[PDF] The Myth Of The Family Farm eBook

Author : Ingolf Vogeler
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 39,63 MB
Release : 2019-06-25
Category : Science
ISBN : 1000303705

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The ideal of the family farm has been used to justify a myriad of federal farm legislation. Land grants, the distribution of irrigation water, land-grant college research and services, farm programs, and tax laws all have been affected. Yet, asserts the author, federal legislation and practices have had an institutional bias toward large-scale farms and agribusiness and have hastened the demise of family farms. Dr. Vogeler examines the struggle between land interests in the private and public sectors and finds that the myth of the family farm has been used to obscure the dominance of agribusiness and that the corporate penetration of agriculture has in turn contributed to the plight of migrant workers, the decline of small towns, and the economic difficulties of independent farmers. Dr. Vogeler also identifies the major shortcomings of agribusiness and federal land-related laws and programs; examines the regional impact of agribusiness and federal farm programs on rural areas; and considers the role of racial minorities and women in the development of agrarian capitalism. In conclusion, he offers a structural analysis that provides the means for progressive social change and states that the achievement of economic equality in rural America and the dismantling of the corporate control of agriculture can be realized through farmer-labor alliances.

Author : Beth Hoffman
Publisher : Island Press
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 31,28 MB
Release : 2021-10-05
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 164283159X

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"Eloquent and detailed...It's hard to have hope, but the organized observations and plans of Hoffman and people like her give me some. Read her book -- and listen." -- Jane Smiley, The Washington Post In her late 40s, Beth Hoffman decided to upend her comfortable life as a professor and journalist to move to her husband's family ranch in Iowa--all for the dream of becoming a farmer. There was just one problem: money. Half of America's two million farms made less than $300 in 2019, and many struggle just to stay afloat. Bet the Farm chronicles this struggle through Beth's eyes. She must contend with her father-in-law, who is reluctant to hand over control of the land. Growing oats is good for the environment but ends up being very bad for the wallet. And finding somewhere, in the midst of COVID-19, to slaughter grass finished beef is a nightmare. If Beth can't make it, how can farmers who confront racism, lack access to land, or don't have other jobs to fall back on hack it? Bet the Farm is a first-hand account of the perils of farming today and a personal exploration of more just and sustainable ways of producing food.

Author : Sarah K Mock
Publisher :
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 41,88 MB
Release : 2021-04-26
Category :
ISBN : 9781636768205

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We love The American Farmer. We trust them to grow our food, to be part of children's nursery rhymes, to provide the economic backbone of rural communities, and to embody a version of the American dream. At the same time, we know that "corporate farms" are disrupting the agrarian way of life that we so admire, and that we've got to do something to stop it. So what's our plan for saving the farms we love? In Farm (and Other F Words), Sarah K Mock dismantles misconceptions about American farms and discovers what makes small family farms work, or why they don't. While exploring the intersection of farming and wealth, Mock offers an alternative perspective on American agricultural history, and outlines a path to a more equitable food system moving forward. Calling for change, Farm (and Other F Words) tackles questions like: Do farmers really get paid not to farm? Are "big corporate farms" the future? How much good has the food movement done for small family farmers? Ultimately, Mock suggests a solution without putting the onus for change on struggling consumers and reminds us that, "the future of American agriculture is not yet decided."

Author :
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 17,36 MB
Release : 2008-06-01
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780803217485

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Americans decry the decline of family farming but stand by helplessly as industrial agribusiness takes over. The prevailing sentiment is that family farms should survive for important social, ethical, and economic reasons. But will they? This timely book exposes the biases in American farm policies that irrationally encourage expansion, biases evident in federal commodity programs, income tax provisions, and subsidized credit services. Family Farming also exposes internal conflicts, particularly the conflict between the private interests of individual farmers and the public interest in family farming as a whole. It challenges the assumption that bigger is better, critiques the technological basis of modern agriculture, and calls for farming practices that are ethical, economical, and ecologically sound. The alternative policies discussed in this book could yet save the family farm, and the ways and means of saving it are argued here with special urgency. ø This Bison Books edition includes a new introduction by the author providing a more national perspective, underscoring the repetitive cycles of American agriculture over the decade, and assessing the major policy issues that have dominated agriculture in recent years.

