Small Farmer Participation and World Agricultural Development

Small Farmer Participation and World Agricultural DevelopmentAuthor(s): Edgar OwensSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1976), pp. 142-148Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/975129 .

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

policy for granted. We must have a food policy designed to assure

that 213 million Americans are well fed at reasonable prices. Such a policy must strive to provide food to assist in feeding literally hundreds of millions of people around the world-both cash cus- tomers and the needy. It must continue American farm exports as the number one source of foreign exchange, and to help pay for the large variety of goods and services we have opted to import from abroad-including vitally needed minerals and pe-

policy for granted. We must have a food policy designed to assure

that 213 million Americans are well fed at reasonable prices. Such a policy must strive to provide food to assist in feeding literally hundreds of millions of people around the world-both cash cus- tomers and the needy. It must continue American farm exports as the number one source of foreign exchange, and to help pay for the large variety of goods and services we have opted to import from abroad-including vitally needed minerals and pe-

troleum It must make sure that food will always be available to help bring a peaceful and pros- perous world.

All of these things add up to a positive food policy. I am confident that the steps taken in recent years toward a food policy, to achieve those objectives which I have briefly discussed here, are being made in ways fully sensitive to market forces-so that the emerging new food policy will be flexible, workable, and successful for decades to come.

troleum It must make sure that food will always be available to help bring a peaceful and pros- perous world.

All of these things add up to a positive food policy. I am confident that the steps taken in recent years toward a food policy, to achieve those objectives which I have briefly discussed here, are being made in ways fully sensitive to market forces-so that the emerging new food policy will be flexible, workable, and successful for decades to come.

SMALL FARMER PARTICIPATION AND

WORLD AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

Edgar Owens, Agency for International Development

SMALL FARMER PARTICIPATION AND

WORLD AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

Edgar Owens, Agency for International Development

The world is not yet confronted with the Mal- thusian apocalypse-too many people on too little land. If governments are willing to involve masses of small farmers in a modern, high-productivity agriculture, then the world food problem might be resolved.

Where governments have involved small as well as large farmers in agricultural advance, farm productivity is as high as or higher than in rich countries. In Egypt, for example, per-acreage output of the basic foodgrains, (wheat, corn, and rice are the ones most familiar to Americans) is 3,515 pounds,' in Taiwan, 3,320 pounds. The compara- ble figure for the United States is 3,185 pounds.

In most developing countries, however, agricultural advance has been concentrated on just the

larger farms. Productivity on these farms has been

rising steadily the past two decades and, in some of the poor countries, is now as high as in the United States.

However, in all but a handful of the low-income countries, the tens of millions of small farmers have been left behind. They lack adequate access to the four elements of a scientific agricultural system-the means of production, the financial

system, the market, and technical knowledge. As a

result, their productivity is still very low, as little as a quarter the level of productivity of the rich

lands; in some countries even less. This combination of a small number of high-

productivity farmers and many low-productivity

The world is not yet confronted with the Mal- thusian apocalypse-too many people on too little land. If governments are willing to involve masses of small farmers in a modern, high-productivity agriculture, then the world food problem might be resolved.

Where governments have involved small as well as large farmers in agricultural advance, farm productivity is as high as or higher than in rich countries. In Egypt, for example, per-acreage output of the basic foodgrains, (wheat, corn, and rice are the ones most familiar to Americans) is 3,515 pounds,' in Taiwan, 3,320 pounds. The compara- ble figure for the United States is 3,185 pounds.

In most developing countries, however, agricultural advance has been concentrated on just the

larger farms. Productivity on these farms has been

rising steadily the past two decades and, in some of the poor countries, is now as high as in the United States.

However, in all but a handful of the low-income countries, the tens of millions of small farmers have been left behind. They lack adequate access to the four elements of a scientific agricultural system-the means of production, the financial

system, the market, and technical knowledge. As a

result, their productivity is still very low, as little as a quarter the level of productivity of the rich

lands; in some countries even less. This combination of a small number of high-

productivity farmers and many low-productivity

farmers adds up to mediocre national performance-and the threat of food shortages. For ex-

ample, if India's agriculture were organized so that her farmers could be as productive as farmers in

Egypt, instead of producing a mere 1,010 pounds of foodgrains per acre, India's foodgrain surplus available for export would exceed total worldwide trade in foodgrains. International and national officials would then frantically be trying to prevent the collapse of the world foodgrain market rather than trying to prevent hunger.

