Large farms that depend on hired farmworkers receive exemptions from Federal labor laws allowing them the advantage of low-wage labor costs. Today, we have 300,000 fewer farmers than in 1979, and farmers are receiving 13 percent less for every consumer dollar. Four firms now control over 80 percent of the beef market. About 94 percent of the Nation's farms are small farms, but they receive only 41 percent of all farm receipts. Like most major industries, the ownership and control over agricultural assets is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Farmers have little to no control over setting the price for their products.
The recent passage of the 1996 Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act was a watershed event in the history of Federal farm policy. It signals the reduction and eventual elimination of government intervention in commodity markets as a means to provide income and price stability for the farming sector. Agricultural technologies have emerged that use ever greater levels of capital to enable fewer people to produce the Nation's food. As a result, income and opportunities have shifted from farms to the companies that produce and sell inputs to farmers. As farmers focused on producing undifferentiated raw commodities, food system profit and opportunities were shifted to the companies that process, package, and market food.