Download or read book The Eclipse of the American Small Farm written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the impact of US agricultural policy -- commodity programs (or farm subsidies), international food aid, federal income tax policy and federal farm credit programs -- on the farm sector from 1933 to 1996. In these years, farm policies and programs had intricate effects on the pace and direction of farm modernization, the viability of the American small farm, and the development of modern agribusiness. Primarily, farm programs have sustained abundant surplus of certain farm commodities, mainly grains. Prices for these commodities have been kept low due to their abundance. This has profited the agribusiness firms that purchase and process them while returns to farmers have dwindled. Programs have sustained surplus by de-coupling production levels from production incentives through the supplement of farm prices and incomes. They continue to do so to this day. Farm subsidies are the beating heart of the industrial agrifood system. Though farm programs have been deployed with the ostensible aims of protecting small farms, they have actually created the conditions under which small farms languish and agribusiness thrives. Other aspects of US agricultural policy have fueled the overcapitalization of the farm sector by incentivizing the mechanization and growth of farms beyond the dictates of efficiency. The decline of small farms is often justified in popular and academic discourse as a defeat by farms that are larger and more efficient. This is untrue, as larger farms are in fact less efficient but have been rewarded by the skewed distribution of commodity program payments since 1933. The advantages of programs for larger farms are sizable; most production in the industrial agrifood system occurs on farms which are large, less efficient and heavily subsidized, while the majority of small farms receive no government support. This conclusion directly contradicts prevailing theories concerning agricultural development in the 20th century, which mark capitalist development, the Green Revolution, and economies-of-scale as the source of growth in the farm sector, and the reason for the eclipse of the American small farm. This conclusion renders useful information for analysts of the industrial agrifood system and its attendant social, economic and environmental problems. This analysis shows that above all, the industrial agrifood system is not simply the due consequence of economic development, but the product of specific US agricultural policies and programs.
Download or read book Gaining Ground written by J. Tevere MacFadyen and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Disappearing American Farm written by Jake Goldberg and published by . This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the crisis confronting American agriculture today looks back at the history of agriculture to find the origins of the problem, the impact of technological innovations, and the limitations of policies on the subject.
Download or read book In the Blood written by Robert Wuthnow and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid and moving portrait of America's farm families Farming is essential to the American economy and our daily lives, yet few of us have much contact with farmers except through the food we eat. Who are America's farmers? Why is farming important to them? How are they coping with dramatic changes to their way of life? In the Blood paints a vivid and moving portrait of America’s farm families, shedding new light on their beliefs, values, and complicated relationship with the land. Drawing on more than two hundred in-depth interviews, Robert Wuthnow presents farmers in their own voices as they speak candidly about their family traditions, aspirations for their children, business arrangements, and conflicts with family members. They describe their changing relationships with neighbors, their shifting views about religion, and the subtle ways they defend their personal independence. Wuthnow shares the stories of farmers who operate dairies, raise livestock, and grow our fruit and vegetables. We hear from corn and soybean farmers, wheat-belt farmers, and cotton growers. We gain new insights into how farmers assign meaning to the land, and how they grapple with the increasingly difficult challenges of biotechnology and global markets. In the Blood reveals how, despite profound changes in modern agriculture, farming remains an enduring commitment that runs deeply in the veins of today’s farm families.
Download or read book Clearing Land written by Jane Brox and published by North Point Press. This book was released on 2005-09-14 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though few of us now live close to the soil, the world we inhabit has been sculpted by our long national saga of settlement. At the heart of our identity lies the notion of the family farm, as shaped by European history and reshaped by the vast opportunities of the continent. It lies at the heart of Jane Brox's personal story, too: she is the daughter of immigrant New England farmers whose way of life she memorialized in her first two books but has not carried on. In this clear-eyed, lyrical account, Brox twines the two narratives, personal and historical, to explore the place of the family farm as it has evolved from the pilgrims' brutal progress at Plymouth to the modern world, where much of our food is produced by industrial agriculture while the small farm is both marginalized and romanticized. In considering the place of the farm, Brox also considers the rise of textile cities in America, which encroached not only upon farms and farmers but upon the sense of commonality that once sustained them; and she traces the transformation of the idea of wilderness--and its intricate connection to cultivation--which changed as our ties to the land loosened, as terror of the wild was replaced by desire for it. Exploring these strands with neither judgment nor sentimentality, Brox arrives at something beyond a biography of the farm: a vivid depiction of the half-life it carries on in our collective imagination.
Download or read book The American Farmer written by Algie Martin Simons and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Unsettling of America written by Wendell Berry and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical inquiry into the ways Americans have exploited and continue to exploit the land that sustains them, tracing attitudes toward and methods of farming from the eighteenth century to the present
Download or read book The Unsettling of America written by Wendell Berry and published by Counterpoint LLC. This book was released on 1996 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical inquiry into the ways Americans have exploited and continue to exploit the land that sustains them, tracing attitudes toward and methods of farming from the eighteenth century to the present.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of American Farm Implements Antiques written by C.H. Wendel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-04-06 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolution of the modern farm Finally, an encyclopedia reference work covering American farm implements and farm-related antiques from the 1800s through the 1940s. Through Encyclopedia of American Farm Implements & Antiques, follow the exciting and fascinating technological advances in farm equipment that made the United States the breadbasket to the world. Thoroughly researched, this guide features nearly 2,000 rare illustrations of farm equipment - the most poplar to the most obscure - from firms such as Deere & Co., J.I. Case, Allis-Chalmers, International Harvester and McCormick. Trace the history of: Alfalfa Grinders Balers Corn Binders Corn Harvesters Cultivators Elevators Drills Hay Tools Milking Machines Plows Saws Threshers Washing Machines Plus Much More! If you have an interest in farming and history, you'll love Encyclopedia of American Farm Implements & Antiques. Not only does it identify and illustrate farm equipment, but it explains how this equipment was used and reveals many of the trials and tribulations farmers faced in using it. Also includes current price ranges for thousands of implements and antiques.
Download or read book Scarcity on the Land written by Frances Horvath Bachman and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The American Farmer written by and published by . This book was released on 1823 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The American Farmer written by John S. Skinner and published by . This book was released on 1829 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Harvest written by Marie Mutsuki Mockett and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great Plains For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it. In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals “not white,” but who people she encounters can’t quite categorize. American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.
Download or read book American Farmer written by and published by . This book was released on 1855 with total page 860 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 4th ser., v. 1-4 includes the Proceedings of the 1st-11th annual meetings (1848-58) of the Maryland State Agricultural Society.
Download or read book The New York Farmer and Horticultural Repository written by and published by . This book was released on 1830 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book America s Transition from Agriculture to Industry written by Greg Roza and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes how America changed its agricultural practices as a result of the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution.
Download or read book American Thresherman written by and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
