Are there farms owned by corporations? I here the term “corporate farms” and I envision huge farms in the midwest (US & Canada) where people work on shifts, on the clock, planting, cultivating, and harvesting corn, wheat & beans.
In my limited experiance (Pa & NY) the farms ( and there are a lot of them ) seemed to be owned by local familys. So what does “corporate farms” mean? If they exsist what do they look like and how do they operate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_farming
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Projects/Famfarm/economy/incorp/incorp4.htm
If you have a chance, stop by a newsstand, pick up the May 2006 issue of Harper’s Magazine, and read the article on corporate pork farming. It gives a soup to nuts (and frankly quite scary) description of modern corporate hog farming.
Among the interesting tidbits, hogs are now bred to be as genetically identical as possible so that they are all the same size and shape and fit into the sausage machine the same way.
Yes. Many.
And many of those families have incorporated their farm for tax and liability purposes, making it a “corporate farm” even if it’s just Ma, Pa, and a couple of hundred acres. A lot of the local ranches here, even though owned by a single family, are incorporated. In fact, even though my “hobby” ranch only represents a pittance in income, I’ve considered incorporating it just so I don’t lose everything I own if somebody gets hurt and sues me.
To many Americans, ignorant of what a corporation really is, the word implies “great big huge company,” so “corporate farm” has come to mean a big business, often running multiple facilities. There are farming corporations that own many pieces of farmland spread over multiple states.