A Broken Food System
America, from its earliest settlement days, has depended
on its rural acres and their farmers to feed the nation.
As we think of the future of rural America, we must
also consider the future of agriculture because rural
America and agriculture have long been linked
together. Providing a ready supply of safe, healthy
food has long been the goal of rural America and
its many farms. But because of the mantra “bigger is
better,” and because of national and often local pol-
icies that encourage industrial-size agriculture, the
number of farms has decreased dramatically since
1935 when the number was at its highest. As noted
earlier, in 1935 the US had 6.8 million farms; in 2021
it had just over 2 million farms. With farm numbers
declining, existing farms became larger; the average
size farm in 1935 was 155 acres, in 2020 it was 444.45.
Although other job opportunities exist in rural
communities, agriculture and food production are
uniquely rural. Agricultural rural areas are largely found
in the heartland but also include much of the remainder
of the country. One of the major challenges facing agri-
culture is the concentration of production, processing,
and distribution of agricultural products in but a few
huge corporations. As a Center for American Progress
writer stated, “Bold policy solutions are needed to tackle
corporate concentration and power, empower farmers
to negotiate fair prices, and ensure that farmers receive
a fair share of the fruits of their labor.”
When Industrial-Size Agriculture Began
Starting in the 1970s, and with the encouragement of
such politicians as Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz,
who said to US farmers, “Get bigger or get out,” we
began to see the development of industrial-size agri-
culture. Farms got larger and farmers’ debts greater.
Corn and soybeans became popular crops for this
new industrial agriculture. Dairy, poultry, beef, and
hogs became part of huge industrial-size operations.
Soon mega-agribusiness firms emerged to the
point that by 2020 a high percentage of the following
agriculture sectors were controlled by as few as four
corporations: beef processing: 85 percent; soybean
processing, 80 percent; pork processing, 67 percent;
and chicken processing, 54 percent.47 Four interna-
tional firms control more than 60 percent of global
proprietary seed sales.
Food Systems and Rural America
In 2019, writer Austin Frerick interviewed an official
of the Iowa Farm Bureau, and from that interview
wrote these comments:64 On Farms and Rural Communities
The outlook for rural communities is grim. There
are fewer jobs than there were a generation ago
and the ones that remain pay lower and lower
wages. America’s agricultural system is predi-
cated on an extractive model, where more and
more of the profits flow to a few. If current trends
continue, rural America will soon be owned by
a handful of families and corporations who will
run their empires remotely with driverless trac-
tors and poorly paid staff. . . . Economic power
is more concentrated today than at any other
point in American history, and nowhere is this
power more apparent than in agriculture. The
American food supply chain—from the seeds we
plant to the peanut butter in our neighborhood
grocery stores—is concentrated in the hands of a
few multinational corporations.
Another writer, in 2021, challenged the assessment
that the natural order of things in American agri-
culture was industrial farming and that multinational
market domination would continue. Today’s agricul-
ture “didn’t grow out of consumer demand for fair and
competitive markets. Industrial agriculture is propped
up by a vulnerable business model that has publicly
failed. It owes its entire existence to individual actors—
at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), in
finance sectors, in Congress, and certainly at the White
House—all who made specific, intentional decisions
to promote it [industrial agriculture] as the future of
agriculture.”
Critics of Industrial-Size Agriculture
Critics of industrial-size agriculture have had dif-
ficulty being heard, and if heard at all, dismissed as
old-school and not up-to-date with what is happen-
ing in the world. Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer
and author, is one of those who has stood up to indus-
trial agriculture and its ultimate, negative effects
on communities, farmers, farm families, and the
environment. Berry is a proponent of agrarianism.
He writes about a fundamental difference between
industrialism and agrarianism.
“I believe that this contest between industrialism
and agrarianism defines the most fundamental human
difference, for it divides not two nearly opposite
concepts of agriculture and land use, but also two
nearly opposite ways of understanding ourselves,
our fellow creatures and our world.” Berry goes on
to say, “Because industrialism cannot understand liv-
ing things except as machines, and can give them no
value that is not utilitarian, it conceives of farming
as forms of mining; it cannot use the land without
abusing it. . . . Industrialism begins with technological
invention. But agrarianism begins with givens: land,
plants, animals, weather."
I bring back Aldo Leopold, whose land ethic ap-
proach challenges industrial-size agriculture, which
appears to see money and profits as important above
all other considerations.
“Quit thinking about decent land use as solely an
economic problem. Examine each question in terms
of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as
what is economically expedient. A thing is right when
it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty
of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends
otherwise.”
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