The Trend Towards Fewer And Larger Farms As Economic Growth Occurs :: essays research papers

The Trend Towards Fewer and Larger Farms as Economic Growth OccursThe structure of US agriculture has been shaped towards less only when thefarms are larger. In the early times of this country, people could make aliving on the 160 demesne they had received from The Homestead Act of 1862. Thisact gave families clear titles to 160 acres if they had lived on it for fiveyears. Though in todays changing world farmers have been force to increasethe sites of their operations or go out of the farming business. The farmingbusiness is a way of life to most of those who do it and do not want to quitdoing it now but with the off of the farm incomes increasing all of the time itis making farmers change their way of life.The Agriculture Economics and farming textbook, sixth addition,says that there are three classifications of farms by economic size. The firstclassification is the expanding sphere . This sector sales more than $100,000per year of farm products, it is 16% of the farms in the U S. It also produces80% of all of the farm outputs or products in the US. The farms in this sectorproduce nearly all of the farm products produced the US but are only contributeto smooth parts of the farms in the US. The expanding sector of agriculturenumbered 271,000 farms in the 1980s. This number increased to 326,000 farms by1991. The off of the farm income of this sector is only $20,847 per farm. The rack up income per farm averaged $180,276 per year. This sectors main incomecomes from farming and very little of its income comes from off of the farm jobs.This sector is growing because there is becoming more life-size farms that producemost of our food.The second sector is called the declining sector. This sector includesthe farms that sold products between $20,000 and $99,000 worth of products ayear. Those farms decreased from 637,000 in 1980 to 549,000 in 1991. Thesefarms produced only 16%of the total farming output. The income for those farmsoperators averaged $47,018 per far m in 1991. This used to be the most popularsector of farming people made there living off of small farms like this butwithin the last 20 years this sector has decreased growth and is decreasing moreall the time. These small farms are each being bought out by the larger farmsor the owners of these farms could not make a living at it.