Ep 1398 Food Fight: Large Farms V. Small Farms

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Richard J. Sexton, Professor Emeritus, Agriculture and Resource Economics, University of California Davis & Author of Food Fight: Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World

In 1973, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz told the nation’s farmers to, ”Get big or get out!”  Many farmers did get big or got out.  That leads us to ask:

Are the nation’s small farms worth saving?

Topics include why Earl Butz, and most of the nation’s ag economists, would tell the nation’s farmers to get big or get out; how the economic principal of economies-of-scale provides the impetus for getting big or getting out; and whether the nation’s small farms are worth saving?