Rural American Family Farms

Oxfam America is a supporter of small family farm based business, according to Laura Rusu the US government spends up to 16 billion dollars a year on farm payments. Most of those funds from the US government go towards large commercial farms. Oxfam America is supporting the act called the Rural America Preservation Act, which will help smaller based farms with funding. Since there are so many loopholes in the current government system that are only helping the larger commercial based farms, this Act will help prevent these loopholes and help the smaller farms with more funding. There are many misleading ideas about the small scale farms, some of which are that small scale farms cannot support a family, that they need to grow into large scale farms to make money, and that small scale farming is usually just a hobby or for extra income. After researching the agribusiness, most of these accusations and most because small scale farms could be more successful if they were provided the support from state and federal governments like they should be.

In the statement of Barbara Fiorito (2005), the US government spends up to 16 billion dollars each year on farm payments, and 70 percent of the money goes to the farms that are already receiving government funding either through different federal grants or state funding. The article discuses how the large commercial farms also hurt smaller farms abroad. Since a large farm can mass produce a product they can sell their product at a much lower price because of the supply they have, verses the smaller farm that can not produce as much so it must then have higher prices. Even though this example that Oxfam give us is using farms from abroad it is the same kind of situations small American agribusinesses are facing. Andrea Perera of Oxfam said that the Rural America Preservation Act if passed will limit the subsidy payments to industrial farms and corporations and will help family farmers make a living. If passed, this Act will now have a cap on payments the farms will receive; the payments will be lowered by 30 percent from $360,000 to $250,000 said Perera in her article and most loopholes in the current government allow the largest farms to collect enormous subsidies, which can exceed $1 million will also be taken care of too.

In doing research it seems that most “common” people or people that grew up in larger cities have been mislead to what a small farm is. Some people do not believe that there are families that base all of their income on their family farm that is run by just themselves. Some believe that families that farm on a smaller scale usually do it for the extra income or as a hobby, but according to the Census bureau, they are not considered hobbies if they spend more than half of their working hours on it. The Census Bureau reports that these primary small family business farms have less than $100,000 in annual gross sales and that practically half are less than $50,000 a year in annual gross sales. A big part of their income goes right back into the preparation for the upcoming planting season, so if they were helped out more like the larger scale farms most of the money for the preparation could be taken care of. There are so many things that farmers must face in order to have a good harvest each and every year.

First, the small farms cannot afford the irrigation systems that the much larger scaled farms can. This means that the family farms must rely on enough precipitation for the harvest to grow, dissimilar to the larger farms that can regulate using their irrigation systems. When these larger farms receive all these payments from the government they, can afford the essentials that are needed to farm. There are also other products that the large farms can