The complexion of farming is changing radically. The land cannot support as manyfarm families as it did in an earlier time. Small farms are being consolidatedinto larger ones.
General farms, with several kinds of crops and a barnyard offarm animals, are yielding to specialty farms that concentrate on a single majorcrop. Family farms are declining; corporate farms are increasing. Efficiency isgrowing. Crops are changing.
Techniques are improving. Just as the train,tractor, truck, and airplane changed farm life in the past, the computer androbotics are expected to change farm life in the future (AOL, 1997). And theoutcome of this is that during the early 1980’s and continuing, the farmer’ssource of income is indeed being stripped from him. What was once the only meansof survival for these farmers, has now become distant memory. Farming techniquesare undergoing tremendous changes.
Farming will surely become more efficientthroughout the world. It will also become more scientific and, in the processperhaps lose some of its romance. People who formerly lived on farms and havefond memories of their rural childhood will barely recognize the new farms. Forfarmers of the future, it will not be enough to know how to drive a tractor andplow a straight furrow. Farmers must change with the industry, as it becomesincreasingly more sophisticated. The farmer must become more of a specialist tocompete in the marketplace.
This is a reason why many of today’s farm familiesare on a decline; that is, that today’s farmers are not able to purchase thelatest machinery or equipment, for they have to be cautious about where they puttheir money. The 1980’s sometimes referred to as the “farm crisis”decade of the 1980’s, while the 1970’s were referred to as the “boomyears”. It was in this time period that farms expanded in size and farmnumbers dropped. But in the 1980’s, two unusual things happened.
First, olderfarmers seemed to stay in farming longer. Some who might have retired didn’twant to sell their land in a depressed market, unless forced by a lender. Second, some middle aged farm families with children who might succeed themquit, or discourage their children from pursuing a farming career. Other youngerfarmers who had recently borrowed to start farming or to expand their businesseswere caught in the interest rate squeeze and forced out of business (Looker1996, pp9). This fed the decline of family farms, for children, who grew up onfarms, did not wish to take upon a career as a farmer, but venture into the citylooking for better work and wages, effects that the farm life couldn’t give. Thedecline of the family farm has been heralded for decades, as growing numbers ofpeople moved from the country top the city, and then to the suburbs.
Accordingto an article in the USA Today, a 32-year-old dairy farmer from Fort Plain,N. Y. , says ” You can get an 8 to 5 job, make a good living and still have(spare) time, and in the dairy business, there are huge cycles in prices. Justabout the time you’ve caught up from a down cycle, another one comesalong”.
This illustrates why young people are leaving the farm in searchfor better living conditions and money. Both the farmers and the academicexperts talk about the key role of money in the decline of the family farm. ” The evolution towards larger farms and more sophisticated equipment putsthe initial investment far out of reach for most young people”. “It’snot a small business anymore”, says John Scott, farm management and landeconomics professor at the University of Illinois-Champaign.
“And becausefarming is risky dependant on the weather, at the mercy of crop and livestockdiseases and victim of wild price swings-banks are unwilling to lend money tofinance startup operations, especially after the disastrous defaults of the late1970’s and early 1980’s, when high interest rate plowed under many farms andleft lender without uncorrectable debts”. (USA Today) This shows us howhard it is for farmers to receive credit, to keep the operation of a farmworking. And without this credit, many farmers face the inevitable, that is,closing and selling their farmland. Farmers, however, do receive aid from theGovernment, to help them with competing prices. According to an article in thePhiladelphia Tribune, it says that if “the Congressional BudgetReconciliation Act now awaiting presidential action is enacted, the historicalAmerican farm family will finally vanish”.
The Reconciliation Act mandatesa $13. 4 billion cut in agriculture over the next seven years. Most of the cutswould effect family farmers who already suffer from a poverty rate twice that oftheir urban neighbors. “For decades, farmers have been plagued by the lowmarket prices for their crops. Between 1982 and 1993: those prices rose only7. 5%, yet what they had to pay for agriculture inputs went up 23%, more thanthree times what they earned selling their crops.
Under the Reconciliation Act,decline farmers supports payments over the seven years will worsen the family’slot. Family farming has always been a hard way to make a living. Since it isgetting even harder, more and more people are fleeting farming for citylife”. (Philadelphia Tribune) There is also the problem of competition forthe land. In Illinois, for example, the average farm size went up by 40 acres in10 years, but total farmland in the state actually declined because more landhas been urbanized.
Much of the farmland was taken over by the suburbandevelopment, retail centers, and the setup of business offices. This occurregularly where farmers were unable to pay back their loans, therefore, largecorporations would take over the land, and build infrastructures. Agribusinessalso posed a threat to many family farms. Agribusiness is the name for thesector of the economy that purchases and processes agricultural commodities andoften produces them and fabricates and sells agricultural production materialsand equipment.
During the winter of 1978-79, the nation capital, Washington, wasa host to one of the largest demonstrations in years. The protest came fromfamily farmers, in the heartland of America, who had organized a ‘trader-cade’to Washington and were blocking traffic in the capital. The protest was to callattention to the crisis in the U. S.
agriculture system, which threatened thesurvival of the family farm, and this is one of the implications agribusinesshas on the family farm. The numbers of family owned and operated farms has longbeen on the decline, and those who are likely to survive the crisis are largeagribusiness corporations. An additional implication is the ‘cost price squeeze’situation. This is where farmers are caught between declining farm prices andrising costs. Farmers are constantly trying to increase productivity, but indoing so tend to overproduce for the market, driving down prices and incomes. When this occurs, it leads to bankruptcy for the weakest competitors, typicallythose who are having trouble buying the basic necessities for the farm (Burnach1980, pp.
