Is this possible? Or desirable? My understanding is that the family farm has declined because large-scale agribiz is more efficient, can get more tons of produce out of a given number of acres for less money. I don’t have any actual figures on that. But in this article on the “Cancun coalition” (http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&pubID=1357), political commentator Michael Lind asserts that “High-tech agriculture wastes fossil fuels – but it spares land, by growing more food on less acreage. Genetically modified crops promise to do the same. Premodern third world agriculture doesn’t rely on chemicals or genetically modified crops. But it takes far more land to grow the same crop by traditional methods than it does by means of industrial farming. The earth’s remaining wilderness would be in even greater danger if the opening of northern markets were to create a financial incentive for developing nations to replace forests, savannas and wetlands with land-wasting peasant farms.” This argument goes to farming technologies, not to the socioeconomic arrangement – whether the land is in the hands of corporations or independent smallholders; but corporations can better afford to use the most modern methods.
On the other hand, I am familiar with some arguments in favor of family farming: As Wendell Berry has often pointed out, family farmers, who hope to leave their farms to their children, have an incentive to care for and preserve the land. A corporation might regard an acreage as merely an asset to be used up and depreciated; then you can always buy more land. I don’t know if this is how agribusinesses actually treat their land, but it’s an obvious danger.
Furthermore, there is an agrarian-populist strain in the American political culture, going back to Thomas Jefferson, which holds that the existence of a class of smallholding yeoman farmers is the bedrock of our liberties. Family farmers are people who own and work their own productive property, thus need not depend on anyone else. I don’t know if family farmers are really as independent as all that. But they do, at least, have productive property, and how many other sectors of our society can make that claim? In the Great Depression there were many people (my mother’s family, for instance) who never went hungry, because they were farmers. If they couldn’t sell their produce, they could always eat it. If another depression came, how many Americans would have that basic safety net?
It’s bad enough that we have to import our energy; we’d really be in trouble if we had to import our food…
I think that there should aways be some family farms, just as there are some small bookstores, say, alongside the giant chains. We can’t sacrifice all of our individuality to the economy of scale!
Can we define large-scale agribiz please? If most of the cotton farmers in my area are independent but belong to the same big cotton co-op are they still considered family farms or part of agri-biz?
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I don’t see how large agricultural enterprises are more likely to waste fuel then smaller ones.
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It also takes a heck of a lot more labor to grow crops the “traditional” way. What is traditional anyway?
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Why would a corporation be any less likely to care for the land? If they don’t take care of it they won’t produce as well as they should and therefore won’t make money.
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Do you have any evidence that points to large farms being any more dangerous then smaller farms?
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Given that only about 2% of the population is directly involved in farming I’d say Jefferson’s dream of gentleman farmers is long past.
During the Great Depression there were many others who couldn’t grow a darn thing. This resulted in a massive migration to California and the dust bowl. If they could eat the produce they didn’t sell then they weren’t really producing all that much to begin with.
…revive the FAMILY FACTORY? Ya know, the kind of swaet shops that existed 100 years ago! All this emoting about the wonderful family farm…its about 60 years too late. Large , industrially-run factory farms are the cheapest, best ways to produce food at low cost. The typical family farm is:
-undercapitalized-the guy is in debt to his eyeballs
-inefficient (he can’t diversify his crops easily)
-horribly laborintensive_the family farmer worljks long hours for a below-minimum wage return
So why would anybody want to be a family farmer? The answer is-they don’t-that’s why they are disappearing; the same way the family factories disappeared.
You can’t fight progress!
I personally consider it one of the greatest achievements of American society (and industrialization in general) that the majority of us no longer spend hours per day grubbing around in the dirt. There was a time when that was the case, and it was called feudalism. The Jeffersonian vision lost, Hamilton’s vision won. It was crappy for awhile, it got better, and in the long run the masses were better off being away from the farm and off to the factories and service industries (Heideggerrian nonsense notwithstanding.)
Most of us are glad not to be farmers. We’re also glad that efficient methods of food production have taken hold and replaced the inefficient ones. The so-called “family farm” is a nostalgic notion of upstate Iowans, and it’s more a cultural ideal than a legitimate market alternative.
Here are some pro-family farm (or small business farm, if you will)/anti-agri-biz arguments:
small/family farms generally support their local economies; they often buy feed and seed locally, buy machinery parts and service locally, etc. Agri-business rarely does; with the central control and distribution that comes with any large corporation, so too do most of the business supplies (seed, feed, parts, service labor, etc.) come from a central depot, spreading very little of its economic benefits to the local area
agri-biz farms make profits not only through economies of scale, but through criminal acts. I was at a press conference last year at which RFK Jr. laid it out. Here’s a quote of his from a press-release:
Basically, huge agri-corps have huge lobbies and political backing that keeps them from being properly policed. Small farms have no such backing, and are more likely to be forced to stay clean and legal.
That said, I still think
NO farm, big or small, should be subsidized
Industrialized farming has helped the U.S. and the world, just as mass-production of manufactured goods has
Farming is a horrible, thankless job. My father joined the Navy in order to get away from his family’s exhausting dairy farm, and never looked back. I would never want to be a farmer. But there are plenty of people who do. There are lots of hardworking family farms and organic farms in my neck of the woods. I personally know a ton of people who are voluntarily becoming artisanal farmers–goat & sheep’s milk cheese, fine wool, vineyards, etc. Bully for them.
I think equal treatment is the key: Cut all subsidies. Enforce pollution laws, etc., equally.
And consumers who are interested in supporting family farms and in better quality food can patronize local farmstands and pay a little more for local/organic/artisanal foods.
