What cause for firm crisis blame the America ?

  Concerning the environment, there are countless examples. Were irrational behavior motivated by the goal of making profits has led to the degradation of the ecosystem. Agriculture happens to be one of the victims of such a rational behavior by corporations. In 2020, the median US income from farm activities was - 1198 dollars. the US farmers share of the retail price, which means how much a farmer makes when farm produce is sold, has declined from 50% in the 1950s to less than 15% today.

 The debt has touched $425 billion loan default rates and bankruptcy filings are up, and so are calls to the suicide prevention lines. Farmer suicide rates today are four to five times the national average. So what happened? How did the situation get so dreadful? Let us find out in today's article.

 The growth of American industry and population has always depended on the availability of foods produced by commercial farmers and transportation networks to get them to consumers. Our story begins in 1790 when the first US census took place. According to it, the nation's population was about four million, almost all of them lived in the countryside, and 90% of them listed their occupation as farmers 50 years later, around 1840. 

The industrialization. Picked up pace and cities started to expand rapidly. By then, America's population had increased to 17 million, out of which nine million were farmers and about 10% of Americans lived in cities. Most people living in the countryside raised animals and grew crops primarily to feed their own families and sold the excess in local markets. However, as the population grew, so did the demand and seeing the opportunity commercial farms came into existence by 1880, America's population passed the 50 million mark.

 In 23 million Americans were farmers, although the number of farmers was still growing, it was the first time when less than half of working Americans were farmers. The steady growth of population led to increased demand for food. Which family farms could not fulfill, fueling the growth of commercial farming. By 1920, America's population crossed 100 million. Through both natural increase and immigrants who mainly worked in industries. Now more than half of Americans lived in cities and most of the city dwellers were now completely dependent on food raised by farmers they had never met.

 By 1950, though, the population saw a significant increase from 100 to 150 million. The number of farmers reduced from 31 million in 1920 to 25 million due to world wars, Dust Bowl conditions and the Great Depression. Due to this, small farmers and huge numbers were forced to sell their land to large commercial corporations who, with the help of their resources, were able to utilize the land profitably. Factories that were used to build tanks and explosives during World War Two were converted to civilian.

 Reduction units to support the production of tractors, combines, and nitrate fertilizers. Munition factories that supported the US military during World War Two had an annual capacity of 1.6 million tons of ammonia. Thus they were converted to support fertilizer production, flooding the market with low cost nitrate fertilizers that produced a boom in staple crops. A country that had faced high prices and food shortages for nearly two decades suddenly had an access to nearly unlimited, inexpensive food products. However, things went downhill from here.

 Thanks to the OPC embargo in 1973 the price of oil and gasoline skyrocketed and the cost of farming grew immensely. By 1980 US population increased to 225 million and not so shockingly, the population of people involved in farming activities declined to just 6 million to compete with corporate farming. Farmers borrowed money from the banks to support the expansion of their operations. However, more crops were being grown than necessary and a huge. Plus meant a decrease in the price of crops leading to the inability of farmers to repay the loans they took for growing those crops, and as a result, small farmers went bankrupt, were forced into foreclosure at alarming rates, and those that survived had to change their way of farming dramatically. When the USSR invaded Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter's government placed an embargo on grain sales to the Soviet Union, which further disrupted markets, crippled prices and assured a big domestic gain surplus. The Reagan era made things worse. The simplest and quickest way to address.

 This problem was to pay farmers to stop growing so much, but they tried almost everything other than this. So to combat the problem they came up with a payment in kind program, also known as PIK, which offered farmers surplus grain and cotton out of government stockpiles. If they would agree to plant less of the same commodities. PIK took 82 million acres out of production, though at a cost that was far greater than a 1982 program to discourage planting would have been.

 Despite reduced demand and increased supply of farm produce, the government believed that in the near future both consumption and exports would increase, but that didn't happen. Over the decades, the government had created an environment where surplus was bound to happen, and on the other hand they then tried to fix it with programs like EPIK. The result of this mess, farm gate prices collapsed, land values were decimated, and interest rates rose sharply. Quarter million small farms closed and over 1,000,000 generational farmers were displaced. Giant agricultural corporations took advantage of the opportunity and gobbled up the land, used their financial power to manipulate the market, reduced farm gate prices even further, and raised input costs to a point where small farms became unsustainable. Over the years, the situation has continued to worsen. In order to survive, instead of farming what farmers want, farmers are forced to raise crops and animals that are profitable for their corporate customers. Unsurprisingly, the same is happening with the livestock farms, a handful of meat processing companies now own the livestock, while poultry, pig, and beef farmers are raising animals for them under contract, four large firms control at least 2/3 of the seed market, 80% of chemical fertilizer, grain trading. Dairy production. Meat supply and almost 100% of farm machinery. Meanwhile, government money flows to the corporations in the form of write offs, market facilitation and crop insurance subsidies. Over 70% of the $50 billion in U.S. government subsidies goes to the top 20% of farms. What do you think? Will family farming ever make a comeback or will the situation just continue to get worse? Let us know in the comments .