How can India and dozens of other developing countries achieve high farm productivity? The answer to this question now being advocated by official agencies, such as the World Bank, the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International

Development, as well as many development ex-

perts, is "small-farm, labor-intensive" agriculture, a

type of farming quite unlike agriculture in the United States.

Small Farm Systems

To Americans, accustomed to multi-hundred acre farms, big tractors, and a constant decline in

Edgar Owens is director of rural development in the Technical Assistance Bureau of the Agency for Interna- tional Development. He has served agricultural technical assistance assignments in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South

Vietnam, and Thailand, and recently coauthored with Robert Shaw a book entitled Development Reconsidered.

farmers adds up to mediocre national performance-and the threat of food shortages. For ex-

ample, if India's agriculture were organized so that her farmers could be as productive as farmers in

Egypt, instead of producing a mere 1,010 pounds of foodgrains per acre, India's foodgrain surplus available for export would exceed total worldwide trade in foodgrains. International and national officials would then frantically be trying to prevent the collapse of the world foodgrain market rather than trying to prevent hunger.

How can India and dozens of other developing countries achieve high farm productivity? The answer to this question now being advocated by official agencies, such as the World Bank, the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International

Development, as well as many development ex-

perts, is "small-farm, labor-intensive" agriculture, a

type of farming quite unlike agriculture in the United States.

Small Farm Systems

To Americans, accustomed to multi-hundred acre farms, big tractors, and a constant decline in

Edgar Owens is director of rural development in the Technical Assistance Bureau of the Agency for Interna- tional Development. He has served agricultural technical assistance assignments in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South

Vietnam, and Thailand, and recently coauthored with Robert Shaw a book entitled Development Reconsidered.

MARCH/APRIL 1976 MARCH/APRIL 1976

142 142



FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL POLICY ADMINISTRATION

the number of farmers, viewing the farm economy of developing countries must seem like Gulliver in the Land of Lilliput. Four-fifths of the farms in poor nations are less than 12 acres. In very crowded countries, such as Egypt, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Indonesia (Java), and also rich Japan, the average farm is as little as two or three acres. The average America farm is 400 acres.

Further, seemingly endless numbers of farmers cultivate these tiny plots. In the United States there is now slightly less than one farmer per 100 cultivated acres. Throughout the developing world, there are 25 or 50 farmers per 100 acres. In the very crowded countries mentioned above, there are as many as 100 farmers per 100 cultivated acres.

In contrast to American agriculture, small farm systems rely much more on agricultural chemicals, such as fertilizer, as the means of increasing output, and on farming techniques, or "cultural prac- tices," many of which are carried out by hand. Also, unlike the United States, small farm systems use small-sized farm machinery and tools to sup- plement human effort, not replace it, to increase the amount of work farmers can do rather than drive them off the land. It is this unusual concept of mechanization which explains the extraordinary number of hard-working farmers on the tiny plots of Egypt and Taiwan.

What distinguishes Egypt and Taiwan from other developing countries is a legal and institutional structure needed to involve two-acre farmers in a modern agriculture. These countries have rec- ognized that such things as equitable land tenure; savings and credit systems; laws relating to con- tracts, property, and other matters; a high level of integrity in public administration and the handling of money; and above all an array of local institutions through which participation is achieved are just as necessary for agricultural advance as better seeds and more fertilizer. Through this combination of local institutions and legal protection, two-acre farmers in Egypt and Taiwan get their two-acre share of credit and fertilizer, and also access to the market to sell the increased production which fertilizer makes possible.

Local institutions are not only a way of achiev- ing participation by small farmers; they are also the way of economies of scale. For example, the amount of fertilizer, credit, or irrigation water used by a highly productive two- or five-acre farmer is so small that it cannot be handled at a reasonable unit cost as an individual business transac-

tion. Similarly, no developing country can afford to train and pay enough extension agents to work with small farmers individually, or build roads to individual farms.

