RE: farm policy
Harris, Craig (Craig.Harris@ssc.msu.edu)
Fri, 1 Jan 1999 09:55:40 -0500
while i agree with the point of fred magdoff and mark ritchie and others
that, analyzing it logically, government policy was not designed primarily
to inhibit the consolidation of farms and/or to inhibit the attrition in
number of family farms, i think it is nevertheless possible that government
policy in total has had that effect . . . i would support this proposition
thus: suppose the government had no agricultural policy -- no land grant
system, no usda, no commodity payments or market controls of any kind . . .
would consolidation and attrition have been greater or less than they have
been . . . i think that without the various policy devices which have
enabled the average family farmer to be marginally successful (economically,
socially, ecologically), we would have seen much greater consolidation and
attrition
the theoretical explanation i offer for this is the following: as long as
there are high biological (disease, pests) and physical (e.g., weather)
risks in a subsector of farming, processors and marketers will try to ensure
that other actors bear those risks . . . this is best done by spreading many
relatively small farms over the landscape (to diversify the aggregate
exposure to spatially specific risks) . . . however the average family size
farm is barely breaking even at the moment, especially if any payment is
imputed for farm operator's labor . . . farm families have been willing to
subsidize the farm by having family members, including the farm operator(s),
take non-farm employment off the farm . . . but even with that off-farm
subsidy, the government has had to help to maintain the appearance of farm
profitability, to keep farm operators and potential farm operators from
selling the farm and shifting their financial and human capital to non-farm
employment and investment . . . thus, about 20 percent of net farm income is
government payments, and, except for the very low end, this does not vary a
great deal by size of farm
one can certainly imagine alternative policies which would have had much
more positive impacts on the retention and expansion of family farms, but
that does not show that the existing policies have had no positive impact at
all
cheers,
craig
craig k harris
department of sociology
michigan state university
429b berkey hall
east lansing michigan 48824-1111
tel: 517-355-5048
fax: 517-432-2856
> ----------
> From: Bob MacGregor[SMTP:rdmacgregor@gov.pe.ca]
> Sent: Thursday 31 December 1998 1:00 PM
> To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu; cpete@nb.net
> Subject: Re: farm policy
>
> Cass,
> 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?
> 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. Barring some such extreme
> action, consolidation of farms will continue as long as the larger units
> are more economically viable than the smaller ones. To date, government
> farm policies have, if anything, created a more favourable climate for the
> larger operations, not the smaller, traditional family farms.
> I'm still not convinced....
> BOB
>
>
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