Studies In The Transformation Of U S Agriculture

Author : A. Eugene Havens,Gregory Hooks,Patrick H Mooney,Max Pfeffer
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2019-09-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000313468

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Studies In The Transformation Of U.S. Agriculture by A. Eugene Havens,Gregory Hooks,Patrick H Mooney,Max Pfeffer Pdf

In recent years, the consensual view of rural society has been challenged by theorists identifying the conflict, exploitation, and power relations in rural society. Beyond this theoretical challenge, empirical studies of the sociology of agriculture have provided a fresh understanding of the dynamics of U.S. agriculture. This book contributes to the growing literature by providing a historical perspective. The contributors explore historical developments in U.S. agriculture within the context of the larger political economy. The book opens with a review of the similarities and differences between the critical rural sociology of today with that of the 1930s and moves on to a study of the accumulation process in U.S. agriculture. Other issues covered include the erosion of the southern class structure during and after the 1930s, the landed aristocracy's reassertion in the post-bellum south, changes in the class structure and locus of agriculture in the midwest, and historical developments in the labor process and in capitalist agriculture in California. The concluding chapter provides a framework for studying both the origins and the consequences of state agriculture policies.

Author : Ellen Hillbom,Patrick Svensson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780415684958

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Agricultural Transformation in a Global History Perspective by Ellen Hillbom,Patrick Svensson Pdf

This book uses a global history approach in order to reach a greater understanding of the agricultural transformation process, using a wide number of comparisons over time and space. The book seeks to identify key factors for agricultural transformation, through the use of micro level case studies, and to assess their importance in a global perspective.

Author : Louis A. Ferleger
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 126 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2020-01-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9781785272639

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Planting the Seeds of Research by Louis A. Ferleger Pdf

'Planting the Seeds of Research' explores why by the beginnings of the twentieth century the United States dominated agricultural production worldwide. The thesis is that the ultimate investments made by the United States Department of Agriculture and State governments created the research structure that made American agriculture spectacularly successful. The social commitment, by business, government and farmers built the productive capabilities that generated sustainable prosperity in American agriculture. The ultimate investment in agriculture enabled Americans over time to spend less of their disposable income on food and more on other goods and services, and compete in international agricultural markets.

Author : National Research Council,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources,Committee to Review the Role of Publicly Funded Agricultural Research on the Structure of U.S. Agriculture
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2002-04-18
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780309076166

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Publicly Funded Agricultural Research and the Changing Structure of U.S. Agriculture by National Research Council,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources,Committee to Review the Role of Publicly Funded Agricultural Research on the Structure of U.S. Agriculture Pdf

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requested that the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources of the National Research Council (NRC) convene a panel of experts to examine whether publicly funded agricultural research has influenced the structure of U.S. agriculture and, if so, how. The Committee to Review the Role of Publicly Funded Agricultural Research on the Structure of U.S. Agriculture was asked to assess the role of public-sector agricultural research on changes in the size and numbers of farms, with particular emphasis on the evolution of very-large-scale operations.

Author : Paul Conkin
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 243 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2008-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780813173153

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A Revolution Down on the Farm by Paul Conkin Pdf

At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin’s lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America’s vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.

Author : Donald H. Parkerson
Publisher : Purdue University Press
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2002-09
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1557532826

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Agricultural Transition in New York State by Donald H. Parkerson Pdf

This study of Agricultural Transition in New York State focuses on the transformation of the U.S. agricultural economy in the middle of the nineteenth century and the its impact on farm families.

Author : Lawrence M Busch,William B Lacy
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2019-07-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000314526

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The Agricultural Scientific Enterprise by Lawrence M Busch,William B Lacy Pdf

The State Agricultural Experiment Stations have played a fundamental role in the development of science and agriculture in the United States. From their inception in 1887, the experiment stations have attempted to wed basic research with practical application and have helped institutionalize a utilitarian approach to agricultural science. Agricultural research and the new technology it helped to generate were major factors in the transformation of U.S. agriculture into a high technology, mechanized, science-based industry. Moreover, the experiment stations, as the first large-scale, publicly supported scientific research institutions in the United States, have also long been models for scientific institutions both here and abroad. Compiled for the 1987 centennial of the State Agricultural Experiment Stations, this volume critically examines past performance, current issues, and future directions for public agricultural research in the United States. Each of the authors, drawn from disciplines as diverse as philosophy and agronomy, focuses on a central concern for the scientific enterprise. Issues include priority setting, maintaining and promoting disciplinary and interdisciplinary effectiveness, supporting higher education for agriculture, and efficacious dissemination of research findings. By setting these issues in their historical and philosophical context, the volume suggests new approaches for meeting the continuing challenge to achieve equity, efficiency, sustainability, flexibility, conservation, and consistency with other objectives of U.S. society.

Author : John Fraser Hart
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0813922291

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The Changing Scale of American Agriculture by John Fraser Hart Pdf

Few Americans know much about contemporary farming, which has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. In The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the award-winning geographer and landscape historian John Fraser Hart describes the transformation of farming from the mid-twentieth century, when small family farms were still viable, to the present, when a farm must sell at least $250,000 of farm products each year to provide an acceptable level of living for a family. The increased scale of agriculture has outmoded the Jeffersonian ideal of small, self-sufficient farms. In the past farmers kept a variety of livestock and grew several crops, but modern family farms have become highly specialized in producing a single type of livestock or one or two crops. As farms have become larger and more specialized, their number has declined. Hart contends that modern family farms need to become integrated into tightly orchestrated food-supply chains in order to thrive, and these complex new organizations of large-scale production require managerial skills of the highest order. According to Hart, this trend is not only inevitable, but it is beneficial, because it produces the food American consumers want to buy at prices they can afford. Although Hart provides the statistics and clear analysis such a study requires, his book focuses on interviews with farmers: those who have shifted from mixed crop-and-livestock farming to cash-grain farming in the Midwest agricultural heartland; beef, dairy, chicken, egg, turkey, and hog producers around the periphery of the heartland; and specialty crop producers on the East and West Coasts. These invaluable case studies bring the reader into direct personal contact with the entrepreneurs who are changing American agriculture. Hart believes that modern large-scale farmers have been criticized unfairly, and The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the result of decades of research, is his attempt to tell their side of the story.

