1 / 10

Where have all the farmers gone?

Where have all the farmers gone?. Brian Halweil. http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/english/exhibits/agriculture/strength.htm. http://www.gudaoxifeng.com/html/35165.shtml. The shift from rural areas to cities. Falling incomes Rising debt Rural poverty

tobias-landry
Download Presentation

Where have all the farmers gone?

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Where have all the farmers gone? Brian Halweil http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/english/exhibits/agriculture/strength.htm http://www.gudaoxifeng.com/html/35165.shtml

  2. The shift from rural areas to cities • Falling incomes • Rising debt • Rural poverty • Attraction from urban life -- higher income and more opportunities http://hsc.csu.edu.au/geography/urban/cities/worldcities/newyork.jpg

  3. Reality • unemployment and ill health in the cities • marginalization of farmers: a vicious cycle

  4. Why the farmers quit farming? http://news.dg.soufun.com/2008-04-09/1646680.htm

  5. The power of technology and mechanization in a industrialized society • Widespread using of chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides • “outsource” expenditures • Prevailed players in a food industry– the processing and packaging business http://cul.news.tom.com/2007-08-22/074F/35720085.html

  6. Result from the high technology • Farmer’s profit margin dropped dramatically • Small farms are being driven out; fewer farmers on bigger tracts of land producing a greater share of the food supply • farmers are becoming more dependent and lost the diversity of crops http://www.nmbb.com.cn/picView.asp?id=84

  7. The squeeze from food cartels • Centralized control of the food system from the agricultural oligopoly • Mergers, takeovers and alliances make few agribusiness firms be extremely profitable: widening gap between farm prices and retail food prices • The result of seeking high profit of corporate bureaucracies: the quality of the food? • Farmers are losing control of the production process: problem from the bank, contracts and so on http://searchui.search.mainone.com/cpa-100-20-0-20-1-23-24--1.htm?cat_id=1008451

  8. Result from the high concentration • higher price; lower quality food • losing professional farmers with extensive knowledge http://dontdatethatdude.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/farmer-john-cornfield2.jpg

  9. Backfire towards rural community: tearing of the social fabric • poverty • crimes • social class distinctions • mental stress • lower rates of medical protection • breakdown of families ties • high rates of suicides • security threats

  10. Ecological disruption • Lost of crop diversity; simplified crop system • Simplifying the ecology of a field can result in nitrogen pollution, water pollution (algae blooms) , gargantuan amounts of waste … • Big enterprises are less concerned about the pollution and resource degradation • overuse of antibiotics caused growing antibiotic resistance in food-borne bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter http://serc.carleton.edu/images/microbelife/topics/red_tide_genera.v3.jpg

More Related