Deep Roots

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Family farms of North America

John E. Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Applied Economics,

University of Missouri-Columbia, USA

istorically, family farms held positions of esteem in

the dominant cultures of North America, as in much

of the rest of the world. The first family farmers in

North America were the indigenous peoples who had lived on

the continent for centuries before the arrival of Europeans.

They farmed as extended families on common lands occu-

pied by their tribes. The European settlers displaced the

indigenous peoples and “enclosed the commons,” creating

independently owned and operated family farms. Thomas

Jefferson, the third President of the United States, believed

strongly that the “yeoman farmer” best exemplified the kind

of “independence and virtue” that should be respected and

supported by government. He was reflecting the historical

values of both Western and Eastern cultures.

The family farm – defined

No generally accepted definition of the ‘family farm’ has

emerged, in spite of centuries of family farming. Some statis-

tical indicators of family farms were outlined in the 2014

Dialogue of Family Farming in North America:

the likelihood

of a farm being a true ‘family farm’ decreases along statisti-

cal gradients from family labour to paid employees, family

capital to non-farm investments, independent operator to

contract producer, landowner to cash renter, single propri-

etor to corporation, and producing for families and local

markets to producing for international markets. A family that

provides the labour for a farm, makes the management deci-

sions and owns and lives on the farm is more likely to feel

a deep, personal sense of connectedness to the farm, which

characterizes family farms.

The sense of interconnectedness of the family with the farm

makes the farm a ‘family farm’ and the family a ‘farm family’.

Such farms and the families are inseparable. The same farmwith

a different family would be a different farm, and the same family

with a different farm would be a different family. True family

farms represent a way of life rather than just a means of making

an economic living. Such farms are managed in ways that reflect

the social and ethical values of the farm family as well as the

potential economic value: they are intentionally multifunctional.

Family owned and operated farms that give priority to economic

benefits are managed as monofunctional farms, even though they

have multiple effects on society and nature.

Sustainability may well be the defining question of the twenty-

first century: How can we meet the needs of the present without

diminishing opportunities for the future? Sustainability is

inherently multifunctional in that it has three key dimensions:

ecological integrity, social equity and economic viability.

Farmers that manage multifunctionally are better endowed to

address the multiple dimensions of sustainability.

Evolution of family farms in North America

Farm families who migrated from Europe to the United States of

America (US) and Canada participated in a form of enclosures

when indigenous peoples were forced off their land and the fron-

tier was privatized. Homesteads gave farm families 160 acres in

both the US and Canada. This continued a trend towards market

allocation of land use, which was common in Europe during the

1600s. Farmland had to be privatized or commodified before it

could be bought and sold and thus reallocated to ensure its highest

economic use. This fundamentally changed the nature of family

farms, farming in general, and ultimately the history of humanity.

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, farming in North

America was predominantly a way of life and most farms were

clearly family farms. Farm sizes began to increase, as farms on

the US and Canadian prairies began to mechanize and expand

production to provide food for growing populations in the east.

Improved storage and transportation allowed grain surpluses

to be more easily traded abroad. Farmer cooperatives played a

significant role in the evolution of farming in Canada and the

US, as farmers joined together in various organizations to gain

bargaining power against large grainmerchants and provide their

own services. Farms continued to expand in acreage and produc-

tivity during the 1800s and early 1900s, with various setbacks

associated with economic recessions.

Following the SecondWorldWar, millions of US and Canadian

farms were destined to become farmbusinesses rather thanways of

life, and agriculture soon became an industry. Wartime technolo-

gies developed to supply munitions, poison gas and tanks were

soon adapted to produce chemical fertilizers, pesticides and farm

equipment. During the 1950s and 1960s, capital and technology

replaced labour and management and farms were consolidated

into larger and fewer farm businesses. By 1970, farm numbers in

the both countries had dropped by more than one-half from their

peak. The global economic recession of the 1980s caused roughly

one-quarter of the remaining farms to go out of business in the US.

Since then, farm numbers have continued to decline and average

farm size is now 421 acres

in the US and 778 acres

in Canada.

Farming in Mexico has followed a path quite different from

the US and Canada, but the tendency towards industrial consol-

idation has been much the same.

In 1876, Spain established

a dictatorship in Mexico that lasted until 1911. The emphasis

on modernization included enclosing and privatizing farmland.

Unlike the US and Canada, lands in Mexico were privatized as

large estates (haciendas) in an attempt to minimize domestic

egional

erspectives