Abstract
AFTER WORLD WAR II, a great deal of America’s five million farms remained alike in many respects: they were similar in size with a fair degree of surrounding natural habitat raising a diversity of marketable crops depending on the growing region, including livestock (for meat, dairy, eggs, and fertilizer), honeybees (for pollination and honey), and other products. Agricultural policy was likewise diverse: more than one hundred commodities received some form of federal price support, mainly in the form of loans. All that would soon change in ways few could have ever predicted.
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Notes
- 1.
Paul Conkin, A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 98.
- 2.
The Soviets, with the cooperation of large grain companies, quietly purchased large amounts of grain at preinflationary prices in the early 1970s. Prices soared after the Soviet grain deal was announced, but most farmers had already sold their grain at low prices.
- 3.
Daniel Imhoff, ed., The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories (Healdsburg, CA: Watershed Media, 2010).
- 4.
National Agricultural Statistics Service, “2012 Census Highlights,” Report ACH12-4, US Department of Agriculture, modified March 2015, https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resources/Highlights/Hog_and_Pig_Farming/.
- 5.
One of the most notorious incidents of this era involved the shooting of banker Rudy Blythe and chief loan officer Deems Thulin by James Jenkins and Steven Jenkins in Ruthton, Minnesota, in 1983. The bank had foreclosed on the father and son’s dairy operation, and the Jenkins took their rage out on unsuspecting bank officials. See Paul Levy, “Twenty Years after the Ruthton Banker Killings: Desperation Still Simmers,” Star Tribune, October 20, 2003.
- 6.
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006), 52–53.
- 7.
Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma.
- 8.
Conkin, Revolution Down on the Farm, 132–33.
- 9.
Organic Trade Association, “Maturing U.S. Organic Sector Sees Steady Growth of 6.4 Percent in 2017,” April 2018, https://www.ota.com/news/press-releases/20201.
- 10.
Catherine Greene, “Organic Provisions in the 2014 Farm Act,” USDA Economic Research Service, updated April 2017, https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environment/organic-agriculture/organic-provisions-in-the-2014-farm-act/.
- 11.
Greene, “Organic Provisions.”
- 12.
National Agriculture Statistics Service, “2012 Census Highlights,” ACH12-3, US Department of Agriculture, updated May 2017, https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resources/Highlights/Farm_Demographics/.
- 13.
Economic Research Service, “Food Dollar Application,” US Department of Agriculture, updated March 2018, https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17885&reportPath=/FoodDollar/Realy.
- 14.
Mary Hendrickson and William Heffernan, “Concentration of Agricultural Markets,” Department of Rural Sociology, University of Missouri, April 2007, web edition.
- 15.
National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Farms, Land in Farms, and Livestock Production 2012 Summary,” US Department of Agriculture, February 2013.
- 16.
National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Farms, Land in Farms.”
- 17.
Mark Drabenstott, “Do Farm Payments Promote Rural Economic Growth?,” Main Street Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, March 2005, 4.
- 18.
Phil Davies, “Trouble on the Farm,” fedgazette, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, April 12, 2017, https://minneapolisfed.org/publications/fedgazette/trouble-on-the-farm.
- 19.
Traci Bruckner, “Agricultural Subsidies and Farm Consolidation,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 75, no. 4 (2016): 645–46, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12151/full.
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© 2019 Daniel Imhoff
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Imhoff, D., Badaracco, C. (2019). The Changing Face of Agriculture. In: The Farm Bill. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-975-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-975-3_6
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