I'm a numbers guy, so when I read in Omnivore's Dilemna that declining corn prices since their heyday in early '70s were forcing "thousands of [farmers] into bankruptcy every week" (p. 53), I thought: "Wait a minute. Thousands (plural) should means three or even more. If three thousand farmers went bankrupt each week, that would be over 150,000 per year. That's a lot of farmers going bankrupt." So I checked. A Kiplinger article from 2003 on the good and bad news of farm bankruptcies reported: "The number of farm bankruptcies is heartening: For 2004, 400-500, same as 2003, a third of early 1990s' counts. " Hardly "thousands every week."
Then I found a 2004 article by the USDA research department which stated: "The number of farms in the United States has declined by two-thirds over the past seven decades, from a historic high of 6.8 million in 1935 to 2.2 million in 2002. While this decline is commonly associated with high rates of farm bankruptcy, a new study by ERS and the University of Arkansas finds the link between dwindling farm numbers and farm bankruptcies to be weak." The article further reported that "during the farm financial crisis of the early to mid-1980s, farm numbers declined to about 2.3 million, and the rate of bankruptcy filings rose to 23.1 per 10,000 farms in 1987."
So how many farms are there? I found that the number of farms hasn't changed much since 1990. In fact there were a few more farms in 2002 than in 1990 -- the recent peak being just over 2.2 million in 1993, and the 2007 number being 2.076 million. If there were around 2.2 million farms in 1987, and 23.1 bankruptcies per 10,000 farms, we'd have a high of about 5,000 filings per year.
So apparently farm bankruptcies have gone from a recent high in 1987 of about 5,000, to 1,200-1,500 in the early '90s, to 400-500 in 2003 and 2004 ---- a far cry from "thousands every week."
The moral of the story: Be skeptical. If things don't sound reasonable, they probably aren't correct. As for Pollan's comment, I have no idea where he got his numbers.
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4 comments:
My understanding is that the majority of the commodity farms are owned by huge corporations, and so that maybe that factors into the reckoning.
I had wonder how much consolidation was going on. However, if you check the number link, you find that the numbers have remained remarkably constant over the past 18 years and the average farm size has actually shrunk by a hair. In any event, the articles discussing bankruptcies are quite specific about numbers. My suspicion is that Pollan picked up the number from another source that was incorrect -- either accidental error or intentional exaggeration -- and passed it on without checking.
So apart from that, how do you like the book?
D.
Very interesting. I'm about half way through -- into intensive pasture management, which I found of particular interest as I'm co-trustee of a charitable trust that has cattle. We've signed on for a program of better pasture management which gets us federal money for the new fencing. The feds are talking moving the cattle every week or two, however, not daily!
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