Download or read book American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century written by Bruce L. Gardner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gardner documents both the economic difficulties that have confronted farmers and the technological and economic transformations that have lifted them from relative poverty to economic parity with the nonfarm population. He provides a detailed analysis of the causes behind these trends, with emphasis on the role of government action"--Jacket

Download or read book A Revolution Down on the Farm written by Paul K. Conkin and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.

Download or read book American Agriculture and the Problem of Monopoly written by Jon Lauck and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The breathtaking number of mergers and joint ventures among agribusiness firms has left independent American farmers facing the power of an increasingly concentrated buying sector. The origin of farmers' concern with such economic concentration dates back to protests against meatpackers and railroads in the late nineteenth century. Jon Lauck examines the dimensions of this problem in the American Midwest in the decades following World War II. He analyzes the nature of competition within meat-packing and grain markets. In addition, he addresses concerns about corporate entry into production agriculture and the potential displacement of a production system defined by independent family farms. Lauck also considers the ability of farmers to organize in order to counter the market power of large-scale agribusiness buyers. He explores the use of farmer cooperatives and other mechanisms which may increase the bargaining power of farmers. The book offers the first serious historical examination of the National Farmers Organization, which fully embraced the bargaining power cause in the postwar period. Lauck finds that independent farmers' attempts at organization have been more successful than previously recognized, but he also shows that their successes have been undermined by the growing concentration and power of agri-business firms, justifying a new approach to antitrust law in agricultural markets.

Download or read book Policy Reform in American Agriculture written by David Orden and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1999-10 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students of public policy and practitioners within the farm program arena will find theis book an essential source of insight, information, and original cross-disciplinary argument."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Economic Poisoning written by Adam M. Romero and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arsenic and old waste -- Commercializing chemical warfare -- Manufacturing petrotoxicty -- Public-private partnerships -- From oil well to farm.

Download or read book The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth written by Michael J Andrews and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Innovation and entrepreneurship are ubiquitous today, both as fields of study and as starting points for conversations among experts in government and economic development. But while these areas on continue to attract public and private investments, many measurements of their resulting economic growth-including productivity growth and business dynamism-have remained modest. Why this difference? Because not all business sectors are the same, and the transformative gains of some industries have been offset by stagnation or contraction in others. Accordingly, a nuanced understanding of the economy requires a nuanced understanding of where innovation and entrepreneurship occur and where they matter. Answering these questions allows for strategic public investment and the infrastructure for economic growth.The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, the latest entry in the NBER conference series, seeks to codify these answers. The editors leverage industry studies to identify specific examples of productivity improvements enabled by innovation and entrepreneurship, including those from new production technologies, increased competition, new organizational forms, and other means. Taken together, the volume illuminates whether the contribution of innovation and entrepreneurship to economic growth is likely to be concentrated, be it selected sectors or more broadly"--

Download or read book The Development of American Agriculture written by Willard W. Cochrane and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Family Farming written by and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans decry the decline of family farming but stand by helplessly as industrial agribusiness takes over. The prevailing sentiment is that family farms should survive for important social, ethical, and economic reasons. But will they? This timely book exposes the biases in American farm policies that irrationally encourage expansion, biases evident in federal commodity programs, income tax provisions, and subsidized credit services. Family Farming also exposes internal conflicts, particularly the conflict between the private interests of individual farmers and the public interest in family farming as a whole. It challenges the assumption that bigger is better, critiques the technological basis of modern agriculture, and calls for farming practices that are ethical, economical, and ecologically sound. The alternative policies discussed in this book could yet save the family farm, and the ways and means of saving it are argued here with special urgency. ø This Bison Books edition includes a new introduction by the author providing a more national perspective, underscoring the repetitive cycles of American agriculture over the decade, and assessing the major policy issues that have dominated agriculture in recent years.

Download or read book Agricultural Policy of the United States written by Stephanie A. Mercier and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book serves as a foundational reference of U.S. land settlement and early agricultural policy, a comprehensive journey through the evolution of 20th century agricultural policy, and a detailed guide to the key agricultural policy issues of the early 21st century. This book integrates the legal, economic and political concepts and ideas that guided U.S. agricultural policy from colonial settlement to the 21st century, and it applies those concepts to the policy issues agriculture will face over the next generation. The book is organized into three sections. Section one introduces the main themes of the book, explores the pre-Columbian period and early European settlement, and traces the first 150 years of U.S. agricultural policy starting with the post revolution period and ending with the “golden age” of agriculture in the early 20th century. Section two outlines that grand bargain of the 1930s that initiated the modern era of government intervention into agricultural markets and traces this policy evolution to the early days of the 21st century. The third section provides an in-depth examination of six policy issues that dominate current policy discussions and will impact policy decisions for the next generation: trade, environment/conservation, commodity checkoff programs, crop insurance, biofuels, and domestic nutrition programs.

