Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
sentee landlord increased by over 1 million acres during this time period. Today almost half
of all the land that is in agricultural production in California is absentee-owned.
Similarly, in Texas, the second-largest agricultural sales producer in the nation, the amount
of farmland that is owned and operated by the same individual or set of individuals decreased
by 21 million acres since 1950, while the amount of rented land increased by almost 7 million
acres. Today, over half of the farmland in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisi-
ana, and North Dakota is owned by someone other than the person who farms it.
It is difficult to empirically evaluate the social and economic consequences of the shift to
absentee ownership of large tracts of farmland. Land, which once anchored labor, capital,
and management to a particular place and formed the foundation of a family-based system
of farming, is increasingly being put into a “reserve pool” from which it can be brought into
or taken out of production as global market forces dictate. Control of the food system, then,
is shifting from local production and regional and national processing to large-scale, global
firms.
Labor Intensification
Until quite recently, agricultural development in the United States has been characterized by
abundant land, a steady stream of labor-saving and land-extending technologies, and a relat-
ively scarce pool of labor. The “family farm” mode of economic organization incorporated
all members of the household into meeting the labor needs of the farm. When the amount
of work became too great for the existing family labor pool, one or two hired hands were
added to the farm. However, unlike many nonagricultural enterprises, especially manufactur-
ing, the ability to “efficiently” integrate a large hired labor force into most farm enterprises
was constrained by the unique aspects of agriculture. The disjuncture between “labor time”
and “production time,” noted by the sociologists Susan Mann and James Dickinson and oth-
ers, worked against the development of a labor-intensive system of industrial agriculture. 12
Don Albrecht and Steve Murdock, rural sociologists at Texas A&M University, note in this
regard, “farm production consists of stages that are typically separated by waiting periods
because the biological processes involved take time to complete. [And] … unlike production
in other industries where commodities are produced continuously throughout the year, crop
production is seasonal.” 13
Given the difficulty of adapting agriculture to accommodate an industrial-like labor force,
one might expect that the amount of hired labor on American farms would remain constant
or more likely decline. And, in fact, during most the twentieth century the number of hired
workers on American farms slowly, but steadily, went down. However, beginning in the late
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