providing resources for farmers. This approach to agriculture has evolved from traditional subsistence farming, allowing fewer workers to produce significant food supplies that can be traded or sold. Commercial farms utilize advanced tools, techniques, and economies of scale to maximize crop yields and minimize production costs, often employing intensive farming practices that involve high usage of pesticides, herbicides, and genetically engineered crops.
While commercial agriculture can efficiently feed growing urban populations and stimulate economic growth through job creation and tax revenue, it faces criticism for its adverse environmental impacts. Issues such as soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and contributions to climate change are significant concerns associated with intensive farming methods. Additionally, the rise of commercial farming has led to the decline of small family-owned farms, contributing to rural depopulation and creating challenges related to worker treatment and labor conditions on larger operations. As such, commercial agriculture remains a complex topic, balancing the need for efficient food production with the imperative of sustainable practices and community welfare.
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Commercial agriculture
Commercial agriculture refers to large-scale farms that are created to maximize profit rather than to provide resources to farmers or their communities. Commercial farms leverage the economy of scale to grow and harvest their crops more efficiently than smaller farms, allowing them to generate larger yields and sell their products at lower prices. Though commercial farms can generate the immense amount of food required to meet the needs of large urban communities, they have been heavily criticized for their unsustainable impact on the environment and contribution to rural depopulation.
Background
Agriculture is the collective practice of farming. It includes modifying the land to grow specific crops and raising livestock. Agricultural plants and animals are chosen for the resources they provide. For example, some crops provide food, while others generate raw materials like fiber. Animals can be raised for dairy, meat, or natural resources, such as leather.
People have practiced subsistence agriculture throughout history. Individuals operated their own farms, raising enough plants and animals to feed themselves and their families. These subsistence farms were often small, inefficient, and typically required many hours of dedicated labor to produce the necessary yields. As agriculture advanced, the yield that a single farm could produce significantly increased. A small subset of the population could dedicate themselves to agriculture, producing more food than they needed. This allowed them to trade or sell their excess supply to the rest of the community. When a portion of the population could produce enough food to feed many people, more of a community’s population became free to pursue other professions, advancing society as a whole.
Modern agricultural advances have significantly increased the crop yield on a single piece of land. These advances include modern industrial tools, high-quality fertilizer, pesticides, and genetically engineered crops. However, research shows that the use of these tools may significantly damage the environment by draining nutrients from the soil and increasing erosion. This damage has the potential to render larger sections of soil infertile.
Because of this, many farmers have adopted sustainable farming practices, which sacrifice some efficiency while still allowing farmers to maintain a profit. These practices reduce or eliminate waste and pollution, preserving the environment for future generations.
Overview
Commercial agriculture refers to all forms of farming that are primarily focused on generating profits rather than on creating sustenance. This type of agriculture evolved from subsistence farming as farms became more efficient. Commercial agriculture does not concern itself with sustaining its community through local trade. Many commercial farms do not sell their goods locally, choosing instead to ship them to large organizations to maximize profits.
This type of agriculture utilizes intensive farming practices, which refer to using the maximum number of available resources to increase the yield of a given plot of land. Commercial farming typically involves the large-scale use of pesticides, herbicides, and commercial fertilizers. It also uses as many laborers as necessary and implements genetically engineered monocrops.
Other types of commercial farming include livestock farming, arable farming, commercial horticulture, and commercial aquaculture. The intensive farming of livestock involves raising as many animals as possible, as quickly as possible, often utilizing specialized breeds intended to grow faster than traditional breeds. In these factory farms, animals are kept in cramped conditions to maximize yields. They are kept healthy through the widespread use of hormones and antibiotics. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines any farm with more than 1,000 cattle; 2,500 pigs; or 125,000 chickens as a Concentrated Feeding Operation (CAFO) or intensive farming system. The advantages of factory farms include quickly generating large supplies of meat, which lowers costs for consumers and simplifies work for farmers. The disadvantages include massive environmental damage, animal cruelty, and increased risks to public health from zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistance.
