There is a quasi-religion that believes Big Ag is bad and small farms are better, but economics is a system and economies of scale exists as a principle regardless of human desires to the contrary. Historian Merle Fainsod noted that during WWI, large estates in Russia produced enough grain for urban markets but after the war they were divided up into small shares for most of the peasants and the result was food shortages in the cities. The landowners were called kulaks and Vladimir Lenin used them to warn that, "Small-scale production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, with elemental force, and in vast proportions.” Joseph Stalin wanted an industrial scale agriculture to feed an industriali...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.