The Trend Towards Fewer and Larger Farms as Economic Growth Occurs
The structure of US agriculture has been shaped towards less but the farms are larger. In the early times of this country, people could make a living on the 160 acres they had received from The Homestead Act of 1862. This act gave families clear titles to 160 acres if they had lived on it for five years. Though in today's changing world farmers have been forced to increase the sites of their operations or go out of the farming business. The farming business is a way of life to most of those who do it and do not want to quit doing it now but with the off of the farm incomes increasing all of the time it is making farmers change their way of life.
The Agriculture Economics
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This sector sales more than $100,000 per year of farm products, it is 16% of the farms in the US. It also produces
80% of all of the farm outputs or products in the US. The farms in this sector produce nearly all of the farm products produced the US but are only contribute to small parts of the farms in the US. The expanding sector of agriculture numbered 271,000 farms in the 1980's. This number increased to 326,000 farms by
1991. The off of the farm income of this sector is only $20,847 per farm. The total income per farm averaged $180,276 per year. This sectors main income comes from farming and very little of its income comes from off of the farm jobs.
This sector is growing because there is becoming more big farms that produce most of our food.
The second sector is called the declining sector. This sector includes the farms that sold products between $20,000 and $99,000 worth of products a year. Those farms decreased from 637,000 in 1980 to 549,000 in 1991. These farms produced only 16%of the total farming output. The income for those farms operators averaged $47,018 per farm in 1991. This used to be the most popular sector of farming people made there living off of small farms like this
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These small farms are either being bought out by the larger farms or the owners of these farms could not make a living at it. With the declining of this sector, it is leading more people to off of the farm jobs and is decreasing the agricultural world.
The third sector of the three is the noncommercial farms, or the hobby farmers. These farms totaled 1,229,000 in the US in 1991. They produce a very small percentage of the products produced in the US. This sector total income equals $35,163 per year. Over 100% of this income comes from off of the farm jobs. This income equaled $35,206 a year on the average, this sector loses $43 a year in the farming business. These people do not mind taking the loss because they have other jobs and just farm as a hobby, part time or retirement operations. The farming world has changed a great deal in the past twenty years with new technology one person can do more so the size of the farms keeps growing.
Although, with all of the cost of this technology, the small farms cannot compete with the big ones. Therefore, there are more and more of these farms going out of
The idea of the family farm has been destroyed by large food corporations. As discussed in class, industrial farming typically leads to the mass produ...
There were three acts implemented in 1862. The first was the Homestead Act which stated that 160 acres would be granted after five years of residence and upon making specific improvements. This act led to the rapid settlement of the Midwest. The next act was the Morrill Act which granted two townships (approximately 40,000 acres) to each state for
A similar thing happened throughout the latter part of the 19th century, after the Homestead Act of 1862 was passed. The Homestead Act gave settlers as much as 160 acres of land for living on it for five years, as well as improving it, while paying a nominal fee averaging about thirty dollars, but in some cases as low as ten dollars. Residency was required for ownership on the land. It was later found that 160 acres was not enough in the plains, though it was on the eastern coast (Freligh).
Sumner, Daniel, José E. Bervejillo, and Nicolai V. Kuminoff. "The measure of California agriculture and its importance in the state’s economy." California Agriculture: Dimensions and Issues. J. Siebert (2003).
The distribution of Government lands had been an issue since the Revolutionary War. Early methods for allocating unsettled land outside the original 13 colonies were chaotic. Boundaries were established by stepping off plots from geographical landmarks. As a result, overlapping claims and border disputes were common. The Land Ordinance of 1785 finally implemented a standardized system of Federal land surveys that eased boundary conflicts. Territories were divided into a 6-mile square called a township prior to settlement. The township was divided into 36 sections, each measuring 1 square mile or 640 acres each. Sale of public land was viewed as a means to generate revenue for the Government rather than as a way to encourage settlement. Initially, an individual was required to purchase a full section of land at the cost of $1 per acre for 640 acres. The investment needed to purchase these large plots and the massive amount of physical labor required to clear the land for agriculture were often insurmountable obstacles.
The first premise is known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO). These are operations concentrate to meet the demand of low cost high quantity amounts of food. For years, farms were thought of as the farmer that woke before the sun to tend to the livestock and the children would work the farm after school. This is no longer the case, these small-scale farms fight to complete with the larger industrial factory farms that have the capability to meet the economic and agricultural demand. CAFOs are becoming a battleground in the war over food and the environment in the United States. (Kolbe, 2013) The center of this war is Iowa with its rural population and interest in the agricultural industry. There is increasing concern over these operations from their surrounding areas.
Cattle farms make up a great deal of the United States with 619,172 beef cattle farms(USDA 2012 Ag Census). The beef cattle industry has an economic impact of $88.25 billion(USDA ERS 2014). (Unknown author. Retrieved from, www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx)
Maday, John. "USDA Projects Growth in the U.S. Livestock Production." Drovers Cattle Network 15 February 2011: 1. Web. 24 Apr 2011. .
agriculture - items: grain, sugar beets, sunflower seed, vegetables, products of the soil; hamburger, milk
“ About 10 billion land animals in the united states are raised for dairy, meat, and eggs each year” (Dosomething.org). Animals and crops are raised and grown by following either the industrial food chain or the pastoral food chain. When looking at the pastoral and industrial food chain, there are differences and similarities that demonstrate the benefits and cost of each food chain, concluding that the industrial food chain is more costly.
Farmers are essentially the back-bone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production, (CSS statistics). Without farmers, there would be no food for us to consume. Big business picked up on this right away and began to control the farmers profits and products. When farmers buy their land, they take out a loan in order to pay for their land and farm house and for the livestock, crops, and machinery that are involved in the farming process. Today, the loans are paid off through contracts with big business corporations. Since big business has such a hold over the farmers, they take advantage of this and capitalize on their crops, commodities, and profits. Farmers are life-long slaves to these b...
People make money off of farming. Farming is some people's lives, it’s how they live. These people are hard workers, they can’t sit around on the couch every afternoon and watch tv they are always slaving away in the field and/or pasture. Especially during harvest, when taking out crops! Farming provides jobs for truck drivers, store owners, and others in the family or friends. The harvest season is loud with a lot of vehicles working. Farming makes more money than a lot of jobs such as banking, serving, and a ton more! These farmers have to work hard and make money for new supplies, supplies such as combines, tractors, barns, plows, tillers, trucks, grain trucks, even land. Farmers also need money for more livestock like cows, hogs, chicken, pigs, and
An article produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states,”Livestock contribute forty percent of the global value of agricultural output and support the livelihoods and food security of almost 1.3 billion people”(fao.org). Therefore globally many people depend on the production of animal agriculture to supply a basic need in their everyday lives.”The human population, currently increasing at 1.4% per year, is forecast to increase by an average of 1.2% per year over the period to 2020, reaching 7.7 billion “(Robert O. Wilson). Therefore, urbanization is increasing and incomes are rising in many parts of the world, trends associated with increased per capita demand for milk, meat, and eggs. Another way animal agriculture is beneficial is to the U.S.
Farming is going downhill. The Census of Agriculture said, “the amount of cropland harvested was nearly 2 percent more in 2012 than 2007.” That means that farming is not as good as it used to be. It is much harder to find farmland, and the prices of dairy products and seeds are going