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THE JOY OF METHODOLOGICAL DISPUTES.
Yesterday, I linked to a New York Times article lauding the increase in small farms in Iowa. Today, agricultural economist Michael Roberts argues that the increase is a meaningless quirk that's evidence of changes in census procedure and commodity prices, not small farms. Ah, the life of a blogger...
COMMENTS (4)
Nice find! Still, it raises some questions about differences in regional trends, don't you think?
Posted by: Melinda | February 18, 2009 6:32 PM
BTW, a big part of my problem with your writing on ag issues is that you're really not familiar with the actual problems and issues around farming and agriculture policy and so your approach tends to be pretty blithe and hand-wavey and cavalier. I thought you might be interested in this very nice piece on the problems of transitioning from commodity farms to what the author calls "food farms": http://www.dailyyonder.com/letter-langdon-choices-food-its-all-ok/2009/02/19/1941
Posted by: Melinda | February 19, 2009 10:54 AM
In my home state of Maryland the number of women-owned "farms" has gone up, but many of these seem to be "horse farms" - ie recreational riding stables with perhaps a little breeding going on.
Posted by: Bloix | February 19, 2009 11:52 AM
Ezra,
Thanks for noticing my post!
Bloix,
One of the recent changes to the farm definition is to include horses (in 1995) and maple syrup and Christmas trees (in 1997). So its not necessarily that women are new horse owners. It's that the agricultural census now counts those households as farms. I suspect it's taken time to find all these "farms," so many probably didn't show up until the recent 2007 Census. There have also been complicated changes to the sampling framework that is important for the count.
There has been a real increase in the number of organic farms, though.
Posted by: Michael Roberts | February 20, 2009 8:40 AM