Only Reconnect - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 108

noted: 'The pace of industrialization of agriculture has quickened. The dominant trend
is a few large vertically integrated farms controlling the majority of food and fibre products
in an increasingly global processing and distribution system. ' 15
Tom Dobbs of South Dakota State University, in his evidence to the
National Commission, describes what happened in eastern South Dakota,
where his great grandfather first set up a farm in the 1870s. 16 Three
generations were raised on the farm, and it finally passed out of family
ownership in 1997. In Moody County, the location of the farm, farm
numbers halved from 1300 in 1949 to 640 during the 1990s, with size
doubling to 180 hectares. But it is in the standardization of the landscape
where change has been most dramatic. Soybean acreage rose sharply, and
areas under oats, flax, hay and barley fell, accompanied by large falls in
numbers of sheep and small declines in cattle and pigs. Mixed systems
were replaced by simplified systems of maize and soybean. As Tom Dobbs
says, these changes mirror those across the Corn Belt and Great Plains,
with small farms replaced by large farms, and mixed farms by simple ones.
It is only narrow economics that allows us to believe that these large
operations are actually more efficient. We simply do not use the proper
accounting measures. The National Commission also indicated that:
'Normal measures of efficiency do not reflect the social and environmental goods produced
by a large number of small farms.' Willis Peterson of the University of
Minnesota echoes this sentiment by asserting: 'The small family and part-time
farms are at least as efficient as larger commercial enterprises. In fact, there is evidence of
diseconomies of scale as farm size increases.' 17
In two previous topics, Regenerating Agriculture and The Living Land , I have
reflected on the historic analysis by Walter Goldschmidt of California in
the mid 20th century. It bears restating, in brief. Goldschmidt studied the
two communities of Arvin and Dinuba in the San Joaquin Valley, similar
in all respects except for farm size. Dinuba was characterized by small
family farms, and Arvin by large corporate enterprises. The impact of
these structures of farming was remarkable. In Dinuba, he found a better
quality of life, superior public services and facilities, more parks, shops
and retail trade, twice the number of organizations for civic and social
improvement, and better participation by the public. The small farm
community was seen as a better place to live because, as Michael Perelman
later put it: ' The small farm offered the opportunity for “attachment” to local culture
and care for the surrounding land.' A study 30 years later confirmed these
findings - social connectedness, trust and participation in community life
was greater where farm scale was smaller. 18
Yet, small farmers are still widely viewed as economically inefficient.
Their disappearance has, in truth, been a severe loss to rural culture. Linda
Lobao's study of rural inequality shows the importance of locality that