Interesting differences between US and European agriculture

[rollingrock]

* In the EU, family farming is an important tradition. Many farms have been owned and run by the same family for generations. Rural areas (farm land and forests) cover over 90% of EU territory and are home to around half of its population (farming community and other residents).

* Compare 12 million farmers with an average farm of about 12 hectares in Europe to only 2 million farmers running 180-hectare farms in the US. Corporate farming – where the farm (i.e. the land, buildings, machinery and livestock) is owned by a commercial company that employs a manager to run it – is rather unusual in Europe.

* The average size of an American farm is twenty times greater than its European counterpart.

* Small family farms where the food is local and travels short distances to get to market (the EU model) vs giant factory farms where the food travels hundreds if not thousands of miles to get to market (the US model). Hence, American food products requires a great deal of processing and preservatives so it can remain edible after traveling over vast distances.


* Many people in the European Union enjoy fresh air and wide open spaces at least half of them live in the countryside, in contrast to the vast majority of Americans who live in urban areas, packed into giant metropolitan areas and suffer the daily stresses that go along with living in densely-populated areas (high crime, dirty air from smog, congested freeways, etc.).

* These fundamental structural differences between the US and Europe have huge cultural and social implications for their respective societies.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Europe has the advantage of having been designed and formed before the car

The US really doesn't.

The EU also has the advantage of really high gas taxes.

And the advantage of hundreds of years of tradition of eating real food, grown locally, eaten in-season, and honor for the small-scale farmer and artisanal foods and living a bit more closer to the land... and a slower-paced lifestyle that's often centered around food: long meals with lots of conversation and having enough time to actually eat those meals, and so on.

We seem to prefer to eat as fast as possible so that we can sit in front of the TV, even though we bought a 4,000 square foot house and have a half-acre of beautifully, chemically-maintained yard, with a boat, an SUV, a four-wheeler, and a jet ski, and as much high end sporting equipment that our credit cards could buy, and so we could be outside doing something, or somewhere else in the house reading, painting, or enjoying the arts, but we're too fucking fat, so we just sit and eat and sit and eat, but never food that wasn't processed and filled with high fructose corn syrup.

[rollingrock]

2. Bill Maher is right

We have high rates of obesity, cancer, diabetes, and other diseases because we basically eat crap.

[Fla_Democrat]

12. Those lucky bastids

The EU also has the advantage of really high gas taxes.


Why, oh why, does America continue to not seek every advantage for it's citizens? :shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Not sure where your figures came from

but the rural population of the EU is nowhere near 50%.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O67oDJW01pwC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%22world+development+indicators%22+rural+population&source=bl&ots=iBnZPlR17C&sig=C4waMXLh-Ukz4doUIDJytMNpK7k&hl=en&ei=yaRXSt_6DoGRjAfJs63RCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

That's the World Development Indicators 2008 (table on the page above), which say the Euro zone rural population (ie most of the EU) is 26.5%, and of the big EU countries outside the Euro, the UK is 10.2%, Poland 37.8%. Here's individual country rural populations. The overall EU figure must be under 30%.

The rural population of the whole world is just under 50% now, and the EU is more urban and industrialised than the world average.

[rollingrock]

5. I got them from the European Commission website

(EU) Agriculture - the heartbeat of rural areas

The agricultural and rural constituency is important. Rural areas cover 90 % of the EU's territory and are home to approximately 50 % of its population. Agriculture and forestry are the main land users and play a key role in the management of natural resources in rural areas and in determining the rural landscape. Agriculture makes a valuable contribution to the socio-economic development of rural areas and full realisation of their growth potential.

Agriculture's wider contribution to the EU's prosperity is considerable. The agri-food sector (including beverages) accounts for 14.2 % of total EU manufacturing output, with EUR 675 billion worth of production. It is the third largest employer in Europe and the second biggest exporter of foodstuffs globally, with agricultural exports worth EUR 61.088 billion in 2002.

Europe's citizens are deeply attached to the diversity of landscape created by the wide variety of agricultural structures and farming types in the EU. Safeguarding this means investing in the future, creating new employment possibilities and encouraging rural diversification. People must be offered opportunities to create wealth as well as long-term rewarding job prospects. That is why the Lisbon Strategy is as important and relevant to rural areas as it is to urban Europe....(continued)

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/lisbon/index_en.htm

Europe's agriculture and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – Frequently asked questions

A picture of EU agriculture


How rural is the EU?

Rural areas (farm land and forests) cover over 90% of EU territory and are home to around half of its population (farming community and other residents).

How many farmers are there in the EU?

There are about 12 million full-time farmers in the 27 EU countries.

