Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity

Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity PDF Author: Sally H. Clarke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521528450
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This book explains how US government activity in the 1930s led to gains in farm productivity.

Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity

Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity PDF Author: Sally H. Clarke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521528450
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This book explains how US government activity in the 1930s led to gains in farm productivity.

A Revolution Down on the Farm

A Revolution Down on the Farm PDF Author: Paul K. Conkin
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081313868X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.

Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior

Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior PDF Author: Wolfram Schlenker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022661980X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Agricultural yields have increased steadily in the last half century, particularly since the Green Revolution. At the same time, inflation-adjusted agricultural commodity prices have been trending downward as increases in supply outpace the growth of demand. Recent severe weather events, biofuel mandates, and a switch toward a more meat-heavy diet in emerging economies have nevertheless boosted commodity prices. Whether this is a temporary jump or the beginning of a longer-term trend is an open question. Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior examines the factors contributing to the remarkably steady increase in global yields and assesses whether yield growth can continue. This research also considers whether agricultural productivity growth has been, and will be, associated with significant environmental externalities. Among the topics studied are genetically modified crops; changing climatic factors; farm production responses to government regulations including crop insurance, transport subsidies, and electricity subsidies for groundwater extraction; and the role of specific farm practices such as crop diversification, disease management, and water-saving methods. This research provides new evidence that technological as well as policy choices influence agricultural productivity.

Agricultural Productivity Growth in the United States :.

Agricultural Productivity Growth in the United States :. PDF Author: Sun Ling Wang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Fourth Industrial Revolution

The Fourth Industrial Revolution PDF Author: Klaus Schwab
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 1524758876
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolu­tion, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.

Another Revolution in U.S. Farming?

Another Revolution in U.S. Farming? PDF Author: Lyle P. Schertz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description


Farmers Helping Farmers

Farmers Helping Farmers PDF Author: Nancy K. Berlage
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807163325
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
One of the largest volunteer movements in the twentieth century, local farm and home bureau organizations have been woefully underrepresented in socio-political studies of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Nancy K. Berlage addresses this omission with an insightful look at how bureau members put university science to work in agricultural and rural life at the local level, even while industrialization, and urbanization profoundly shifted the landscape of labor in the U.S. In Farmers Helping Farmers, Berlage explores how bureaus served as the locus of science-based agriculture for rural communities. Drawing on community bonds and culturally powerful metaphors to overcome skepticism, bureaus played a critical role in circulating knowledge grounded in the new disciplines of agricultural economics, rural sociology, home economics, veterinary medicine, child science, and public health. Throughout the book, Berlage weaves a novel consideration of women's roles into the story of farm and home bureaus, noting that these organizations served as places where supporters could grapple with issues beyond farming practices such as child welfare, personal health, and gender ideals. They were also crucial in supporting the organization's underlying mission to strengthen community and family ties to the benefit of more efficient and productive farm. In addition to bureau documents, Berlage draws from cartoons, films, photographs, and personal correspondence, to add a human dimension this organizational history. The resultant analysis offers a fresh look at the local bureaus' social, economic, cultural, and political functions and book highlights the organizations' significant influence on American life in the early twentieth century.

Handbook of Agricultural Economics

Handbook of Agricultural Economics PDF Author:
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0323988865
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
Handbook of Agricultural Economics, Volume Six highlights new advances in the field, with this new release exploring comprehensive chapters written by an international board of authors who discuss topics such as The Economics of Food Loss and Waste, Empowering Communities Using an Integrated Design of Food Networks, Concentration in Food and Agricultural Markets, Agriculture and trade, Producers, Consumers, and Value Chains in Developing Countries, The Multiple Burdens of Malnutrition: Dietary Transition and Food System Transformation in Economic Development, Psychophysiological Measures and Consumer Food Choice, and The Economics of Health and Nutrition Related Food Policies: The Effects on the Public Health and Malnutrition. Presents the latest release in the Handbook of Agricultural Economics Written and contributed by leaders in the field Covers topics such as Economics on Food Loss and Waste, Integrated Design of Food Networks, Agriculture and Trade, and more

A Perilous Progress

A Perilous Progress PDF Author: Michael Alan Bernstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400865085
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
The economics profession in twentieth-century America began as a humble quest to understand the "wealth of nations." It grew into a profession of immense public prestige--and now suffers a strangely withered public purpose. Michael Bernstein portrays a profession that has ended up repudiating the state that nurtured it, ignoring distributive justice, and disproportionately privileging private desires in the study of economic life. Intellectual introversion has robbed it, he contends, of the very public influence it coveted and cultivated for so long. With wit and irony he examines how a community of experts now identified with uncritical celebration of ''free market'' virtues was itself shaped, dramatically so, by government and collective action. In arresting and provocative detail Bernstein describes economists' fitful efforts to sway a state apparatus where values and goals could seldom remain separate from means and technique, and how their vocation was ultimately humbled by government itself. Replete with novel research findings, his work also analyzes the historical peculiarities that led the profession to a key role in the contemporary backlash against federal initiatives dating from the 1930s to reform the nation's economic and social life. Interestingly enough, scholars have largely overlooked the history that has shaped this profession. An economist by training, Bernstein brings a historian's sensibilities to his narrative, utilizing extensive archival research to reveal unspoken presumptions that, through the agency of economists themselves, have come to mold and define, and sometimes actually deform, public discourse. This book offers important, even troubling insights to readers interested in the modern economic and political history of the United States and perplexed by recent trends in public policy debate. It also complements a growing literature on the history of the social sciences. Sure to have a lasting impact on its field, A Perilous Progress represents an extraordinary contribution of gritty empirical research and conceptual boldness, of grand narrative breadth and profound analytical depth.

Days on the Family Farm

Days on the Family Farm PDF Author: Carrie A. Meyer
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452913285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
From the beginning of the twentieth century to World War II, farm wife May Lyford Davis kept a daily chronicle that today offers a window into a way of life that has all but disappeared. May and her husband Elmo lived through two decades of prosperity, the Great Depression, and two World Wars in their Midwestern farming community. Like many women of her time, Davis kept diaries that captured the everyday events of the family farm; she also kept meticulous farming accounts. In doing so, she left an extraordinary record that reflects not only her own experiences but also the history of early twentieth-century American agriculture. May and Elmo’s story, engagingly told by Carrie A. Meyer, showcases the large-scale evolution of agriculture from horses to automobiles and tractors, a surprisingly vibrant family and community life, and the business of commercial farming. Details such as what items were bought and sold, what was planted and harvested, the temperature and rainfall, births and deaths, and the direction of the wind are gathered to reveal a rich picture of a world shared by many small farmers. With sustainable and small-scale farming again on the rise in the United States, Days on the Family Farm resonates with both the profound and mundane aspects of rural life—past and present—in the Midwest.