SOC 2080 Lecture : Feb.7 Lecture

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2080
• Professor: Anthony Winson

Document Summary

Pre 1950"s: solid farming communities and strong farm organizations, making progress. Post 1950"s: fragmentation of farming, increasing stress on communities -> formation of the agro-food complex. Tractorization of agriculture-eliminates physical limits on amount of land that could be farmed using animals -> increases in cost of land, machinery beyond farmers control. Price of labour on farms increased [lead to labour shortage] Cost-price squeeze takes hold-> cost of inputs rising faster than prices farmers receiving for their products **pg. By 1990"s adoption of neo-liberal policies=reduction in farm subsidise ->drastic price decline for some farm commodities [i. e. fertilizer, gasoline] Many couldn"t do this-> social differentiation of farm structure- a relatively few get bigger and the majority are squeezed and leaving farming. By 1981 25% of farms were controlling 74% of gross farm sales- top 1% of super farms=20% Number of census farms drops 60% between 1941 and 1986 in canada as a whole, but drops 85% in.