American agriculture is in a state of flux.
Mergers and acquisitions are reshaping the industry as large companies take control. The price of farm commodities is declining, as is the percentage of food prices that returns to the farmer. Small farms are being gobbled up by larger farms, and the family farm that loosely defined agricultural entity largely owned and operated by members of a household is fast disappearing from the American landscape. Exports have been declining for the past few years, and nonpoint source pollution including polluted agricultural runoff and erosion is still the worst despoiler of America s lakes and streams. While the 1996 Farm Act changed the system of payments that the federal government makes to farmers and did much to disassemble the agricultural support system put into place during the New Deal, the truly critical issues shaping the sector s future were left largely untouched, says Otto Doering, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University.