Perhaps the outcome (a pretty ideal one, IMO) will be that, in time, farming will reflect manufacturing: Bulk staples (wheat, corn, hogs, etc.) will be grown entirely by agribusiness (factories). But finer/specialty items (wine, fine cheese, heirloom tomatoes, organic potatoes, super-fresh/flavorful produce, grass-fed beef, etc.) will be the province of small/family farms (just like individual craftspeople/small businesses who still, today, make clothing, pottery, jewelry, furniture, soap, etc.). As a small business owner, you’re setting yourself up to fail if you set out to produce a market-traded commodity (corn) in the face of a business with huge assets and economies of scale. A better strategy would be to go after a niche.
Circular reasoning at best. We need family farms because family farms support local businesses. Why do we need local businesses? To support family farms. Why do we need family farms? I’m getting dizzy already…
Did he lay out any actual crime statistics to support this claim, or is it just supposed to be accepted on face value?
The family farm, as a viable institution is probably dead, although family farms will persist for a long time to come.
The barriers to entry are just too high. A new farmer, just starting out after graduating from high school or agricultural college, would need well over a million dollars in startup capitalization for land, buildings, stock, equipment, etc. This is well beyond the range of possibility for most, unless they inherit an established operation.
We might as well lament the demise of the family oil refinery.
Which is a sad thing, as the family farm does have great iconic significance in the American culture, but it is inescapable.
Subsidies and protectionism are inefficient. Free market is the way to go.
The idea that America cannot rely on imported food is plain silly. America is already producing a huge surplus of food which it is dumping where ever it can, mostly exports and government programs like the school lunches which a nothing but a way to dump unneeded and unwanted food.
America can live importing food like it can live importing steel (see current thread on this topic) or anything else. America cannot be self-sufficient. If the situation came where America’s trade was blockaded and it found itself without steel, without oil, without computer parts and other electronics made in Asia. . . America would collapse in a matter of days and all the food in the world isn’t going to make any difference. The farms rely on imported machinery, imported computers, etc. The fixation with food is silly.
Let the market decide. it is the best thing for America and the best thing for the rest of the world.
Most posters on this thread so far do not believe the family farm has a viable future.
In that case, when we Americans discuss how to solve the problems of an impoverished, socially unstable Third World country, why is “land reform” always one of the first items on the agenda? And it is usually on the agenda of the rebel guerillas, if any, of the country in questions. “Land reform” always being understood to mean redistribution of the land, taking it away from the existing big landlords (and paying them compensation or not, depending on local circumstances), and parceling it out to peasant families to work as their own property. I.e., turning big estates – “agribiz,” but usually without the high-tech equipment and organization – into family farms.
Why is that? Is the whole “land reform” idea misconceived? Or is it something that would work in a Third World country (where the people are mostly peasants to begin with) but not in the United States?
BrainGlutton, I cannot discuss your post because you are asking why unnamed people would defend an idea. Well, ask them, don’t ask me. If you present me the arguments I will address them but you present no arguments or details one way or the other. Give us concrete cases, examples, reasons, arguments and then we can talk.
If land reform means taking land which is kept unproductive and giving it to someone who will make it productive then it may be a good idea but we would have to see the particulars of the situation. If it means taking land from people who are making good use of it and giving it to other people who cannot make such good use of it just because the first group are whites and the second are blacks, like has happened in some African countries, then that is a bad idea.
The two situations are utterly dissimilar. Family farms, insofar as they actually are uncompetitive in North America, are so because of things such as the high (relative to the world) cost of labour here. In places where labour is relatively cheaper than capital, the gains in economies of scale made by agribusiness will be minimal. Just for example. There are also a whole host of other issues involved in places where land reform is a concern which arise out of how the land came to be concentrated in the hands of a few in the first place, the political systems which brought about the current situation, etc.
Any analogy between family farms vs agribiz here and peasant farmers vs Dole there is utterly hopeless.
Personally, I think family farms have a better chance of surviving in a no-subsidy regime than they do under the current conditions. But perhaps I’m overly optimistic. I do think toadspittle’s point about staple production vs specialty items is one of the more illuminating in this thread.
Here in NE we have many successful small farms…these are guys who serve “niche” markets-like the spaecialty vegetables for chinese restaurants,or organic famers, or specialty cheese producers. None of these guys could ever survuve if they tried to compete with the giant factory farms-it just can’t be done! This is nothing to be worried about-a small farmer is far better off if he serves a niche market, and can make a reasonable return on his investment,
The only thing that worries me-we (in the USA) are now becoming so dependent on just a few plant species-if a blight ever destroyed out hybrid corn, for example, we would have a tough time replacing the strain, since so many strains of corn have gone extinct.
But, genetic engineering should solve that problem in a few years!
Why are so many posters on this thread hostile to the idea of government subsidies for farmers? Don’t we have a long and largely successful history of subsidies to farmers? In the late 18th Century, and well into the 19th, practically every American farmer west of the Appalachians got his land, initially, from the government. The government bore the cost of purchasing or conquering the land from foreign powers; the government bore the cost of killing or removing the Indians; and then the government gave away parcels of land, or sold them at nominal cost on generous terms, to farmers who wanted to homestead. The results worked very well for a long time. Why can’t this approach, or something like it, work today?
Nothing wrong with Homesteading, and since we (the people) own the land what you described is hardly a subsidy. Pouring money into a business that cannot survive on itself is not only ineficient, but undemocratic. I’d love to start a business and have the gov’t funnel funds my way if I make some bad decisions. Why subsidise the farmer and not my special little business (whatever it might be)?
Because we are no longer an agrarian society. Something like 5% or less of our workforce is required to produce food to not only meet our needs but the needs of people all over the world. If a business is not profitable, it is wastefull to artifically prop it up with subsidies. That is money and resources that can be used to produce something else.