Economies of scale have been achieved for small farmers only where they are highly organized, in countries such as Egypt, Taiwan, China, Yugoslavia, and to a lesser extent, South Korea. For the purpose of examining the significance of local institutions, Japan and Israel are instructive additions to this list.

In a model drawn from non-communist countries, there are four types of organizations that can be used at the local level to organize and involve small cultivators: (1) local government, (2) farmer cooperatives, (3) irrigation and other types of land improvement associations, and (4) land law administration and arbitration.

The organizational distinctions that are com- mon-place in the non-communist world are seemingly dropped in China and Yugoslavia, where the rural commune appears to be a single institution encompassing the full range of organized group activities. Aside from political considerations, however, this difference in organizational form is more apparent than real, since different functions are organized separately within the commune in a pattern with which we are familiar.

To what extent have non-communist developing countries and foreign aid agencies used these local organizations as a way of involving small farmers? The answer, alas, is very little.

A form of local government that exists in most developing countries is the village council. General- ly speaking, however, these councils lack the authority, the money, and the trained manpower needed for development. If they function at all, it is as the local agent of the national government or national political parties. With few exceptions, it seems not to have occurred to either developing countries or foreign aid agencies that local government could be a major institution for participation and economic growth.

Land improvement associations are conspic- uously absent, even though irrigation is extensive in many of the low-income countries. Is the absence of farmer participation in the operation of irrigation systems one reason why maintenance is slovenly and water rates are not collected-and why so many systems are used at only 10 or 20 per cent of capacity?

Local land tribunals function only in several countries that have carried out comprehensive land

MARCH/APRIL 1976

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

reform programs, such as Egypt and Taiwan.

The Debasement of an Honorable Institution

The one local institution that nearly all developing countries and foreign aid agencies have used to try to organize and involve small farmers is the cooperative. In the dismal history of this honorable institution, we can identify the problems involved in increasing participation and the impor- tance of government protection of small farmers.

Cooperatives have long had an image as a business organization through which farmers can im-

prove their lot in life and protect themselves from

exploitation. To this view, born in Europe and North America, the developing countries have added an image of the cooperative as an institutional bridge between the low-productivity world of subsistence agriculture and the high-productivity world of scientific agriculture. In a few countries the cooperative has turned out to be an effective bridge: Japan, Egypt, Taiwan, and South Korea. Apart from these few, however, the history of farmer cooperatives has not been a way of involving small farmers in a modern agriculture.

For one thing, governments or traditional local elites have distorted basic principles of cooperative organization. "Cooperatives become forms of official tutelage, useful as temporary expedients, but tending to perpetuate official control and keeping peasants as second-class citizens."2

The present study [of farmer co-ops in Columbia] tends to illsutrate how in underdeveloped societies certain institutions undergo a process of re-adaptation to the mil- ieu which puts their functioning in a state of contra- diction to their ideological objectives and doctrines. Such institutions adapt themselves to the context in which they function with the effect that, far from producing necessary changes therein, they reinforce the established social order instead.

The manner in which so many local cooperatives have been organized illustrates how they can be subverted and made a part of the traditional

low-productivity system. Commonly a civil servant asks a group of farmers to organize a cooperative in a village with little or no discussion of the possible advantages for a farmer-member or how a co-

operative ought to be organized and managed. Long accustomed to responding affirmatively to

government suggestions, the farmers agree, have their names entered on the membership roll, and elect officers. The president is invariably either a

person of status in the local community or an in-

dividual who serves as the agent of a person of status. Many a village cooperative has been organized in this fashion in the course of a morning or an afternoon.

Whatever activities are undertaken by this type of village society usually are initiated by the government. Loans can be extended to members when the government appropriates funds for agricultural credit. Crops are marketed if and when the government makes the necessary arrangements. Most of whatever planning is done is initiated by the government. The mass of small farmers are not much involved. In such a system the officers are not leaders of the local cooperative but merely the last link in a one-way communications channel from remote government officials down to the people.

