The Economic Viability of American Agriculture Essay

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers food assistance programs that help provide food for low to no income families. It is their goal to increase food security and reduce hunger by increasing access to food, a healthful diet, and nutrition education for low-income Americans (Caswell, 2013, para. 1). Some of the current nutrition assistance programs include “the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)”(Caswell, 2013, para. 1). SNAP will be the primary nutrition assistance program of the paper at hand. No matter how morally good it is to try to help reduce hunger and increase food security within the United States, there are still many questions regarding issues with SNAP. This paper will be discussing why there is such a strong support for the program, how it helps the United States as a whole, problems with the program, and why some people are against SNAP.

compared to that from larger farms. Small farmers focus their farming techniques on being sustainable, which includes reducing the use of

Dorothy Allison, well-known author and essayist, begins her essay by discussing how she remembers her mother’s gravy and the process of making it, including the pounding of the meat in order to flatten it out. She adds pathos by saying gravy is the “most memory-laden dish” she has learned how to cook and the comfort it brings. Instead of calling it country-fried steak as others normally do, Allison’s mother calls the savory dish cube steak, a more underprivileged name. Allison says, “It was not until I was grown that I understood

America — a land known for its ideals of freedom and new opportunities, a nation built under the idea that every man and women is created equal. However, the definition of what makes a person an American is entirely different from what it is that makes up America, itself. J.Hector St. John Crevecoeur, author of Letters from an American Farmer (1782), exposes what he believes makes an American. However, when compared to the standards of what makes an American in today’s world, it seems that becoming an American then was much simpler then, than it is today. The definition of an American is always evolving due to the influences of our changing nation. During a simpler time, Crevecoeur defined an American as someone of European

1 There are large market places in this field. (Small farmers, Medium Farms, Large Farms)

farms to keep their prices low, can eventually cause the market to fail. (58) The article The

As the population of the young United States increased more and more people hungry mouths were asking for food. Farmers had to keep up with new technology but there were also many setbacks in government policy and economic conditions. In the period of 1865-1900, there were many ways in which technology, government policy, and economic conditions changed early American agriculture.

Like much of the midwest, Indiana is especially dependent on agricultural success to boost their economy. Farming is the backbone of the Hoosier state, with 57,500 farming operations functioning in 2016, per the United States Department of Agriculture. While Indiana relies heavily on the agricultural sector of their economy, the agricultural sector in turn often relies upon subsidization. According to “Food Policy: Looking Forward from the Past”, a book written by Arlene Spark and Janel Obenchain, “An agricultural subsidy is governmental assistance paid to farmers and agribusiness to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities.” Now that we accurately

Arguing that the majority of farmers during the Great Depression benefitted from the government policies produced through President Roosevelt’s New Deal is an inaccurate claim. While history textbooks highlight the improvement of finances for people in rural areas in the United States of America, the personal experiences of family farmers contradict those textbooks. Writers of textbooks about American history should consider looking further into the delicate topic of how the Great Depression effected common farm families. In the West, farmers endured the Dust Bowl. In the North, people in rural areas competed to make a profit. Although statistics show the most economic damage of the Great Depression beginning at the end of 1929, small farm families refer to the effects of the Depression dating back as early as 1925 since government policies mostly benefitted large farm industries as small farms were forced to foreclose.

Alongside the growth of large farms, crops are being subsidized which leads to the prices of the goods being kept at a low price (Toews). For a family farm, this means producing a crop that is not cost effective which eventually drives the family farms out of business. Once these large corporations produce the crop, it is then shipped to the manufacturers

In Clayton county, the land in farms decreased from 408,987 acres in 2007 to 398,022 acres in 2012. The average size of farms, though, increased. In 2007, the average size of a farm was 247 acres; in 2012 it was 252. This shows that the farmers that are still in agriculture are going strong, and although some are leaving their jobs, the ones that are left are ready to make up for

When we mention about farm, most of us have this image of a vast green pasture where farmers spend most of their time herding livestock but that idyllic picture is just a thing from the past. Since the 1930s in America, small farms started to wither away, made way to bigger and highly mechanized factory farms. It all traced back to McDonalds and the booming of fast food restaurants (Food, Inc 2008). Fast food restaurants had become successful because they could produce tasty food with cheaper cost. Their franchises eventually made them a multi-million-dollars industry. Big business required big suppliers. Small rural farms cannot meet the demand for supply and they quickly fade away. Farmers were being replaced by corporations in

With the perfect storm of great farmland, high-end markets, solid crop mix, and advanced skills, it is possible to net $70,000/year on less than 2 acres, maybe even better than that. Most farmers make significantly less, and the range of profitability among farms is vast. The pervasive assumption that farming is not profitable is false, but so is the assumption by many new farmers that it is easy to make a lot of money in farming. The truth is that it will most likely take

When farming comes to a decision. It’s a game of “What if?” You cant really decide on anything and expect it to work absolutely perfect. It will have its flaws. Like if you have to decide between two different types of pesticides, It can be more effective if the ground is wet. But it wont work as well if the ground is very dry. Its decisions like that. Farming is really never a guarantee. It can either hurt your crops or give your crops a boost. Depending on the climate, The weather, and the chemicals you put on the crops. The implications that can happen are either drastic, or great. It can cost

Thinking of owning a farm? Farming is great for some people but it’s not for all. A farm has many assets and liabilities when it comes to finances. One of the assets of owning a farm is seeing the plants grow and making a profit off of those plants. The liabilities of a farm are the purchase of seed, cost of employees, and the cost incurred for plant care. A farm can be very expensive but it can also be very profitable.