Provided by Research Papers in Economics
HOW WILL PRODUCTION, MARKETING, AND
CONSUMPTION BE COORDINATED?
From a Farm Organization Viewpoint
Kenneth Hood
Director of Commodity Division
American Farm Bureau Federation
Many influences in the future will affect the coordination of pro-
duction, marketing, and consumption of agricultural products. Market
prices will continue to function as a guide to producers who are trying
to relate output to consumer demand. Government control programs,
state and federal marketing orders, and similar devices will have
more or less influence, depending upon the direction of agricultural
legislation. International commodity agreements may have some effect
on commodities entering the foreign market. But the biggest influence
of all will be in the institution of specification production and market-
ing for about half of our farm output within the next ten years.
A startling technological revolution in production, marketing, and
consumer demands is moving us swiftly toward a new kind of world
in American agriculture, where coordination of production, market-
ing, and consumption will be achieved in large part by some kind of
formal or informal production and marketing contracts.
We are all aware of the far-reaching changes that have taken
place in American agriculture since the end of World War I. During
this period, we have moved from a world of horses, steam threshing
machines, setting hens, country butter, family orchards, and general
farming to a streamlined, mechanized, commercialized, specialized
type of farming. In marketing, we have progressed from a quaint
system of peddling and bartering a miscellaneous array of farm prod-
ucts to the complex distribution system we know today. Specialization
in agricultural production and rapid urbanization of our population
have vastly increased the distance that food travels from the fields
to the consumers' tables. Changes also have been brought about by
brands, grades, quality standards, trading stamps, precooked foods,
bulk milk tanks, and filter-tipped cigarettes. And even bigger changes
have been brought about by shifts in consumer demand, concentra-
tion of buying power in the hands of fewer but larger firms, super-
markets, vertical integration, contracts, specification production, and
specification buying.
Perhaps we can better visualize the phenomenal change that has
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