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Modern farming drives specialization trend
A prominent agriculture economist says the complexity of modern agriculture
has driven the trend to specialization. Farming systems have become more sophisticated,
resulting in producers making the choice to raise either crops or livestock,
said Chris Hurt at Purdue University.
“If you can concentrate on one of those, concentrate your management, concentrate
your size, so you can get the best technology available and the best managers,”
Hurt told Brownfield Ag News Wednesday.
Diversification is now the exception, said Hurt. Livestock provide fertilizer
for crops and crops provide feed for livestock, but Hurt said farming
operations need to be scaled up to make economic sense.
“We want each of those enterprises, the crop enterprise and the animal
enterprise, to be big enough so that they can get these economies of size, advantages
of size, they can get the best technology and the best managers in each,” said
Hurt, “but that’s hard to do.”
The value of crop enterprises and livestock enterprises, said Hurt, is roughly
the same.
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