Comment by garrickvanburen
12 hours ago
It’s likely the land would be far more valuable as something else.
Small family farms, while romanticized, have all the problems of any small business competing with larger professionalized businesses; consistency in operations, consistency in output quality, access to resources - including people and machines.
Additionally, for their own operational simplicity big buyers prefer interacting with as few suppliers as possible - so, market forces have been driving consolidation for decades.
It really depends on the farm, unlikely it will be used for anything else.
90% likely what would happen is an adjacent farmer would buy the land. You want all your land to be near each other, like defragementing a hard drive ;)
I am told that farms are optimized for labor efficiency rather than profits. These farmers often have a second job when they're not out there farming.
With a low tax on land, we may not actually be encouraging the most efficient use of farmlands.
Given that people are loathed to sell their land for any reason, this makes it impossible for farmers to start new farm, leading to a gradual depopulation and collapse of rural economies.