The officers of the village society help the government officials administer whatever programs the government sponsors. Since governments are often lax in imposing standards to assure equitable treatment of each member, it becomes relatively easy for a few to monopolize the benefits. In one case, "a number of small loans went for immediate consumption or for handling calamities," a kind of poor relief program rather than a way of increasing production and personal incomes. In the same cooperative, moreover, most of the production credit funds were allocated to the larger farmers.4

Business principles of farmer cooperatives have been contravened no less than organizational principles. Nearly all local societies are too small to be viable as business entities. If required to operate in a market economy, they should and would go bankrupt.

Local societies generally are organized in individual villages and often have fewer than 100 members. Most villages in developing countries have less than 1,000 people, and many are much smaller. The members of such a small society do not buy enough fertilizer, save or borrow enough money, or market enough produce to approach the minimum volume of transactions needed for reasonable unit costs of these business transactions. Indeed, the total number of acres cultivated by all the members of a village society may be no more than the size of a single American farm!

These village societies are too small to finance an office, a warehouse, and other needed facilities, and too poor to hire a staff. Clearly, such a

cooperative is a business in name only. In the handful of high-productivity countries

the local cooperative has been made economically viable by grouping villages into the United States

MARCH/APRIL 1976

144




equivalent of a township or county federation of village societies.

A second weakness in the business aspect of farm cooperatives in the developing world is the lack of federations. The management of a financial system, the manufacture and distribution of fertilizer and other production inputs, marketing and processing-these and other functions are too big for a local cooperative unit. For this reason, the real economic muscle of farmer cooperatives is realized through regional and national federations. Depending on the size and population of the country, these business operations must be organized on a regional or national scope. Finally, and contrary to the Western image of a cooperative as a type of private business, the functions of federations can be performed by public agencies as, in fact, they are in Egypt and Taiwan and were in Japan until World War II. In these countries, the federation functions are performed by the Minis- try of Agriculture or public marketing corpora- tions.

Generally speaking, the countries which have organized village societies that are too small to be viable are the same countries in which federations are weak or still non-existent. A farmer who lacks access to the market as an individual is no better off by being a member of a village society if he still lacks access to the market. The all-important economies of scale which are regional or national by their nature are denied to local cooperatives in most developing countries.

In summary: three of the four kinds of institutions through which people can be involved-local government, irrigation and other land improvement associations, and land tribunals-have been overlooked in most developing countries and by the foreign aid agencies. With respect to the one local institution that has been tried in nearly every country, the farmer cooperative, both organizational and business principles have been contravened almost everywhere because governments have been reluctant or unwilling to intervene on behalf of small farmers.

Participation and Performance

How does the historical record compare with the contention that participation is one of the essentials of sugcessful economic growth?

The table on the following page shows two measures of performance that can be used to eval- uate the agricultural sector: foodgrain output per

acre and the number of farmers per 100 acres. In the absence of adequate income data, food-

grain yields can be taken as a general indicator of production performance for two reasons. Food- grains are the largest component of total agricultural production in almost every country in the world, including the United States. In addition, foodgrains comprise three-fifths to three-fourths of the diet of the poor. Where foodgrain yields are high, the poor are not hungry. Where foodgrain yields are low, and also where population density is already high, the threat of hunger is real.

The table shows that foodgrain yields are much higher in the participatory countries than in countries where the legal and institutional structure is weak, that the amount of increase during the past two decades is also very much higher in the participatory countries, and, finally, that it is possible for low income countries to catch up with the rich.

The productivity difference between the high- and low-participation countries is actually greater than the table shows, because diversification and commercialization of agriculture (into vegetables, fruits, small animals, and other cash crops) is more advanced in the former. Small farmers in the high participation countries not only produce more foodgrains per acre: they produce more fruits and vegetables and other cash crops as well.

The right-hand column of the table, farmers per 100 acres, shows the enormous potential for job- creation in small-farm, labor-intensive systems. The table shows that in general there are far more farmers in the high participation countries than in the low. From other sources it is known that rural underemployment is much higher in the latter than in the former. Further, the incomes of small farmers in the high participation countries have been rising slowly but steadily over the past two decades. In most developing countries the income level of small farmers remains essentially un- changed, even after 25 years of ostensible agricultural development and foreign aid.

