Jim Bacon’s post on the “family farm” made a number of good points. The responses raise a lot more good observations, especially the spacial relationship between raising and consuming food.
In the discussion of extensive (nonurban) land uses it is important to keep in mind that it is economically, socially and physically important that the Urbanside be compact without regard to what nonurban land uses are found in the Countryside.
The Urbanside is most efficient and most effectively serves the market for functional urban land uses if it occupies about 5 percent of the land area in the United States. (The number varies from region to region and from continent to continent.) Scatteration of urban land uses beyond that amount of urban land diminishes the functionality of human settlement patterns in the Urbanside.
Therefore, devoting 95 percent of the land area to nonurban (aka, Countryside) uses is a good idea without regard to what those uses are. We will be documenting this in The Shape Warrenton-Fauquier’s Future.
The support (or subsidies) for family farms, multifamily farms, corporate farms owned by a family or an enterprise, family tree farms or cyanide heap-leach gold mining, etc., etc., depend on the utility/impact of the product (raising healthy, tastier vegetables, sugar beets, tobacco or whatever) and how it is done (e.g. spreading chicken manure in DelMarVa).
EMR