Arable farming refers to the large-scale cultivation of plants on specially prepared tracts of agricultural land. This process involves tilling the land and installing aqueducts to make it suitable for the chosen crop. Commercial horticulture refers to the large-scale, for-profit production of ornamental plants, such as flowers, trees, shrubs, fruit plants, vegetables, and turfgrass. Unlike arable farming, commercial horticulture sells living plants to consumers. Commercial aquaculture refers to the mass-scale raising, harvesting, and transporting of fish and shellfish.
Though commercial agriculture includes many varieties of farms and products, all commercial farms share several important traits. They prioritize large-scale production by securing as much land as possible to use for growing crops or raising massive herds of livestock. Commercial farms benefit from economies of scale. They can purchase large quantities of necessary supplies from manufacturers, such as feed, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer, and farming equipment, at inexpensive bulk rates. Commercial farms also maximize the output of their product. By using scale to push production costs down, they can sell their products for lower prices, undercutting smaller, less-efficient competitors while maintaining high profit margins.
Commercial farms make use of any available advanced technology and mechanization. They often use intensive farming techniques by employing many laborers and using mechanized industrial tools to maximize their efficiency. For example, modern harvesting machines enable workers to increase their speed and efficiency, harvesting many more plants than could possibly be done by hand.
Most commercial farms make heavy use of specialization. By choosing to focus on a single product, they can carefully prepare all available land, resources, and industrial equipment to maximize the efficiency of growing and harvesting that product. For example, many commercial farms choose to allocate all their land to growing specific varieties of corn. They can also build complex relationships with potential clients who have a reliable need for their particular crop, allowing for consistent sales after harvest.
Farms that choose to specialize take extreme care when choosing their product. Many grow genetically modified varieties of plants, which may be hardier and pest-resistant. Livestock farms that specialize in a particular animal utilize breeds that grow quickly on less feed or can survive being raised in close quarters. Additionally, commercial farms often specialize in crops that have a high demand and market value, allowing the farm to maximize its profits on every harvest.
Commercial farms carefully integrate themselves into the international supply chain. While some commercial farms may sell to local markets, those with the capability to sell abroad seek international partners to find the best possible trading arrangements. This benefits many national economies by driving economic growth, generating foreign exchange, and developing international economic interdependence.
The development of commercial farming has benefited society in many ways. It has allowed an increasingly small number of farmers to feed most people on the planet, which allows major metropolitan areas to exist without internal farmland. It also creates jobs and benefits both state and national governments through the generation of tax revenue.
Commercial farming has also been heavily criticized for damaging the environment. The large-scale use of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides pollutes the land. Removing these pollutants from the soil is often difficult or impossible. Clearing large swathes of land to grow crops or raise livestock harms forests by destroying the habitats of many animals, sometimes irreplaceable. Such deforestation, combined with the continued use of pesticides and herbicides, has a significantly negative impact on local biodiversity.
The practice of monocropping traditionally practiced by commercial farms has a unique set of drawbacks. Without rotating crops to provide new nutrients to the soil, continually raising the same plant species on the same plot of land can exhaust the nutrients in the soil. Though this can be slowed with the use of commercial fertilizers, it can eventually render a plot of land infertile. Additionally, the continued tilling required for planting and the removal of native plants can weaken the top layer of soil, leading to increased erosion.
Commercial farming plays a significant role in the acceleration of global climate change. Deforestation for the creation of farmland reduces the planet’s ability to turn carbon monoxide into oxygen, increasing the rate at which greenhouse gases are collected in the atmosphere. Additionally, both large-scale livestock production and the use of industrial agriculture equipment generate greenhouse gases.
Commercial farms have also contributed to rural depopulation. Small family-owned farms are often unable to compete with larger commercial farms and are eventually driven out of business, forcing the owners and their families to move to urban areas to find alternative employment. In regions with weak labor laws or limited local enforcement mechanisms, commercial farms maximize profits by underpaying workers or forcing laborers to work in unsafe or unsanitary conditions.
Bibliography
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