What types of farming are there in the EU?

Throughout the EU, there are farms practising extensive and intensive farming, as well as conventional and organic farming.

In the EU, family farming is an important tradition. Many farms have been owned and run by the same family for generations.

Compare 12 million farmers with an average farm of about 12 hectares in Europe to only 2 million farmers running 180-hectare farms in the US!

Corporate farming – where the farm (i.e. the land, buildings, machinery and livestock) is owned by a commercial company that employs a manager to run it – is rather unusual in Europe.


Does the EU support a particular 'European model of agriculture'?

The EU favours sustainable, productive, and competitive agriculture, even in regions where conditions are difficult.

This means farmers should be able to live well and be competitive, to respond to consumers' and citizens' concerns regarding food availability and price, quality and safety, environmental protection and the safeguarding of animal welfare.

Rural communities and regions should be preserved as a valuable part of Europe's heritage and landscape and Europeans should continue to enjoy not only safe and affordable food but also Europe's beautiful countryside.


Where can I find statistics on EU agriculture?

In our 'Statistics' section and on the EUROSTAT website.

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/faq/index_en.htm

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Ah - by those definitions, 57% of the US population live in rural areas

Those links say the European Commission "has consistently used the OECD methodology, e.g. in the Strategic Guidelines for RDP 2007-2013 and therefore this report defines rural areas using the OECD
methodology" (see http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/agrista/rurdev2008/RD_Report_2008_Chapter1.pdf - that has the detailed method of classifying the areas). The OECD definitions are 'predominantly rural', 'intermediate' and 'predominantly urban'; there's an OECD PDF on regions here (8 pages - not too large), and in Figure 8.3, (5th page) you can see that of the large EU countries, Germany, the UK, Italy and Spain are all more 'predominantly urban' than the US; while France and Poland are less so (and of the smaller countries, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal are also more urban than the US).

I've actually totalled up the countries given in their source (it's a downloadable spreadsheet) (a few of the Eastern European countries don't appear in the list, like Romania, but they're not that significant for the whole EU - the missing countries are about 8% of the total EU population), and the end figures are:

EU (18 countries shown) Population in areas that are:
Predominantly Rural: 7.2%
Intermediate: 42.6%
Predominantly Urban: 50.2%

compare those figures with the USA:
Predominantly Rural: 37.2%
Intermediate: 20.2%
Predominantly Urban: 42.7%

So their "50% of the population live in rural areas" means "50% of the population live outside predominantly urban areas". And that would be 57% for the US.

And if you just used the 'predominantly rural' definition, the USA would be way more rural than Europe.

[rollingrock]

9. I don't know who you are

and why you insist on disputing these figures which are directly from the European Commission itself. I think its safe to say they would know more about their own population than an arrogant Yankee know-it-all like yourself who probably never even set foot in Europe.

[charlie]

10. muriel_volestrangler is from the UK n/t

[rollingrock]

13. Maybe, maybe not

She (or he) is still an anonymous poster and so are you. So I can't take your word for it. Even if she is from the UK, that doesn't necessarily mean she knows what she's talking about. So I think I will go with the European Commission stats, thanks, which are obviously more credible then some anonymous poster on the internet.

According to this poster the EC is off on their figures by a huge margin. It would be pretty astounding that the European Commission, the governing body of the EU itself would be off by that much on their own basic demographic statistical information. That assumption is rather laughable I'd have to say.

[charlie]

14. Okay, have it your way

From one anonymous poster to another, I'll tell you what I do know. He doesn't needlessly provoke people and he doesn't affect a contrarian stance. He just disagrees with the EC's summary and has OECD stats that disagree as well. You should reconsider taking it as a personal slight, because it's not.

[rollingrock]

15. I don't take it as a personal slight

This poster accuses me of giving out false figures, and even after I provide the source of the figures, which is the freaking European Commission itself, the poster says the figures are still no good?? WTF?? How am I supposed to react to such an idiotic response??

[charlie]

18. Accused

That's taking it personally. He said the figures you used were wrong. The EC figures. He put up sources and an explanation of how the EC defines "rural" -- a combination of the OECD's "predominantly rural" and "intermediate" categorization of populations. It wasn't just a bald assertion that the figures are "no good."

In any case, he's posted his disagreement, you've posted your objection, that's about as far as it can go until he returns.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. I am indeed from the UK

And I don't think anything I have posted is 'idiotic'. I have been putting the figures in context.

