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Social and Economic Interactions and the Structure of U.S. Agriculture

Number of Hog Operations, USA"Consolidation" and "concentration" are perhaps the most apt words to characterize the structural change in American agricultural production over the past two decades. The number of farms with hogs in the United States declined from almost 700,000 in 1980 to approximately 70,000 in 2000. At the same time, the percentage of hogs produced by the largest sized farms (greater than 5,000 head inventory) rose from 20 percent of total U.S. production in 1992 to approximately 50 percent in 2000. Similar statistics also exist for poultry and crop production in the U.S.


Percent of USA Hogs by Farm SizeThis shift toward larger production units and the substitution of chemical and mechanical inputs for labor have raised a variety of social and economic issues. For example, there are questions concerning the environmental sustainability of modern agricultural production systems. More recently, low product prices, larger government payments to farmers, and increased use of alternative business arrangements such as contracting have also brought into question the economic and social sustainability of the current agricultural industry structure.

State governments have traditionally promulgated and enforced environmental policies with respect to farm level production. However, varying political forces across state lines have led to different degrees of regulation and enforcement. There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that such differences are responsible for shifts in livestock production to non-traditional areas (and less regulated) with less stringent regulation and often where there is little or no crop base to utilize the manure nutrients. Such shifts in economic activity may have social and environmental consequences that are not always in society's best interest.

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