278 - “Corporate-ization,” Consolidation, and the Reality of Commoditization

The Business of Agriculture Podcast

I’ve been hearing the complaint, “it’s hard / impossible for a young person to start out in farming these days” for decades. Recently, an interviewer went down this road about the struggle of young people to get into farming and blamed the phenomenon on “corporate-ization.” You’ve no doubt heard this complaint yourself, but is it even true? If it is true, why is it? In this episode I provide some historic perspective, numbers, data, outlook, and reality: that commodity production favors scale and size, whether you’re in the business of making corn or manufacturing copper. Sponsored by Pattern Ag pattern.ag, AGvisorPRO getagvisorpro.com, and Truterra truterraag.com