capital-intensive farming

Capital-intensive farming, also known as intensive agriculture, is a system where a large amount of labor and capital is used relative to the amount of land. This approach utilizes significant inputs of fertilizer, pesticides, and advanced machinery for planting, cultivating, and harvesting. It also often involves sophisticated irrigation systems.

The primary goal of intensive agriculture is to achieve much higher crop yields per unit of land compared to extensive agriculture. This increased productivity allows farmers to produce a similar profit with less land. However, the high capital investment in machinery can also lead farmers to cultivate larger areas to keep equipment fully utilized. While theoretically suited for land close to markets, in practice, large-scale operations in countries like the United States often use intensive methods on vast tracts of land far from markets.