>I am well aware of the impact of decreasing farm numbers on rural social and
>economic structure. However, do you think that government policy --
>purportedly to "support the family farm" has inhibited the consolidation of
>farms and the attrition in farm (and farm family) numbers?
Obviously it has not. But that word "purportedly" is fraught with meaning
here. However the government's policy has been described, and whatever
rhetoric Congress used in enacting farm legislation, the fact is that
government policy does not, and was not designed, to support the family
farm. It's a syllogistic fallacy to state otherwise.
The government''s policy is ample agricultural output at globally
competitive prices. Period.
If support of the family farm were the point, the government would not have
permitted federal irrigation rights in the West to expand to 960 acres
instead of the 160 acres envisioned by the Reclamation Act, and it would
not avert its gaze as legal machinations allowed farmers to expand that to
thousands of acres.
If support of the family farm were the point, the government would not have
permitted corporate farms to reap millions of dollars in crop-support
payments in violation of maximum benefit levels.
>If the government really wanted to maintain farm numbers, they could ban the
>technological advances -- notably mechanization -- that allow such big,
>low-labour operations to be created.
If the government really wanted to maintain farm numbers, it would be much
more aggressive in examining agricultural marketing, packing, and shipping
operations for antitrust violations.
>Barring some such extreme action,
>consolidation of farms will continue as long as the larger units are more
>economically viable than the smaller ones.
Then let us examine, very closely, what makes those larger units so much
more economically viable. It couldn't be, could it, that they've gotten
more than their share of the government largesse that was "purportedly" to
support the family farm?
Cass Peterson
www.flickerville.com
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail