Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
data. The case study data show that family farms tend to dominate when seasonal parameters
limit specialization and that large factory-corporate farms tend to dominate when seasonal
factors can be mitigated. The case study data also show how changes in seasonal variables
(sometimes as the result of technological changes) cause predictable changes in farm
organization.
As we noted in chapter 1, we generally ignore the role of government policy, but the
issue of farm organization requires a more complete discussion. Federal farm programs
and state anticorporate farming statutes may have artificially sustained family farms by
preventing the efficient takeover of the industry by the factory-corporate farm. Sumner
(1991), however, finds no evidence that federal farm programs generally have subsidized
the family farm. Raup (1973), on the other hand, argues that farm policies have subsidized
corporate agriculture. More important, our study remains outside this debate for two reasons.
First, our historical data predate the implementation of federal and state farm policies.
Second, where we examine detailed farm-level data (British Columbia and Louisiana) there
are no anticorporate farming statutes (Knoeber 1997).
Typically, the U.S. programs have limited the amount of direct government payments per
“person,” and this limit could create an incentive to use smaller organizations than otherwise
(see Pasour 1990).
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Many students of agricultural policy have noted, however, that these
limitations are relatively easy to skirt. For example, Knutson, Penn, and Flinchbaugh (1998)
describe a Mississippi Christmas tree farm in which fifteen corporations (owned by siblings
and other relatives) were set up to increase total payments from $50,000 to $1,050,000!
Some of the more egregious cases have led to sanctions. For our purposes, we simply ignore
these effects because we have no systematic method of incorporating them into the analysis
and data.
Historical and Current Case Studies
The family unit has been the dominant organization in farming since the earliest days of
agriculture. Family farms were present in ancient Egypt, Israel, and Mesopotamia (Ellickson
and DiA. Thorland 1995) and among pre-Columbian American Indians (Cronan 1983).
Hayami and Otsuka (1993) report owner-cultivated farm dominance in Asia, Europe, and
Latin America as well as in North America. Even in Africa, where land is often owned in
common by tribes, farmland is customarily allotted to individual families. Collective farms
are a fairly recent political experiment, with typically catastrophic outcomes.
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Case studies allow us to examine many of our key predictions in a variety of times and
places. After first examining the conditions under which family farming tends to dominate,
we study the history of several specific agricultural industries. The first of these histories
looks at how the extent of the farm has diminished during the past two centuries. The other
