What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Commercial Farming?
- Advantages: Everything is produced on a big scale: more land for crops means
- more income for the producer and more product going off the farmUse of machinery
- (often large, modernized machinery) make chores such as feeding animals,
- seeding, spraying, tilling, and harvesting crops easier and less time-consuming.
- Bigger machinery on bigger fields means less time spent on that field.Improved
- seed cultivars used means bigger returns to the producer - more yeilds/acre puts
- more money in the producer's pocketBusiness oriented farming, where producers
- and their families run the farm as a family business, not as a hobby, even
- though one or more spouse may have an off-farm job to supplement income to that
- farm.Create job opportunities for those who want to work on a farm, be it grain,
- livestock or mix of both.
- Disadvantages:Lots of income coming in also means lots
- of expenses going out. This does not always equal in profits. A producer can get
- in the red quite easily with expenses outweighing income.Hiring employees may
- even out the workload for the producer, but the producer needs to pay those
- employees to work. This is one of the expenses that a producer has to pay out in
- order to have the farm function like it should.Magnet for negativity from non-ag
- community about animal welfare, environmental concerns, messages about how "big
- agribusinesses are greedy," etc.Not always a low-cost option of a way of
- farming, though commercial producers are adopting such practices more and more.