Locality and Inequality: Farm and Industry Structure and Socioeconomic Conditions (SUNY series, The New Inequalities) - Softcover

Lobao, Linda M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791404765 ISBN 13: 9780791404768

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1990

Synopsis

This book explores how the recent restructuring of farming and industry has affected economic and social equality in the United States. The author explains how the farm sector has undergone a dramatic restructuring with profound effects. Moderate-size family farms, the mainstay of American agriculture, have declined during the postwar period and are now under severe financial stress. Large-scale industrialized farms -- "the factories in the field," often run by corporations -- continue to expand their share of agricultural sales while small farms operated on a part-time basis appear to be replacing traditional family farming.

Lobao shows that public concern about farm restructuring is indeed warranted and that the nation now appears to be losing its most beneficial farms as well as industries. While local and regional social and economic forces and state policy can be brought to bear on these trends, Lobao particulary focuses on how community empowerment and broad-based political coalitions offer the most promise for fundamental change.

About this title

About the Author

Linda M. Lobao is Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology at The Ohio State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791404765
• ISBN 13: 9780791404768
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 291