Congress Urged to Use Policy Against Concentration

July 28,1999

Concentration in agricultural production is driven by policy choices, the Senate Agriculture Committee was told yesterday, that can be changed to enhance the future for family sized farms and ranches. But there's a price tag that goes along with it.

John Crabtree of the Center for Rural Affairs, Walthill, NE, told the committee the "declining farm share of food system profit reflects choices in technology and markets. Public research programs have focused on developing expensive technologies that enable input corporations to increase their income by selling more to farmers and that reduce the role of and need for farmers in producing food."

Farmers have been relegated largely to producers of cheap raw commodities, said Crabtree. "The attributes that make products unique and add to their sale price have largely been added in plants of food processing corporations. Companies that capitalize on these attributes have received a growing share of food system profit."

Family farmers and ranchers should get the same break, says Crabtree, through a new federal initiative. The initiative should provide competitive funding for activities that increase the farm share of food system profit. Some of the funds involved should be used to develop new knowledge and production systems "that enable farmers to use their management and skills to increase their share of the food system profit by cutting input and capital costs and/or producing higher value products."