Author : United States. Commission on Agricultural Workers
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Agricultural laborers
ISBN : UTEXAS:059173000527015

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Report of the Commission on Agricultural Workers by United States. Commission on Agricultural Workers Pdf

Author : Bruce L. Gardner
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2006-03-31
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780674263703

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American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century by Bruce L. Gardner Pdf

American agriculture in the twentieth century has given the world one of its great success stories, a paradigm of productivity and plenty. Yet the story has its dark side, from the plight of the Okies in the 1930s to the farm crisis of the 1980s to today's concerns about low crop prices and the impact of biotechnology. Looking at U.S. farming over the past century, Bruce Gardner searches out explanations for both the remarkable progress and the persistent social problems that have marked the history of American agriculture. Gardner documents both the economic difficulties that have confronted farmers and the technological and economic transformations that have lifted them from relative poverty to economic parity with the nonfarm population. He provides a detailed analysis of the causes of these trends, with emphasis on the role of government action. He reviews how commodity support programs, driven by interest-group politics, have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to little purpose. Nonetheless, Gardner concludes that by reconciling competing economic interests while fostering productivity growth and economic integration of the farm and nonfarm economies, the overall twentieth-century role of government in American agriculture is fairly viewed as a triumph of democracy.

Author : William H Friedland
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 357 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2021-11-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000009453

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Towards A New Political Economy Of Agriculture by William H Friedland Pdf

The emergence of a truly global economy in the 1970s and the need to understand the subsequent changes in economic structure provided the impetus for this synthesis of the sociology of agriculture. The book offers the first formulations of a political economy theory that explains the transnational social and production relations of food and agriculture. Drawing upon studies of labour, technology, the state and gender, the contributors put forward a basis for reassessing and restating the intellectual framework of agriculture.

Author : Mark Overton
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1996-04-18
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0521568595

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Agricultural Revolution in England by Mark Overton Pdf

This book is the first available survey of English agriculture between 1500 and 1850. It combines new evidence with recent findings from the specialist literature, to argue that the agricultural revolution took place in the century after 1750. Taking a broad view of agrarian change, the author begins with a description of sixteenth-century farming and an analysis of its regional structure. He then argues that the agricultural revolution consisted of two related transformations. The first was a transformation in output and productivity brought about by a complex set of changes in farming practice. The second was a transformation of the agrarian economy and society, including a series of related developments in marketing, landholding, field systems, property rights, enclosure and social relations. Written specifically for students, this book will be invaluable to anyone studying English economic and social history, or the history of agriculture.

Author : Louis E. Swanson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2019-04-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780429712975

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Agriculture And Community Change In The U.s. by Louis E. Swanson Pdf

This book contains the Office of Technology Assessment commissioned papers analyzing the Northeast, South, Midwest, the Great Plains and the West of the U.S. The papers indicate that the relationship between the structure of agriculture and characteristics of rural communities vary in the U.S. .

Author : Patricia Allen
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2004-01-01
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780271045689

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Together at the Table by Patricia Allen Pdf

Everywhere you look people are more aware of what they eat and where their food comes from. In a cafeteria in Los Angeles, children make their lunchtime food choices at fresh-fruit and salad bars stocked with local foods. In a community garden in New York, low-income residents are producing organically grown fruits and vegetables for their own use and to sell at market. In Madison, Wisconsin, shoppers select their food from a bounty of choices at a vibrant farmers&’ market. Together at the Table is about people throughout the United States who are building successful alternatives to the contemporary agrifood system and their prospects for the future. At the heart of these efforts are the movements for sustainable agriculture and community food security. Both movements seek to reconstruct the agrifood system&—the food production chain, from the growing of crops to food production and distribution&—to become more ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially just. Allen describes the ways in which people working in these movements view the world and how they see their place in challenging and reshaping the agrifood system. She also shows how ideas and practices of sustainable agriculture and community food security have already woven their way into the dominant agrifood institutions. Allen explores the possibilities this process may hold for improving social and environmental justice in the American agrifood system. Together at the Table is an important reminder that much work still remains to be done. Now that the ideas and priorities of alternative food movements have taken hold, it is time for the next&—even more challenging&—step. Alternative agrifood movements must acknowledge and address the deeper structural and cultural patterns that constrain the long-term resolution of social and environmental problems in the agrifood system.

Author : Rachel Bezner Kerr,T. L. Pendergrast,Bobby J. Smith II,Jeffrey Liebert
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 85 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2023-06-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783031304842

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Rethinking Food System Transformation by Rachel Bezner Kerr,T. L. Pendergrast,Bobby J. Smith II,Jeffrey Liebert Pdf

This book contains a collection of selected papers from the 2017 Farm-to-Plate: Uniting for a Just and Sustainable Food System conference in Ithaca, New York, which explored what different advocates, stakeholders, growers, and community members today prioritize when it comes to justice, action, and transformation in the agri-food system. The research presented at this symposium shows the diverse range of approaches scientists have taken to investigate this aforementioned question. The papers represent a combined effort to creatively educate, share, and connect work being done by stakeholders on food system transformation. Previously published in Agriculture and Human Values Volume 36, issue 4, December 2019