| |
Mid-sized Farms in a Squeeze
Why Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle? A White Paper for the Agriculture of the Middle Project
by Frederick Kirschenmann (reprinted with permission). The white paper included below originally appeared in the July 2004 issue of Juliens Journal. To support their initiatives on behalf of agriculture in the middle, please visit their website at www.agofthemiddle.org.
Mid-sized farms “are too big to sell directly to green markets but too small to compete with highly subsidized industrial farms,” as Dan Barber points out, but they “cultivate more than 40 percent of our farmland” (“Stuck in the Middle,” New York Times, 23 November 2005). What is more, in the words of Farm and Dairy editor Susan Crowell, “These are the farms that sustain our rural communities. These are the farmers who care properly for their animals. These are the farmers who take their role as stewards of the land seriously. These are the farms we want to drive by in the countryside. And these are the farms that are getting squeezed and may not make it through another generation” (Farm and Dairy, 19 August, 2004).
As Susan Crowell goes on to say, there is “no simple answer, no magic policy.” That’s where the Agriculture of the Middle Project’s White Paper comes in. We are posting the Paper in full. It is long but thorough, and it suggests a route past the squeeze. A route neither simple nor magic, but one that’s doable.
Fred Maier
Why Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle?
A White Paper for the Agriculture of the Middle Project
During the past several decades, the American food system has increasingly followed two new structural paths. On one hand, small-scale farm and food enterprises in many regions have thrived by adapting to successful direct markets which enabled them to sell their production directly to consumers. This is an encouraging trend with real benefits to their communities. On the other hand, giant consolidated food and fiber firms have established supply chains that move bulk commodities around the globe largely to serve their own business interests.
This new pattern of food systems has had a disastrous effect on independent family farmers---it has led to a disappearing agriculture of the middle. These farms and enterprises of the middle have traditionally constituted the heart of American agriculture. They operate in the space between the vertically integrated commodity markets and the direct markets. While the bulk of these farms have gross annual sales between $100,000 and $250,000,3 it would be a mistake to characterize them simply as midsized or small farms. Many of these endangered agriculture of the middle farms are what the U.S. Department of Agricultures Economic Research Service calls farming-occupation farms and large family farms.
What we are calling the agriculture of the middle is, in other words, a market-structure phenomenon. It is not, strictly speaking, a scale phenomenon. Yet, while it is not scale determined, it is scale related. That is, farms of any size may be part of the market that falls between the vertically integrated, commodity markets and the direct markets. But the midsized farms are the most vulnerable in todays polarized markets, since they are too small to compete in the highly consolidated commodity markets and too large and commoditized to sell in the direct markets.
Read the rest of the White Paper (Acrobat PDF)
|
|
Index of Articles
Beyond 'Green Shopping'
by Jerry Mander & John Cavanagh. Reprinted with permission from the September 24, 2007 issue of The Nation magazine. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.
Horse Power
by Dick Courteau. Excerpted with permission of Orion magazine September/October 2007 issue.
Hurting a Small Farm Near You
Reprinted with permission of Anthony Flaccavento. For more information visit Appalachian Sustainable Development.
Put farm subsidies out to pasture
by Brian M. Riedl. Reprinted with permission of the author.
One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum
by Wendell Berry. Excerpt reprinted with permission from "One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum,"which was part of the September 11, 2006 special issue of The Nation magazine. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week's Nation magazine can be accessed at www.thenation.com.
Farm Economics 101
"You Kill It, You Eat It" and Other Lessons From My Thrifty Childhood by Jean Bethke Elshtain. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the John Templeton Foundation, www.Templeton.org
Study Shows Potential Economic Payoffs Tied to Healthy Eating from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Reprinted with permission. The full study may be read at:
www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/files/health_0606.pdf
Mid-sized Farms in a Squeeze
Why Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle? A White Paper for the Agriculture of the Middle Project
by Frederick Kirschenmann (reprinted with permission). The white paper included below originally appeared in the July 2004 issue of Juliens Journal. To support their initiatives on behalf of agriculture in the middle, please visit their website at www.agofthemiddle.org.
A Plea for “d”emocracy
The letter by Amalie Lipstreu printed below appeared in the Summer 2006 newsletter of the Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association (OEFFA). Posted with the permission of The Farmland Center www.thefarmlandcenter.org.
Water
“Since widespread irrigation began in the 1950s, the Ogallala has sustained a net loss of as much as 120 trillion gallons — 11 percent of its original volume. One entire Lake Erie, plus a little. Gone... (Quoted with the permission of William Ashworth)
Charlotte's Webpage: Why children shouldn't have the world at their fingertips
by Lowell Monke (reprinted with permission). This article originally appeared in the November/December 2005 issue of Orion magazine, 187 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230, 888/909-6568, www.oriononline.org. For a free copy, please visit their website.
the ostrich rhumba and the realm of the inevitable
preserving farmland
Copyright Lynn R. Miller. Reprinted by permission of the author, originally appeared in the summer 2005 Small Farmer's Journal.
Watch for Signs
By Kristy Hebert, Farm and Dairy Reporter reprinted with permission, July 14, 2005 issue.
Letter from Larksong
by David Kline, Editor, reprinted with permission from Farming Magazine's Summer 2005 issue.
Think Globally, Eat Locally
by Jennifer Wilkins, December 18, 2004, reprinted with permission from the New York Times
A Secretary for Farmland Security
by Victor Davis Hanson (reprinted with permission) from an op-ed piece in the New York Times, December 9, 2004
|
|
