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

This assumption can no longer be supported. We have increasing
evidence of the concentration of the economic rent generated by
agricultural research in the hands of a steadily declining number of
landowners. This has not yet reached crisis proportions, in a politi-
cal sense, but it is foolhardy to insist that no crisis is approaching.

This poses a greater long-run threat to the land-grant educational
system than any shortages of resources or restrictions on markets.
We are the custodians and the beneficiaries of a long tradition of
public trust and confidence in the dedication of agricultural edu-
cators to the public good. If the impression grows that the invest-
ment of public funds in agricultural education is creating a rentier
class, it will damage and ultimately destroy the base for the land
grant system.

This is the context in which a concern for the structure of agri-
culture should be interpreted. We now have a concentration of
landholding in agriculture in the United States that is as skewed as is
the landholding pattern in many countries now convulsed by land
reform efforts. We must anticipate a growing movement for land
reform in the United States, generated and supported primarily by
non-farmers.

This prospect is quite different from the concern over concentra-
tion of economic power in non-farm businesses. The primary reason
for this difference is the dominant role played by land in the asset
structure of agriculture. Concentration of land ownership in the
U.S. does not imply the same loss of personal freedom that is charac-
teristic of an agrarian society in a less-developed country. But it
does violate some of the most deeply felt sentiments of equity and
fairness, even in an industrial culture. Freedom of access to food-
producing land is still one of the most treasured freedoms of the
social order.

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