From the Family Farm to Agribusiness
Author: Donald J. Pisani
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 1984-01-01
Total Pages: 552
ISBN-13: 9780520051270
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The Myth Of The Family Farm
Author: Ingolf Vogeler
Publisher: CRC Press
Published: 2019-06-25
Total Pages: 362
ISBN-13: 1000303705
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe ideal of the family farm has been used to justify a myriad of federal farm legislation. Land grants, the distribution of irrigation water, land-grant college research and services, farm programs, and tax laws all have been affected. Yet, asserts the author, federal legislation and practices have had an institutional bias toward large-scale farms and agribusiness and have hastened the demise of family farms. Dr. Vogeler examines the struggle between land interests in the private and public sectors and finds that the myth of the family farm has been used to obscure the dominance of agribusiness and that the corporate penetration of agriculture has in turn contributed to the plight of migrant workers, the decline of small towns, and the economic difficulties of independent farmers. Dr. Vogeler also identifies the major shortcomings of agribusiness and federal land-related laws and programs; examines the regional impact of agribusiness and federal farm programs on rural areas; and considers the role of racial minorities and women in the development of agrarian capitalism. In conclusion, he offers a structural analysis that provides the means for progressive social change and states that the achievement of economic equality in rural America and the dismantling of the corporate control of agriculture can be realized through farmer-labor alliances.
Preserving the Family Farm
Author: Mary Neth
Publisher:
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 378
ISBN-13: 9780801848988
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBetween 1900 and 1940 American family farming gave way to what came to be called agribusiness. Government policies, consumer goods aimed at rural markets, and the increasing consolidation of agricultural industries all combined to bring about changes in farming strategies that had been in use since the frontier era. Because the Midwestern farm economy played an important part in the relations of family and community, new approaches to farm production meant new patterns in interpersonal relations as well. In Preserving the Family Farm Mary Neth focuses on these relations--of gender and community--to shed new light on the events of this crucial period. (source: 4e de couverture).
Family Farming
Author:
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2008-06-01
Total Pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9780803217485
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAmericans decry the decline of family farming but stand by helplessly as industrial agribusiness takes over. The prevailing sentiment is that family farms should survive for important social, ethical, and economic reasons. But will they? This timely book exposes the biases in American farm policies that irrationally encourage expansion, biases evident in federal commodity programs, income tax provisions, and subsidized credit services. Family Farming also exposes internal conflicts, particularly the conflict between the private interests of individual farmers and the public interest in family farming as a whole. It challenges the assumption that bigger is better, critiques the technological basis of modern agriculture, and calls for farming practices that are ethical, economical, and ecologically sound. The alternative policies discussed in this book could yet save the family farm, and the ways and means of saving it are argued here with special urgency. ø This Bison Books edition includes a new introduction by the author providing a more national perspective, underscoring the repetitive cycles of American agriculture over the decade, and assessing the major policy issues that have dominated agriculture in recent years.
On Behalf of the Family Farm
Author: Jenny Barker Devine
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2013-05-01
Total Pages: 204
ISBN-13: 1609381491
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOn Behalf of the Family Farm traces the development of women’s activism and agrarian feminisms in the Midwest after 1945, as farm women’s lives were being transformed by the realities of modern agriculture. Author Jenny Barker Devine demonstrates that in an era when technology, depopulation, and rapid economic change dramatically altered rural life, midwestern women met these challenges with their own feminine vision of farm life. Their “agrarian feminisms” offered an alternative to, but not necessarily a rejection of, second-wave feminism. Focusing on women in four national farm organizations in Iowa—the Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, the National Farm Organization, and the Porkettes—Devine highlights specific moments in time when farm women had to reassess their roles and strategies for preserving and improving their way of life. Rather than retreat from the male-dominated world of agribusiness and mechanized production, postwar women increasingly asserted their identities as agricultural producers and demanded access to public spaces typically reserved for men. Over the course of several decades, they developed agrarian feminisms that combined cherished rural traditions with female empowerment, cooperation, and collaboration. Iowa farm women emphasized working partnerships between husbands and wives, women’s work in agricultural production, and women’s unique ways of understanding large-scale conventional farming.
Family Farms: Survival and Prospect
Author: Harold Brookfield
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-11-08
Total Pages: 504
ISBN-13: 113412225X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMarx, Lenin and Kautsky all regarded family farming as doomed to be split into capitalist farms and proletarian labour. Most modern economists regard family farming as an archaic form of production organization, destined to give way to agribusiness. Family Farms refutes these notions and analyses the manner in which family farmers have been able to operate with success in both developed and developing countries, using examples wherever these are illuminating. This book begins by reviewing theoretical arguments about agricultural structures, and defines family farming. This is followed by five vignettes about farming in the first half of the twentieth century. The authors analyse the conditions of access to land and water, labour, livestock, tools and seed and review marketing arrangements and how they have changed since 1900. A three-chapter review of evolving policies in the North Atlantic countries, in the communist states, and in the developing countries, leads to a discussion of the impact of neo-liberalism. New issues of the farmer as steward of the environment are explored, as well as modern ideas about de-agrarianization and a discussion of land reform, tracing the experience of Mexico and Brazil. In two final chapters the more positive approach of pluriactivity is discussed and followed by a review of organic farming as a principal modern innovation. New political organizations representing family farming are described and their demands are discussed with empathy, but in a sceptical manner. Family farming is an adaptable and resilient form of production organization, and these qualities have allowed it to survive. The future will be no easier than the past, yet family farming continues to flourish in most contexts. This book will be useful for researchers, students and lecturers interested in Development Studies, Rural Studies and Geography and Anthropology, as well as general readers who have an interest in farming.
American Agriculture
Author: Mark V. Wetherington
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2021-05-28
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 1442269286
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAmerican Agriculture tells the story of farming in American from contact between Native Americans and Europeans to the present. Agricultural historian Mark V. Wetherington provide a narrative overview of significant historical trends explored through specific crop regions and their emergence over time. He traces the decline of the family farm that at one time formed the backbone of America’s agrarian culture and the emergence of large industrial farms that overproduce subsidized commodity crops. American Agriculture provides a narrative overview of significant historical trends explored through specific crop regions and their emergence over time. It is interdisciplinary in approach and places the major themes and topics within the broader context of the nation's history. This book will be essential reading to anyone interesting in the past, present, or future of American farming.
Eating Tomorrow
Author: Timothy A. Wise
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2019-02-05
Total Pages: 296
ISBN-13: 1620974231
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"A powerful polemic against agricultural technology." —Nature A major new book that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expert Few challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050—at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response, corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise's Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests. Most of the world, Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what and how to grow food. These same farmers—who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—can show the way forward as the world warms and population increases. Wise takes readers to remote villages to see how farmers are rebuilding soils with ecologically sound practices and nourishing a diversity of native crops without chemicals or imported seeds. They are growing more and healthier food; in the process, they are not just victims in the climate drama but protagonists who have much to teach us all.
The Fate of Family Farming
Author: Ronald Jager
Publisher: UPNE
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9781584650270
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA penetrating look at the condition of family farming--yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Going Over Home
Author: Charles Thompson, Jr.
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2019-10-03
Total Pages: 242
ISBN-13: 1603589139
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBooklist Editors’ Choice “Best Books of 2019” An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet as he came of age he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country’s agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation’s rural places and their people.
