ABSTRACT
This chapter explores issues relating to the survival and sustainability of farms, given the structural changes currently taking place in production agriculture. It focuses on the characteristics and problems of small farms in an industrialized agriculture. Off-farm employment has become an integral part of the emerging structure of production agriculture and its effects are of vital concern to rural communities because of the labor, farm input and product market linkages of agriculture to the rest of the rural economy. In addition, the structural transformation in production agriculture has resulted in massive migration of farm families from rural areas to urban centers due to better economic opportunities and social services. The historical increase in farm size, mechanization and accompanying reliance on off-farm inputs, specialization, and globalization is often referred to as “industrialization” of agriculture. Agricultural research and cooperative extension services have provided the basis for highly innovative agriculture which is geared to capital-intensive, large-scale farming.