First, I posted some figures from the World Development Indicators (which come from the World Bank, so a reliable international comparison), which reckon the rural population of the EU is under 30%. You showed your figures come from the European Commission, so I followed that up, and saw they said they used the OECD definitions or 'predominently rural', 'intermediate' and 'predominately urban'. So I thought it worth comparing the figure that uses the OECD definitions with the US ones, since that comparison is the purpose of your OP (notice the Commission page didn't say what the US figures were).

And it turns out that, using the same OECD standard, the US is slightly more rural than the EU. This is not all that surprising (after all, the US is less densely populated than the EU). I thought it worth pointing out.

I said the 50% figure was 'wrong', because it is significantly different from the WDI one, which was the international one that is easily available (and we have recently had stories such as Half of world to live in cities by end '08, and the EU is significantly more urbanised that the world as a whole). I have not said the figures are 'no good', but that they only show part of the story - that the US can be said to be more 'rural' than the EU, using the Commission standard.

I think I have informed everyone (including myself, since I couldn't have sworn what way it would have come out before I checked the figures; and indeed, by other definitions of 'rural', the US is probably less rural than the EU - the World Development Indicators figures would point towards that, but it would be a close thing) by posting this - it's certainly not 'idiotic' to give people more data.

Sorry if you thought that no-one else could add to the figures you gave in the OP. I'd suggest you react by reading my posts, maybe following the links I gave, and considering the relative urbanisation of the US and the EU, which was part of your OP, in the light of this increased information.

[rollingrock]

22. World Bank?

Uhh, the World Bank specializes in providing 'aid' to 3rd world countries.
What the heck would they know about the demographics of freaking Europe??

And personally, I wouldn't rely on anything with the word 'bank' in it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. Maybe they can count?

And they look at all countries in the world, to see how they are developing, or have developed. Here, if you think eevull bankers are unable to count, and you don't trust the OECD figures that the European Commission themselves use, then you can try the United Nations:

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wup2007/2007_urban_rural_chart.pdf

Notice the figures for the large European countries - Germany 73.5% urban, France 77.1%, UK 89.9%, Italy 67.9%, Spain 77%, Poland 61.3%. All well above 50%. This shows the European Commission's definition of 'rural' may be rather idiosyncratic. You'd certainly need to know its details, or the equivalent figures for other areas, before you could draw any conclusions from it.

[rollingrock]

24. If bankers could count

they wouldn't be bankrupt and require trillions of taxpayer dollars to bail them out.

[rollingrock]

25. Joseph Stiglitz resigned from the World Bank in protest

of its draconian neoliberal policies toward its 3rd world customers. Stiglitz is a nobel laureate and former chief economist of the World Bank before he resigned.

The World Bank has long been criticized by NGOs and academics who argue that the so-called free market reform policies—which the Bank advocates in many cases—in practice are often harmful to economic development if implemented badly, too quickly ("shock therapy"), in the wrong sequence, or in very weak, uncompetitive economies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank#Criticism

http://www.commondreams.org/views/101100-101.htm



Come to think of it, these bankers do sound pretty eevull to me.

[rollingrock]

26. The United Nations

hmm, that's interesting thing about the UN. but I have some questions for you.

1) how do you know the UN isn't simply reprinting the World Bank's figures, which IMO are suspect at best?

2) what is the UN's definition of 'urban?' and how do you know it isn't a dubious one?

3) Do you dispute the EC's figures of approx. 12 million farms in Europe vs. 2 million in the US? How about the EC's statement on their web page that agriculture is the 3rd largest employer in the EU? Or that average farm size is about 15-20 times larger in the US than it is in the EU? Or that large-scale 'factory' farming is rare in the EU while in the US it is the norm? Is the EC just making up all this stuff up? If so, for what purpose?

Either way you look at it, the EU is a much more agrarian society then the US. That's not a criticism of the US, but merely a fact. That is, unless you believe the EC is just making it all up.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. No, it's not a 'fact' - that's my whole point

If you look at the OECD figures, which are what the European Commission uses, the US is more rural than the EU. And that's what we have a precise definition for - population density, centres of population and so forth. And rejecting figures just because you think they might have had World Bank involvement is silly, to be honest.

So there are ways of looking at it in which the US is more agrarian. Factory farming isn't that rare in the EU; but there are also many very small farms, which just employ the family - and that often not full time. The average farm size varies widely between EU countries too - according to the USDA the average farm size in the UK is 171 acres, while in Hungary it's just 7.2 acres. It varies a lot between states in the US too - 66 acres in MA, or 2,061 acres in Montana. And with so many small farms in many places, a mean farm size alone may not tell you much - a median farm size may give an extra idea of how the range is spread. And a large farm size in a less fertile area (eg a lot of the west of the US that has low rainfall) doesn't necessarily tell you much about how it's run.

