In the Upper Midwest, new farm and land management organizations began forming in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in part as a response to the farm crisis of 1982, and in part because of the environmental ethic that was rising. Some believed it meant saving the soil from chemical pollution or erosion. Others thought it meant keeping the farmer on the land through higher prices and parity. One definition held that sustainable agriculture is farming that does not erode its own base of soil, water, farmers, or children willing to farm. Contract farming is growing rapidly as farmers, hoping for a degree of economic security, increasingly agree to contracts with meatpackers to produce beef, pork, and chicken.
Agribusiness buys from the farmer wholesale and sells back to the farmer at retail.
Markets enlarge and globalize. Farm business mergers create huge concentrations of control over specific markets. And there are other pressures. Many European nations and Japan are declaring that genetically modified organisms will not be sold in their markets. Although it is complex and expensive, farmers are beginning to imagine a dual-track of marketing that will allow them to identify the genetically modified crops.