Millions of tons of annual agricultural trade is now being conducted outside the US dollar, and within the new BRICS framework.This represents a tectonic shi...
Yes there has been a consolidation over the decades into few large, corporate operations. You can still buy fresh produce and other farm goods locally from the same people who grew them in “farmer’s markets” in towns and cities, but these are only in limited times of year and locations. For most Americans the food they buy and eat will have come to their supermarket from some massive factory-like supply chain, average distance of over 1,000 miles away, or something like that (I’ve not read up on this topic in many years).
The documentary Food, Inc. narrates a surprising and dark picture of the state of farming in the U.S., and it was filmed 17 years ago! So food production has progressed further into profits-at-all-cost corporate hands since then. Similar things happened with smaller, often local, goods stores disappearing during 1980s-1990s due to emergence of large shopping malls and multi-department corporate chains like Walmart and Target (you may see this referred to as the Main Street “ghost town”).
Amazing how it was predicted by Lenin at the end of XIX century. He said that USA have farthest going bourgeois agriculture system that he would want to see enacted in Russia for the explicit purpose of getting rid of every dreg of feudalism, but as the time goes, it will be consolidated under less and less great bourgeoise landowners.
Are there even many individual farmers in USA? From what i read it’s more of a agricorpos running everything.
Yes there has been a consolidation over the decades into few large, corporate operations. You can still buy fresh produce and other farm goods locally from the same people who grew them in “farmer’s markets” in towns and cities, but these are only in limited times of year and locations. For most Americans the food they buy and eat will have come to their supermarket from some massive factory-like supply chain, average distance of over 1,000 miles away, or something like that (I’ve not read up on this topic in many years).
The documentary Food, Inc. narrates a surprising and dark picture of the state of farming in the U.S., and it was filmed 17 years ago! So food production has progressed further into profits-at-all-cost corporate hands since then. Similar things happened with smaller, often local, goods stores disappearing during 1980s-1990s due to emergence of large shopping malls and multi-department corporate chains like Walmart and Target (you may see this referred to as the Main Street “ghost town”).
Amazing how it was predicted by Lenin at the end of XIX century. He said that USA have farthest going bourgeois agriculture system that he would want to see enacted in Russia for the explicit purpose of getting rid of every dreg of feudalism, but as the time goes, it will be consolidated under less and less great bourgeoise landowners.