Mexico illustrates how small farmers fare in countries which lack viable institutions of participation and, in consequence, how national performance is retarded when small farmers are left out of development.

Four-fifths of the total increase in agricultural production in Mexico the past two decades has come from fewer than five per cent of her farms. These farms are relatively large, from 100 to 500 acres, cover half of Mexico's total cultivated area,

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

TABLE I FOODGRAIN PRODUCTIVITY AND FARM EMPLOYMENT

Foodgrain Yields Per Acre

1970-72

(pounds)

Increase Since 1948-50

(pounds)

Farmers Per 100 Acres

1970

Rich Countries

Japan Great Britain U.S.A.

High Participation Developing Countries

Egypt Taiwan South Korea Yugoslavia Mainland China

Low Participation Developing Countries

Asia: Indonesia Turkey India Iran

Latin Mexico America: Guatemala

Brazil

Africa: Kenya Nigeria Algeria Zaire

Source: Production Yearbooks and World Crop Statistics, 1948-64, FAO, Rome.

but employ only one-sixth of her farmers. These farms are mostly irrigated and are cultivated with

American-style farm equipment. Per-acreage yields of two of the crops grown in this commercial sector, wheat and cotton, are higher than in the United States.

The main crops of Mexico's small farmers are corn and beans. In contrast to the high yields for wheat and cotton, the per-acreage output of these two is only one-fourth and one-third, respectively, of yields in the United States. This combination of

a few high-productivity large farmers and a large number of low-productivity small farmers ac- counts for the mediocre national performance of Mexico shown on the table.

At the bottom of the scale in Mexico's farm

system are the agricultural laborers who own no land at all. During the 1950s this large group increased from 2.3 to 3.3 million. Because of labor-

displacing mechanization, their working time de- creased by almost one-half, from 194 to 100 days per year. The extremely low incomes of these

MARCH/APRIL 197 6

1,695 1,295 1,690

91 6 .85

1,395 1,525 1,385 1,210

700

78 79

106 26 60-70 (est.)

4,615 3,450 3,185

3,515 3,320 3,025 2,355 1,690

1,805 1,245 1,010

810

1,335 860

1,215

1,165 640 600 795

565 410 370 -80

89 26 39 13

635 150 45

12 34 15

265 65 10

-25

N.A. N.A. 23 N.A.

146




people who, with their families, make up a third of Mexico's total population, actually declined by one-fifth. The same trends are believed to have continued during the 1960s, although the relevant 1970 agricultural census data have not been re- leased.

Mexico's record tells us that the basic issue of agricultural development is the capacity of an en- tire rural society to use whatever improved technology is available. It is clear that the rural societies of Egypt and Taiwan have much more of this capacity than the rural society of Mexico. Yet it is Mexico, not Egypt and Taiwan, that uses the so- called "miracle seeds" of the Green Revolution. It is in Taiwan and Egypt, not Mexico, that the incomes of two-acre farmers have more than doubled the past two decades. To those who say the problem in Mexico is too many people on too little land-for each farmer per acre in Mexico, there are more than six in Egypt and Taiwan.

The continuing poverty of five-sixths of Mex- ico's farmers is the result of misguided policies that actually create unemployment, worsen income distribution, and depress national productivity levels.

This is to say that agricultural development, or the "world food problem," as it is now being described, is a problem of political will, or, more accurately, the lack of it, in all but a handful of developing countries. Creating the necessary legal and institutional structure of a high-productivity economy, maintaining a high level of integrity in the participatory institutions, protecting small farmers from traditional forms of exploitation, these require government commitment and government action. When this commitment is weak, the poor may well go hungry!

Two-Acre Farmers and the United States

Small farm systems are being seen increasingly as the solution to the world food problem by the World Bank, the United Nations, and many others. Unbeknownst to most, the U.S. Congress was perhaps the first public body to endorse such systems officially.

