Is there some sort of cash crop that could be grown when food production becomes unprofitable? That might not save the landed gentry everywhere, but it could keep them going in a few countries at least.
On paper, maybe, but in practice I'm sceptical, since this theoretical wealth doesn't actually bring in any revenue or help with living expenses. (Hence why homeowners still have to go out and work for a living, instead of supporting themselves on the value of their houses.)
The biggest reason we dont have land = income, is because we grow grass lawns. Even a 1\4 acre lot if managed properly, you can grow enough food for at least 10 families.....
Grow less grass, and more food, land will equal income.
1. Since farmer with thousands of acres frequently gone bankrupt, this certainly false.
2.food <not equal> income; even if your lawn produce food, can you make enough money from it ???
3.beside, landowner should have enough income from Rent by farmer, not working as farmer himself.
This is pretty clearly a challenge that is incompatible with an industrialized society. So, no industrialization is your starting point.
What are we counting as "industrialised" here? In Britain, the landed gentry kept much of its power until the 1880s, and lost it due to cheap food imports causing an agricultural depression, rather than industrialists making huge fortunes. I think Britain in the 1870s would count as an industrialised society by most reasonable definitions of the term.
The biggest reason we dont have land = income, is because we grow grass lawns. Even a 1\4 acre lot if managed properly, you can grow enough food for at least 10 families.
Eric Toensmeier, this man has done it, and more. With less of a Industry Farm mindset to food production, and a more Permaculture Farm approach, farming can get easier.
Toby Hemenway, is an orchard genius and inspired me to move to the hobby orchard I am working on now. Gaia's Garden, is a must have in your library if you want to start to make your land productive.
Grow less grass, and more food, land will equal income.
There is a difference between political power and wealth. How much of the national GDP was due to the output of the land? How much of the wealth of the landed gentry was?
If the landed gentry didn't get their wealth from farming, we wouldn't expect an agricultural depression to have much effect on their position, surely?
Was that an answer to the questions asked?
No, because more food grown by more people equals a decrease in the demand for and increase in the supply of food on the open market, causing the yeild-per-acre (in monetary terms) to go down. If those ten families grew their own food by replacing their grass lawns why spend money buying it from you?
Demand for food isent boundless, so growing more on every inch of land we could would just flood the market. That's why we had farmers literally burning grain and slaughtering hogs en-mass at the start of the great depression here in the US despite going bankrupt.
It was an answer to the second one.
Then if the criteria is being a major source for some people rather than society, then challenge achieved by plenty of people.