Socioeconomic Issues In Industrialized Farming Business

However, industrialized farms involve socioeconomic issues such as, the well-being of the communities with a predominate workforce in the farming industry. Stofferahn (2014) explains in his writings that these socioeconomic issues are a main reason why the industrialized farming business should be limited when compared to small farms. This claim is supported by the findings of the most recent research studies in the field of agricultural sociology conducted by Lobao, in 1990 (as cited in Stofferahn, 2014). Stofferahn (2014) explains that Lobao’s research observes the socioeconomic well-being of 3,000 farming counties in the United States. Well-being is based on the income, poverty, and income polarization between rich and poor of each county

For example, in 1970, Lobao found that there was less poverty, more income, and lower unemployment (Stofferahn, 2014). Furthermore, this same data was found to be increasingly more beneficial to the community in the year of 1980 in the same counties (Stofferahn, 2014). This conveys the idea that, as time goes on, larger family farms increasingly benefit the community. Moreover, Stofferahn (2014) explains that, unlike industrialized farms that provide a limited amount of jobs, because large family farms require hired labor, there is an increase in jobs available to the middle class allowing for an increase in income for more

The most harmful impact that industrialized farming had on the community was its influence on income polarization (Stofferahn, 2014). This term is used to describe the extreme divide between the rich and the poor (Stofferahn, 2014). When studying the socioeconomic impacts of industrialized farming, Stofferahn (2014) explains that Lobao found that these large corporate farms resulted in a generalized poor community with low family incomes and high poverty rates. As compared to large family farms, the poverty statistic of industrialized farm communities was found to have increased from 1970 to 1980 (Stofferahn, 2014). This conveys the idea that as the years pass, there is a detrimental effect on poverty in these communities. This income polarization may not seem like a problem; however, it has been found that a gap between the rich and poor results in higher rate of