With remarkably little notice by the press and public, the Congress incorporated a small farm, labor-intensive policy into America's foreign aid law in 1973. Future foreign aid is to be aimed directly at the people Congress described as the "poorest majority," the villagers and urban slum- dwellers whom Americans have always wanted to

be the beneficiaries of our assistance. About 60 per cent of this "poorest majority," more than a billion people in the non-communist developing world, depend upon small farms for a living.

What can the United States do to help bridge the gap between under-developed governments and two-acre farmers? Small farmers cannot be involved in a modern agriculture without some decen- tralization to viable local institutions, a sensitive problem in any country, including the United States. Clearly, our country cannot impose participation in small farm systems as a condition of American development assistance. The basic decis- ions about the future pattern of developing societies, their organization, how they combine traditional and modern values, whether their governments involve their poor in a high-productivity economy, will increasingly be made by the countries themselves.

The United States can promote small farm agriculture and other forms of participation in development by explaining the projects we are prepared to support (which we have not done), and the reasons for our choice. Our government should talk about the participation strategy in an educational, non-pressure way, and also be more selective about the projects we support with our assistance. For example, American taxpayers should be able to assume our government will not support the type of non-viable farmer cooperatives described above. Nor should our government feel obliged to provide assistance to a country simply because it is poor. As the House International Relations Committee expressed the point,

Recognizing the desirability of giving poor-country governments. . .time to adjust to the new directions, the committee believes that program and missions should be phased out if, after an appropriate effort has been made, the conclusion is reached that a particular country is at the moment unsuited to the kind of program envisaged by the 1973 legislation.5

In other words, we should rely on persuasion and the power of the idea of participation.

Notes

1. This and the several figures which follow are a three- year average for 1970-72. This average is used in order to even out somewhat the seasonal fluctuations which are characteristic of agriculture.

2. Doreen Warriner, Land Reform in Theory and Practice (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 402-403.

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

3. United Nations Research Institutes for Social Develop- ment, Rural Institution and Planned Change (Geneva: the Institutes, 1970), Vol. 2, p. 293.

4. Ibid., p. 291.

3. United Nations Research Institutes for Social Develop- ment, Rural Institution and Planned Change (Geneva: the Institutes, 1970), Vol. 2, p. 293.

4. Ibid., p. 291.

5. Report of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, House Report No. 93-1471 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), p. 13.

5. Report of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, House Report No. 93-1471 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), p. 13.

FOOD, AGRICULTURE, AND ADMINISTRATIVE

ADAPTATION TO POLITICAL CHANGE

Weldon V. Barton, House Agriculture Committee

FOOD, AGRICULTURE, AND ADMINISTRATIVE

ADAPTATION TO POLITICAL CHANGE

Weldon V. Barton, House Agriculture Committee

The administration of agricultural policy in the United States set high standards for itself in the 1930s. "Undoubtedly the outstanding executive department from the standpoint of administrative management," a staff report to President Franklin Roosevelt's Committee on Administrative Manage- ment (the Brownlow Committee) said of the De- partment of Agriculture in 1937.1 That mark of success was especially impressive, at a time when

Agriculture had just gone through the transition from a research and education agency to the only established department of the national government that was charged with the operation of a major New Deal regulatory program. The Brownlow Committee had evaluated a department engaged in the management of controversy, not only of rou- tine service programs.

Four decades later, in the mid-1970s, agricultural policy administration is again under the

public spotlight. But it is doubtful whether a

modern-day Brownlow Committee, applying simi- lar criteria of effectiveness as the original one in

1937, would be as generous. At least, a present- day critique would need to resort to models of

organization less systematic than the hierarchical model that guided the Brownlow Committee, in order to find much that might be endorsed about current agricultural administration.

How does agricultural policy administration measure up, in the mid-1970s? To answer that

question, we cannot consider the administrative

system abstractly. Drastic change has occurred in farm and food politics in recent years, creating pressures for adaptation by administrative pro-

The author wishes to thank Gladys Baker, James Bon- nen, and Leo Mayer for reading and commenting upon an earlier draft of this article. The presentation in this article is that of the author, and does not represent the Com- mittee on Agriculture of the U.S. House of Representa- tives.

