Talk:Farm

Farm Ownership

Rmherman,

I believe that the concept of a farm being both owned and run by a "person or family" is definitional. Agriculutural businesses owned by a corporation and run by its employees are really not farms in the traditional sense; they may be plantations or ranches; the more inclusive term "grower" or "producer" is also sometimes used. A look in a good dictionary might help. I have M-W but it is a print edition and 40 miles away at the moment. Anthere might have an OED or some other more international reference.

It is certainly normal usage in the Midwest of America - anywhere you do agriculture is a "farm", a farm owned by a family is a "family farm". Why else would we have come up with the second term? Rmhermen 15:43 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well, we use "ferme" (farm) to talk about small (usually family) businesses. And "exploitation agricole" (farming business) as a general term which encompass both family farms and bigger businesses. So, my feeling differs slightly from Kat here, as I give a more general definition to agricultural business. However, Kat's definition of farm is rather fine by me. I would say perhaps, person, family or small company (to take into account rather common situations of association of two men not from the same family). Ant

The Australian view In Australia family farming is very much on the decline. Many previous family farmers are becoming contractors to large agribusiness organisations such as Dalgettys, Elders, etc. as the cost of land, machinery, and infrastructure rapidly escalate. They may become contract managers, general laborers, or take up a specific segment of the farming enterprise (contract sowing, contract harvesting, contract fencing, contract spraying, etc).

The word farm is still used regardless of who owns/operates it.

For sheep/beef/cropping, a farm of 10,000 acres is becoming marginal for family farm operations (according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Landline program). This does not apply to intensive operations like dairy, poultry, feedloting, or market gardening where a "family operation" may still manage on tens of acres. But even these are being swallowed up with various companies buying out egg production licences and milk supply contracts. Garrie 22:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Have changed to "gallery" picture format

Photos were put in various places and of various sizes, making the Wikipedia article look pretty untidy. Also removal of one picture took place without explaining why, as one image was removed alltogether as editor obviously didn't see a farm in the picture. For the sake of unity, have used the gallery format. Large photos really only suit articles with large enough text area, so they can be aligned at the side of the text, but if there isn't enough text the images look as though they have been piled in. Readers of Wikipedia will know to zoom into pictures to appreciate their quality. Hope this OK.Dieter Simon 21:16, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I think (and I admit to being biased) that there should be at least one large image. Therefore I've removed the only FP from the gallery and made it larger --Fir0002 www 07:31, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Fir0002, you see the trouble is where is the farm? This should go under agriculture logically. When we talk about "farm" we should have the buildings of a farm in sight. The lack of farm buildings is also apparent in three of the other images of this article. Cows or sheep and fields do not make a farm, they part of farming of agriculture, sure, but this way they are quite incongruous. I'll come back to this in a minute. Dieter Simon 22:55, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I really feel we should have a number of actual farms of different characteristic styles, such as European ones, South American haciendas, Australian type farm buildings, and yes the different styles of buidlings cum silos and stabling in North American farms and ranches, so we can actually get an image of them in our mind. If we are not very carefully, someone will move these pictures into "agriculture", I would say quite rightly so.

The article also discussed "feedlots" and "rangeland", expressions which aren't really used in European farms, again they belong to the description of a type of farming, North-American farming to be precise. if you are going to talk a particular type of farming practice, that again should go under "farming" which redirects to "agriculture" in Wikipedia. I think this should be looked at.

Dieter Simon 23:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC). Dieter Simon

The British usage is "farm" rather than "farmstead". Dieter Simon 13:15, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The images which show a farm should have more prominence. The Hereford cows pic is already at Agriculture and Hereford (cattle) where it is more appropriate --Astrokey44 15:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

A small Australian grazing farm is now 1,000 acres (one thousand if the comma is confusing you). Generally you can only see the homestead (not that anyone uses that term anymore) from a small portion of the farm. But in Australia as I understand in the UK, as much as possible the farmhouse, machinery shed, shearing shed, dairy, etc, are all clustered together so you can walk back to the kitchen to eat. (but usually, there is enough distance that the noise and smell wouldn't usually make it back to the house). Or the cook can walk to where you are working and feed you. So the concept of a ground-level photo showing "all the buildings" doesn't apply too well.Garrie 22:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

'In England there is a vague point when a large farm ceases to be referred to as a farm and becomes an estate;' (from the article) I am not sure there is any connection between estate and farm in Britain (and why England? many of the largest estates in Britain are in Scotland). Chambers dictionary simply calls an estate a large piece of land. The word is more often associated with private ornamental deer parks and wooded areas for shooting. An estate needn't include any farms, though they usually do. And the largest farm imaginable, if it included only agricultural land, would not necessarily be an estate. Can some other Brit back me up on this, please.--Will peters 09:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC) NB See [1]

'Farm', a verb primarily, not a noun?

I think that a lot of the definitional issues in this discussion arise from the fact that 'farm' as a noun is a case of 'back-formation' from 'farmer' and eventually from the verb 'to farm'. The verb itself relates to a financial relation, in particular a capitalist (contractual) financial relation. There were no farms in feudal times, except as in France, tax farms. In France, the right to collect taxes was farmed out to syndicates, who aimed to make a profit on the deal.

In England, the Black Death (after 1346) so reduced the peasant population that wage labour began to supplant feudal servitude, owing to competition among landowners for peasants to work the land. Eventually sheep farming for profit replaced feudal subsistence agriculture altogether, especially in eastern England (cf., Thomas More, Utopia). Rather than administer their entire estates themselves, landowners, in what became known as the 'Enclosure Movement', would farm out portions of their land to tenant farmers, (in return for money rents, not a share of the produce ). The fields farmed out to the farmers became known as farms.

So while it is true that today the word 'farm' refers to a basic unit of agriculture, it should be recognised that this reference is historically specific, and depends primarily on the existence of capitalist relations in agriculture. The main entry does correctly identify the etymology of the word as relating to rent. However it fails, IMHO, to recognise the significance of this.

Hopefully, this also answers Will Peters query. An 'estate' would be the personal demesne of the landowner, (sometimes referred to as 'Home Farm'). Any other farms on the estate would be farmed by tenants of that landowner. --Paulredfern1 11:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Photo gallery

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  Bales of straw on a farm near Ames, Iowa
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  Cattle on an Amish dairy farm near Dundee, New York
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  Sheep eating grass on an Australian farm
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  Farming in North Carolina
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  Herd of Hereford cows in a field used for farming
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  A typical farm yard on the Canadian prairies.
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  An abandoned farm in Glen Arbor, MI.

Specialized farms

It appears to me that every farm is meant for specific purpose, whether it be cattle, hogs, sheep, ostriches, mink, etc. Would it be fair to say that every farm is specialized in some way shape or form? If that would be the case, should more farm types be added to the specialized farm section? --BlindEagle^{talk~contribs} 15:55, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

{{portalpar}}

I've replaced {{farming}}/{{Agriculture}}, which was getting VERY long and therefore less useful, with {{portalpar}}--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 17:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand what portalpar is. Care to explain? Sorry, I'm kind of a newbie at Wikipedia. --PaladinWriter (talk) 21:53, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Future of Farming

Why not have a section in the article about the future of farming? --PaladinWriter (talk) 21:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)