So it's not helpful to imagine there is just one 'European model of farming', or that many more Europeans live in the countryside compared to Americans. It's always worth checking the equivalent figure elsewhere, at the very least, and looking at assumptions and data around the figures that are given. I wouldn't expect the EU has made anything up; but those who run the Common Agricultural Policy, which is a by-word for inefficiency, are likely to tell you figures that emphasise the importance of agriculture in the EU. Their jobs depend on it.

[rollingrock]

30. Hmmm

'Rejecting figures just because you think they might have had World Bank involvement is silly, to be honest.'

Not as silly as you rejecting the EC's figures in favor of those put forth by the World Bank, an institution that its own chief economist described as shoddily run, poorly-managed and corrupt.

'The average farm size varies widely between EU countries too.'

Uh, no kidding Sherlock. That's why term average is used by the EC to account for variations.
You have heard of the concept of an average before, no?

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. I described the EC population figures fully

With the original quote, we had no idea what they were, or how they compared to the US. The EC just gave a figure in isolation; I linked to full tables; and if you think the World Bank, or the UN, or the OECD, or the EU, just goes around making statistics up for shits and giggles, or nefarious purposes, then you're unlikely to ever get an informed view of anything. Try and be objective about figures.

Quoting one average figure actually gives you no idea at all if the average farm size varies widely between component regions. Anyone familiar with what an average is would know that. So pointing out there is a wide variation has added, again, a useful bit of information to this thread. I'm sad that you think adding information is a problem.

[Karenina]

11. BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!

:rofl:

[AngryAmish]

16. It is disputed because of the facile conclusion you make (or imply)

The tenor of your OP is that Europeans are somehow closer to land the land or some other such nonsense.

The reason that there are smaller farms ion Europe is trade protectionism. Lack of economy of scale and such whatnot.

People in the EU spend a higher percentage of their income on food than in the US. Whether that is good or not is debateable.

I spend a lot of money on food. Well, certain food. Day to day I shop at non-chain stores, Mexican grocery stores and the like. Much cheaper than the chains. In an hour I am off to the local organic farmers market. The food is incredibly expensive but incredibly good. Very tasty. My departed mother would kick me in the balls if she saw the prices I pay for fresh berries.

[Tim01]

19. The corporations don't want us to be like them.

And Americans are not strong enough anymore to change themselves.
The people who formed this country were not the type of Walmart shoppers this country is populated with now.

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Whenever I go to Europe, I enjoy going into groceries .......

On a recent visit to Barcelona, we stayed very near the largest Corte Inglese store. Actually a department store, it has a huge supermarket. The fresh food selection was incredible. The ham and salami counters, alone, we bigger than the entire meat, fish, and cheese counters in our local, very large, Safeway. Much of the fresh food was quite local, mostly from Catalunya.

[rollingrock]

6. I could spend all day shopping for food in Europe

the little food shops in Italy have so much charm and character, and the way the food is so beautifully presented, it feels more like going into a fancy restaurant then a grocery store.
just the act of grocery shopping feels like an experience, whereas a typical grocery store in the US feels more like walking into an impersonal warehouse that's designed to get you in and out as fast as possible.

[malaise]

7. My Danish brother in law has taken me to

the seafood restaurants run by the fishermen on the waterfront - now that is fresh food. We'd drive through the villages and pick up fresh vegetables from stands and leave the money - you rarely saw people there - fresh new potatoes and tomatoes - delicious.

[AngryAmish]

17. What do they eat in February?

Not a lot of fresh new tomatoes in February - unless it is flown in or grown indoors.

[JVS]

29. They do things a lot like we do. Substitute Spain, Italy, North Africa, and Greece for CA and FL

http://www.rewe.de/index.php?id=22&tx_nxmarktsuche_pi1=32066&no_cache=1

Here is the specials insert for next week at a national grocery chain (this one for a particular store in Berlin). Notice that all produce mentions country (or countries of Origin). For example they have a sale on watermelons from Spain and Hungary. Apples are currently from Germany and Austria, although I've seen Chinese apples for sale too.

[ThomWV]

21. It is my understanding that now days hydroponics/greenhouses are Europe's supply

Spain, Portugal, and Israel have thousands of acres under glass is what I recall seeing reported within the last year, possibly in a piece on Bill Moyer's Journal.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

28. Some of the most delicious produce I ever had in my life was in Switzerland and Italy

I recall driving through farmland in Switzerland and it stunk. I asked my brother why? They used shithozen to spray the fields with natural fertilizer..pig shit. No chemicals.