Why Iowa Should Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle
The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University
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, 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
Agriculture's 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….
The Disappearing Middle
Evidence of the disappearing middle is already accumulating. Iowa serves as a compelling example.
The decade from 1987 to 1997 saw an 18 percent sales increase in farms
that are 1 to 100 acres in size and a 71 percent sales increase in
farms that are more than 1000 acres in size. Farms in the 260 to 500
acre range averaged a 29 percent decrease in sales. The percentage of
operators and acres in all farms between 100 and 999 acres in size
declined 23 and 25 percent, respectively.
In the
time since the USDA‘s 1997 data was published, we have seen the
“middle” disappear at an even more alarming rate. In Iowa during the
five-year period from 1997 to 2002, there was a 17 percent drop in
farms with sales ranging from $5,000 and $500,000 while the number of
farms with gross sales of more than $500,000 increased by 17 percent.
Farms with less than $2,500 of gross sales increased by 39 percent….
Some of What We Will Lose
So, exactly what is it that we stand to lose if the agriculture of the middle disappears?
• The opportunity to choose foods with special desirable attributes.
• Open spaces that are easily accessible
• Wildlife habitat
• Clean air
• Soils that hold rainwater for aquifers
• Soils in crop and pasture land that help reduce flooding
• Taxes will increase because farmland requires fewer services than residential areas
•
Diversified farmland that includes perennials serves as a carbon “sink“
to reduce greenhouse gases that are implicated in global climate change
• Face of America altered from featuring smaller farms on a diverse landscape to endless fields of mono-crops
(Click here to read the complete article in PDF format.)
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