Author : John Connell
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 20,13 MB
Release : 2019-05-07
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1328578003

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For fans of The Shepherd’s Life, a poignant memoir—and #1 Irish bestseller—about a wayward son’s return home to his family’s farm, and how he found a new beginning in an age-old world Farming has been in John Connell's family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps. Until, one winter, after more than a decade away, he finds himself back on the farm. Connell records the hypnotic rhythm of the farming day—cleaning the barns, caring for the herd, tending to sickly lambs, helping the cows give birth. Alongside the routine events, there are the unforeseen moments when things go wrong: when a calf fails to thrive, when a sheep goes missing, when illness breaks out, when an argument between father and son erupts and things are said that cannot be unsaid. The Farmer’s Son is the story of a calving season, and the story of a man who emerges from depression to find hope in the place he least expected to find it. It is the story of Connell's life as a farmer, and of his relationship with the community of County Longford, with his faith, with the animals he tends, and, above all, with his father.

Author : Arlo Crawford
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 23,7 MB
Release : 2014-04
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 080509816X

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A Book of the Month for GQ, The New Yorker, and Flavorwire "Beautifully told...In this one season of life, Crawford's writing about the work, people, nature and his family legacy reveals much about a simple life, and reminds us all to appreciate life's riches."—Seattle Post Intelligencer "A must-read..."—Washington Independent Review of Books An intimate, gorgeously observed memoir about family and farming that forms a powerful lesson in the hard-earned risks that make life worth living The summer he was thirty-one, Arlo Crawford returned home for the summer harvest at New Morning Farm—seventy-five acres tucked in a hollow in south-central Pennsylvania where his parents had been growing organic vegetables for almost forty years. Like many summers before, Arlo returned to the family farm's familiar rhythms—rise, eat, bend, pick, sort, sweat, sleep. But this time he was also there to change his direction, like his father years ago. In the 1970s, well before the explosion of the farm-to-table and slow food movement, Arlo's father, Jim, left behind law school and Vietnam, and decided to give farming a try. Arlo's return also prompts a reexamination of a past tragedy: the murder of a neighboring farmer twenty years before. A chronicle of one full season on a farm, with all its small triumphs and inevitable setbacks, A Farm Dies Once a Year is a meditation on work—the true nature of it, and on taking pride in it—and a son's reckoning with a father's legacy. Above all, it is a striking portrait of how one man builds, sows, and harvests his way into a new understanding of the risks necessary to a life well-lived.

Author : John Connell
Publisher : Granta Books
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 15,29 MB
Release : 2018-03-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1783784199

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Farming has been in John Connell's family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps. Until, one winter, he finds himself back on the farm and begins to learn the ways of the farmer and the way of the cows. Connell records the hypnotic rhythm of the farming day - cleaning the outhouses, milking the herd, tending to sickly lambs, helping the cows give birth. But alongside the routine events, there are the unforeseen moments when things go wrong: when a calf fails to thrive, when a sheep goes missing, when illness breaks out, when depression takes hold, when an argument erupts and things are said that cannot be unsaid. The Cow Book is the story of a calving season. It is also the story of the cow itself, from its domestication and worship as a God by the Ancient Egyptians to the modern practice of mechanized herds, via the figure of the cowboy, the destruction of the American buffalo, the demise of the aboriginal jackaroos and the consequences of BSE. And, above all, it is the story of Connell's life as a farmer, of his relationship with his birthplace of County Longford, with the community around the family farm, with the animals he tends, and with his father.

Author : Philip Levy
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 36,76 MB
Release : 2013-02-12
Category : History
ISBN : 1250023149

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Noted historian pens biography of Ferry Farm—George Washington's boyhood home—and its three centuries of American history In 2002, Philip Levy arrived on the banks of Rappahannock River in Virginia to begin an archeological excavation of Ferry Farm, the eight hundred acre plot of land that George Washington called home from age six until early adulthood. Six years later, Levy and his team announced their remarkable findings to the world: They had found more than Washington family objects like wig curlers, wine bottles and a tea set. They found objects that told deeper stories about family life: a pipe with Masonic markings, a carefully placed set of oyster shells suggesting that someone in the household was practicing folk magic. More importantly, they had identified Washington's home itself—a modest structure in line with lower gentry taste that was neither as grand as some had believed nor as rustic as nineteenth century art depicted it. Levy now tells the farm's story in Where the Cherry Tree Grew. The land, a farmstead before Washington lived there, gave him an education in the fragility of life as death came to Ferry Farm repeatedly. Levy then chronicles the farm's role as a Civil War battleground, the heated later battles over its preservation and, finally, an unsuccessful attempt by Wal-Mart to transform the last vestiges Ferry Farm into a vast shopping plaza.

Author : Kathryn Marie Dudley
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 39,71 MB
Release : 2002-05-15
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780226169132

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Explores the social impact of the farm debt crisis of the 1980's through interviews with members of an agricultural community.