22) A critical feature which distinguishes a system of family farmingfrom corporation based factory farming is the use of family labor rather thanwage labor. The family farm unit differs significantly from the corporate ownedfarm in that no matter how large the farm is, or mechanized it is the primaryinput of labor on the family farm comes for family members. On the other hand,large agribusiness firs owned by such companies as United Brands employ hundredsof wage laborers. It is bad news for family farms because family farm membersare attracted to the wage pay from the agribusiness firms; thus they leave theirfarms to go to these firms, leaving no one to work on the family farm. As aresult the family farm starts to see declined in productivity, and not too faraway, the selling of the farm to some big firm, who can meet the monthlyexpenses.
This is another implication affecting the decline of family farms. When family farms realize that they are getting into trouble with their farm,their immediate reaction is to sell off some of their assets. The followingtable shows some examples of immediate reactions to trouble. Actions of farmersin financial trouble, 1983-1987 __________________________________________ % #__________________________________________ Attended crisis meetings 60 32 Becamean activist 22 13 Cooperated with lender 48 27 Counseled other farmers 52 30Sold or gave back land 55 32 Eliminated enterprise 50 29 Sold machinery 35 20Took off farm job 36 21 __________________________________________ Source:Sample data (N=58) (Friedberger 1989, pp. 75) However, whenever there is trouble,there is almost always some kind of relief. In 1985, an Act called “Savethe Family Farms”, was passed by the government.
It imposed mandatorycontrols on production and the amount of land that could be farmed. Its basicobjective was to raise farm prices through a modest increase to the consumer inprice of food. The “Save the Family Farm” aimed to provide analternative. Its corner stone, the minimum price provision. Was offered as theequivalent of the minimum wage in urban occupation.
It also had other importantaspects, notably a concern for the future of land tenure and the initiation ofrefinancing provisions for farmers (Friedberger 1989, pp. 147). Basically theaim of this act was to help save the last few family farm. A problem facingfamily farms today is that it is hard for the young farmers to get ahead. Sometimes the farm is not passed down from generation to generation, so it ishard for the young farmers to start up their operations. Not only are youngpeople more receptive to new ideas in general, but beginning farmers are at astage in their lives when their making decisions about the kind of machinerythey will but and the methods they will use.
Younger farmers also need tomaximize their income from sales and maybe more inclined to bypass the traditionmarketing and processing system. Younger farmers also have less land (dependingon how much help they got from their parents) so the ones with smalleroperations may have more time to use sustainable methods. If there is a singlemessage here, its that getting stated in farming today is still possible butthat it’s not easy. For most young people farming means having less leisuretime, less security, fewer benefits and often less income than their cityfriends with a job do.
This is what scares many young farmers, thus adding tothe decrease of family farms. An additional problem facing young family farms isthe constant struggle to keep up with larger farms, for the larger ones possesssomething that the family ones don’t; that is high tech machinery and the latesttechnology. A forecast for the 21st century farm suggests a unit of 5000 to10,000 acres ( 2,025 to 4, 050 hectares), with the farmer, or farm manager,sitting in an air conditioned pod, or central office, scanning computer printout or screen. The computer will receive weather and soil data, analyze pastrecords of planting, consider market reports and then recommend what crops togrow, when to sow, what kind and how much fertilizer to apply, and when toharvest. The physical labor will be entrusted to robots with tape controlledprograms and it will be supervise by television scanners on gigantic towers.
Robot harvesters will carry out high-speed picking, grading, packaging andpreparation of crops for market. The beginnings of such system are already inexistence (AOL 1997). This may all sound a bit absurd, but this id the way thingare looking right now. Technology has taken over many of the operations of thedaily farm routines, and it will continue to do so in the future. Despitetechnology playing an important part in farming, so does family farms becoming acapitalist unit of agricultural production.
The development of U. S. agricultureis generating the transformation of agricultural working class in three day. First, as the growing size and industrialization of successful farms makesfamily labor insufficient, more farms are becoming capitalist, hiring permanentemployees. Second, mechanization of harvesting and other labor-intensive tasksis lessening the demand foe seasonal labor (Burbach 1980, pp. 37).
This shows,how family farms, since they cannot meet the labor input needed, have to becomecapitalist, joining other farms in an agribusiness firm. Overall, the U. S. family farm cannot survive as the dominant form of agricultural production.
Theyare constantly struggling against the encroaching power of the banks, thecorporations, and the large-scale agribusiness firms. Ultimately the remainingfamily farmers, the farm workers and the other sectors of the U. S. working classhave to assume control of both agriculture and industry and forge a newagriculture system that takes into consideration the needs of the vast majorityof the American people (Burbach 1980, pp. 12).
In conclusion, as farming in theU. S. continues to evolve, it bring with it obstacles that would deter all butthe most devoted young people. America’s family farms are flirting withextinction as the young people priced out by huge startup costs and scared offby backbreaking responsibility- increasingly find other ways to make a living.
On sum, despite setbacks, the intergenerational family farm remained animportant institution in the open country corn belt. However, over a period ofdecades, farm families experienced what amounted to a shake out in land tenure,the reorganization of farm finance, and in some cases a search for alternativesources of income. Despite being on the decline, there are still some familyfarms hanging in there. From the words of a Willow Springs, Mo. Hog raiser,”this is a great way of life if you don’t have to depend on it totally fora living”.
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