Download or read book Evaluation of Agricultural Policy Reforms in the United States written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study analyses and evaluates US agricultural policies, focusing on the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, in the context of developments in agricultural policy that have taken place in the United States since 1985.

Download or read book Modeling the impacts of agricultural support policies on emissions from agriculture written by Laborde Debucquet, David and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To understand the impacts of support programs on global emissions, this paper considers the impacts of domestic subsidies, price distortions at the border, and investments in emission-reducing technologies on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. In a step towards a full evaluation of the impacts, it uses a counterfactual global model scenario showing how much emissions from agricultural production would change if agricultural support were abolished worldwide. The analysis indicates that, without subsidies paid directly to farmers, output of some emission-intensive activities and agricultural emissions would be smaller. Without agricultural trade protection, however, emissions would be higher. This is partly because protection reduces global demand more than it increases global agricultural supply, and partly because some countries that currently tax agriculture have high emission intensities. Policies that directly reduce emission intensities yield much larger reductions in emissions than those that reduce emission intensities by increasing overall productivity because overall productivity growth creates a rebound effect by reducing product prices and expanding output. A key challenge is designing policy reforms that effectively reduce emissions without jeopardizing other key goals such as improving nutrition and reducing poverty. While the scenario analysis in this paper does not propose any particular policy reform, it does provide an important building block towards a full understanding the impacts of repurposed agricultural support measures on mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate change. That full analysis is being undertaken in subsequent work, which will also take account of land-use change and alternative forms of agricultural policy support to align objectives of food security, farmers’ income security, production efficiency and resilience, and environmental protection.

Download or read book OECD FAO Agricultural Outlook 2019 2028 written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Agricultural Outlook 2019-2028 is a collaborative effort of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. It brings together the commodity, policy and country expertise of both organisations as well ...

Download or read book Principles of Agricultural Economics written by Andrew Barkley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book showcases the power of economic principles to explain and predict issues and current events in the food, agricultural, agribusiness, international trade, natural resources and other sectors. The result is an agricultural economics textbook that provides students and instructors with a clear, up-to-date, and straightforward approach to learning how a market-based economy functions, and how to use simple economic principles for improved decision making. While the primary focus of the book is on microeconomic aspects, agricultural economics has expanded over recent decades to include issues of macroeconomics, international trade, agribusiness, environmental economics, natural resources, and international development. Hence, these topics are also provided with significant coverage.

Download or read book American Agriculture 1899 1939 written by Harold Barger and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Agriculture and the Confederacy written by R. Douglas Hurt and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive history, R. Douglas Hurt traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America. The backbone of the southern economy, agriculture was a source of power that southerners believed would ensure their independence. But, season by season and year by year, Hurt convincingly shows how the disintegration of southern agriculture led to the decline of the Confederacy's military, economic, and political power. He examines regional variations in the Eastern and Western Confederacy, linking the fates of individual crops and different modes of farming and planting to the wider story. After a dismal harvest in late 1864, southerners--faced with hunger and privation throughout the region--ransacked farms in the Shenandoah Valley and pillaged plantations in the Carolinas and the Mississippi Delta, they finally realized that their agricultural power, and their government itself, had failed. Hurt shows how this ultimate lost harvest had repercussions that lasted well beyond the end of the Civil War. Assessing agriculture in its economic, political, social, and environmental contexts, Hurt sheds new light on the fate of the Confederacy from the optimism of secession to the reality of collapse.

Download or read book Agricultural Development and Economic Transformation written by John W. Mellor and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of agriculture in the economic transformation of developing low- and middle-income countries and explores means for accelerating agricultural growth and poverty reduction. In this volume, Mellor measures by household class the employment impact of alternative agricultural growth rates and land tenure systems, and impact on cereal consumption and food security. The book provides detailed analysis of each element of agricultural modernization, emphasizing the central role of government in accelerated growth in private sector dominated agriculture. The book differs from the bulk of current conventional wisdom in its placement of the non-poor small commercial farmer at the center of growth, and explains how growth translates into poverty reduction. This new book is a follow up to Mellor’s classic, prize-winning text, The Economics of Agricultural Development. Listed as a Best Books of 2017: Economics by Financial Times.

Download or read book A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.