Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Sources: Agricultural Statistics, various years; U.S. Census of Agriculture, 1997.
Today, the traditional farm management blueprint for agriculture is so ingrained in the
minds of farmers, policy makers, and agricultural professionals that it has become “the world
as given” to them. Most people associated with agriculture in the United States assume that
staying on the agricultural treadmill and producing more food with less land and less labor
is the only way agriculture can or should be organized. And, in fact, this is the model of pro-
duction that is being exported to developing nations as the “American way of farming.”
By adopting, without question, a strictly economic view of production agriculture, the
stage was set for the development of a market-oriented, economically focused system of
farming that could be uncoupled from communities and households. If agriculture could be
viewed in the same manner as manufacturing, then there was no reason not to expect a trend
toward mass production, standardization, and homogenization of agricultural commodities.
And, indeed, over the past hundred years this is exactly the path farming has taken.
The Social Construction of Modern Economic Categories
Mass production, whether in manufacturing or agriculture, has given rise to a mode of eco-
nomic analysis anchored to “free markets” as mechanisms that order both production and
consumption. This mode of analysis is based on constructs that have little connection to
noneconomic social forms. The terms “industry” and “occupation,” for example, are disem-
bodied economic concepts that are most amenable to a strictly economic form of analysis. 22
They have been “constructed” apart from any social context (household, community, etc.) to
which they might be naturally linked.
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