Perspective on Farm Size

Farm size has been on the agenda of meetings of agricultural economists in this country from the beginnings of our profession. At times it has been a central issue and has been given high priority. At others it has played a secondary role, but it has seldom stayed completely in the background. Most agricultural economists, regardless of specialized interests, such as quantitative methods or market structure, have expressed opinions on this subject. Often these opinions reflect a mixture of emotion and objective judgment. One might well ask why farm size has continued to be of interest to so many for so long. I think there is an important mixture of reasons. One relates to poverty in rural areas, low incomes, and a desire to insure some minimum level of living for farm people. A second has to do with business management-finding combinations of resources that are productive and then discovering ways to combine them successfully on individual farms. A third, closely related reason has to do with efficiency-what is the least cost or the best way to use a given bundle of resources, not only on individual farm units but across whole groups of farms? A fourth is concerned with distribution-who is it that controls our land and agricultural resources and how broadly or narrowly are these resources distributed amongst farmers and others? Farm size is clearly a policy issue. At one level the focus of concern is on individual farmers and their welfare. At another it centers on society as a whole and such questions as who gains and who loses with changes in farm structure over time, and how much power is concentrated in the hands of how many? The pioneers in what came to be known as agricultural economics in this country came from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds (Taylor and Taylor). Most were drawn to this ield because of a concern for the low incomes of farmers. They sought to learn why some farmers did better than others. Farm size was quickly identified as one of the key issues. The farm business as a unit and farm management decisions were targets of primary attention (Case and Williams). Today farm size questions continue to be examined from somewhat conflicting vantage points within our discipline. Some of us concentrate on the individual unit, seeking ways to encourage firm growth, mechanisms to accumulate and retain capital, and pointing out means to avoid tax burdens through estate planning. At the same time others are concerned with the policy implications of concentration of farm production in the hands of fewer farms and the potential for an industrialized organization of agriculture. At our winter meetings, the title of one session was "Appropriate Technology for U.S. Agriculture: Are Small Farms the Coming Thing?" (Doering, Gardner and Pope, Raup 1978, Barkley). Two of the invited paper sessions at this meeting concern size issues: "Impact of Public Policy on the Control of Agricultural Resources" and "Consequences of Acreage Limitation and Other Provisions of the Federal Reclamation Law." A reexamination of size issues seems in order. The pioneers in our field saw the need to define farm size along with many other basic concepts as topics for study. Many of the insights we take for granted in textbooks, bulletins, articles, and classroom lectures stem from their careful and much debated work. To provide perspective, I would like to examine our collective efforts over the years to study the economies and diseconomies of size, particularly now that there appears to be substanPresidential address.