SOME ISSUES IN LAND TENURE, OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL IN DISPERSED VS. CONCENTRATED AGRICULTURE

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SOME ISSUES IN LAND TENURE, OWNERSHIP AND
CONTROL IN DISPERSED VS. CONCENTRATED
AGRICULTURE

Philip M. Raup, Professor

Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
University of Minnesota

One of the uncritically accepted assumptions regarding the struc-
ture of American agriculture involves the inevitability of continuing
increases in farm size, concentration of control, and specialization.
Until quite recently, the power of this assumption has been sufficient
to inhibit any serious efforts within the agricultural establishment
to analyze the possible consequences. This paper points up some of
the issues that seem likely to arise if there is a continuation of these
trends toward a concentration of economic power in agriculture.

It explores several problem areas that promise to prove critical in
the shaping of public policy toward agriculture in the coming decade.

The Fragmentation of the Agricultural Sector

We can begin this exploration by noting that the farm sector has
become so specialized that we can no longer describe it in generali-
ties. Farm price supports unquestionably contribute today to rigidity
and inflation in dairy products and sugar, but have been much less
significant in foodgrain and feedgrain crops in recent years. In the
international dimension, this is reflected in a bimodal policy struc-
ture: Prices for wool and sugar can be supported by import policies;
price supports for grains and cotton involve export policies.

The most portentous change involves the increasing cleavage
between the livestock and the grains sectors. This functional separa-
tion has probably been the primary cause for the decline of broad-
based farm organizations and the rise of special-interest commodity
groups. This sets the stage for jurisdictional conflict within agri-
culture that is analogous to the conflicts within organized labor
when structured by the boundaries of crafts or trades. At a time
when the trend in organized labor is toward a broad-based, industry-
wide structure, agriculture is fragmenting itself in a fashion that is
reminiscent of ancient crafts and guilds.

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