Bob, Farms in the USA started out under 100 acres. They were what one family could clear and work with an animal. As mechanical farm implements became more common, farms grew in size. >From 1900 to 2000, farm equipment became very efficient. And on the great plaines, you can farm 1,000+ acres with the right equipment. As farmers invested in more expensive capital equipment, they looked to farm more acres to maximize the use of their equipment. That's why farms are so big in the midwest and western USA. Regards, Bob S.
On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Bob W <p...@web-options.com> wrote: > [...] >> >> There was/is an Amish community near where my grandfather farmed and >> where I spent much of my life that continues -- east central Illinois - >> - to farm profitably with horses today -- and on farms that are >> unimaginably small -- often less than a 100 acres, rarely more than 200 >> -- to the industrialized farmers of the region. > > That doesn't sound very small to me, so I googled it. It's quite small by US > standards, but not by the standards of other parts of the world. Here are > some figures for the EU, from > <http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/EuropeanUnion/basicinfo.htm> > > "EU farms are, on average, considerably smaller than U.S. farms. In 2007, > the average farm size in the EU-15 was 46.2 acres, whereas the average farm > size in the United States was 418 acres. The addition of 12 new member > states with smaller farm sizes than the EU-15 makes U.S. average farm size > more than 12 times that of the average EU-27 farm of 34.1 acres. However, > farm size varies greatly by country, ranging from an average of 171 acres in > the United Kingdom to 7.2 acres in Hungary." > > It's very interesting to see people working on these tiny little farms in > Eastern Europe and elsewhere because it's such small scale. Africa and Asia > are even smaller. > > B > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
