As represented by the graph above, in the last century, the ratio between farm size and number farms has taken a drastic turn. In the early 1900's there were about 5,500 farms with about 150 acres (1). Today it is the opposite, with only a small amount of farms holding most of the farm land, while the majority of farms have very little land.
This has been a problem that has devastated the income for many traditional farming families. Oregon is no exception. If you look at the graph above, from 2007, it shows the relationship between the number of farms to their income. Only about 7% of farms make over $250,000 while about 37% of farms make between $1,000 and $10,000 annually (2).
It seems even outside of the Agricultural Core of the United States, large corporations are dwarfing the majority of small, family owned farms.
1. http://www.architecturefordevelopment.com/archives/726
2. http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/do_speech_farm_size.shtml
No comments:
Post a Comment