Good Growing: Why Organic Farming Works

As farming in the United States enters the twenty-first century, the economically independent, self-reliant producer of the last century is rapidly disappearing from the countryside. Farmers, who were once the centerpiece of the rural economy, have often been reduced to producers of basic commodities for large agribusiness corporations. Much of the economic value in agriculture no longer rests in the commodities produced by farmers, but instead has shifted to the corporately controlled and integrated sectors of the agri-food system that bracket producers with high-priced inputs on one side and tightly managed production contracts and marketing schemes on the other side.