The administration of agricultural policy in the United States set high standards for itself in the 1930s. "Undoubtedly the outstanding executive department from the standpoint of administrative management," a staff report to President Franklin Roosevelt's Committee on Administrative Manage- ment (the Brownlow Committee) said of the De- partment of Agriculture in 1937.1 That mark of success was especially impressive, at a time when

Agriculture had just gone through the transition from a research and education agency to the only established department of the national government that was charged with the operation of a major New Deal regulatory program. The Brownlow Committee had evaluated a department engaged in the management of controversy, not only of rou- tine service programs.

Four decades later, in the mid-1970s, agricultural policy administration is again under the

public spotlight. But it is doubtful whether a

modern-day Brownlow Committee, applying simi- lar criteria of effectiveness as the original one in

1937, would be as generous. At least, a present- day critique would need to resort to models of

organization less systematic than the hierarchical model that guided the Brownlow Committee, in order to find much that might be endorsed about current agricultural administration.

How does agricultural policy administration measure up, in the mid-1970s? To answer that

question, we cannot consider the administrative

system abstractly. Drastic change has occurred in farm and food politics in recent years, creating pressures for adaptation by administrative pro-

The author wishes to thank Gladys Baker, James Bon- nen, and Leo Mayer for reading and commenting upon an earlier draft of this article. The presentation in this article is that of the author, and does not represent the Com- mittee on Agriculture of the U.S. House of Representa- tives.

cesses and agencies. We must understand the

changing nature of agricultural politics, in order to look realistically at Executive Branch activities which are an integral part of that political scene.

Stages of Agricultural Politics

The trend that underlies virtually all change in the politics of agriculture is urbanization. The United States shifted from 75 per cent rural in the 1860s when the Agriculture Department was es-

tablished, to 73 per cent urban by 1970. Rein- forced by court-induced congressional reappor- tionment and redistricting during the 1960s, urbanization brought about a precipitous decline in

agriculture's political base. That declining base occurred alongside ever-increasing food consumption on a worldwide scale. Gains in farming productivity postponed the day of reckoning. But

ultimately, the trends toward urbanism and increased food consumption would render the politics of food highly salient to consumers, and would shift the power to decide food policies es-

sentially into the hands of urban consumers. The best barometer, perhaps, of political

change that led to the current situation is the U.S. House of Representatives. The House, compared to the Senate, reflects urban-rural cleavages most

prominently, because House districts are com-

posed more exclusively of either urban or rural constituents. By focusing upon the House, there-

fore, we can trace the stages of political change within the context of which Executive Branch

agencies must ultimately function.

cesses and agencies. We must understand the

changing nature of agricultural politics, in order to look realistically at Executive Branch activities which are an integral part of that political scene.

Stages of Agricultural Politics

The trend that underlies virtually all change in the politics of agriculture is urbanization. The United States shifted from 75 per cent rural in the 1860s when the Agriculture Department was es-

tablished, to 73 per cent urban by 1970. Rein- forced by court-induced congressional reappor- tionment and redistricting during the 1960s, urbanization brought about a precipitous decline in

agriculture's political base. That declining base occurred alongside ever-increasing food consumption on a worldwide scale. Gains in farming productivity postponed the day of reckoning. But

ultimately, the trends toward urbanism and increased food consumption would render the politics of food highly salient to consumers, and would shift the power to decide food policies es-

sentially into the hands of urban consumers. The best barometer, perhaps, of political

change that led to the current situation is the U.S. House of Representatives. The House, compared to the Senate, reflects urban-rural cleavages most

prominently, because House districts are com-

posed more exclusively of either urban or rural constituents. By focusing upon the House, there-

fore, we can trace the stages of political change within the context of which Executive Branch

agencies must ultimately function.

Weldon V. Barton is a staff consultant to the Committee on Agriculture of the U. S. House of Representatives. Previously, he was director of governmental services of the National Farmers Union, and assistant professor at two universities in Texas.

Weldon V. Barton is a staff consultant to the Committee on Agriculture of the U. S. House of Representatives. Previously, he was director of governmental services of the National Farmers Union, and assistant professor at two universities in Texas.

MARCH/APRIL 1976 MARCH/APRIL 1976

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Documents

Small Farmer Participation and World Agricultural Development