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Farm structure, market structure and agricultural sustainability goals: The case of New York State dairying

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2009

Rick Welsh  and
Thomas A. Lyson
Rick Welsh
Affiliation:
Director of the Southern Region SARE Program, 1109 Experiment St., University of Georgia, Griffin, GA 30223;
Thomas A. Lyson
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Rural Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.
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Abstract

This paper explores issues of agricultural sustainability in relation to arguments to sustain the family labor farm and the theoretical justification for the recent increase in smallerscale milk processors and differentiated dairy product markets. Using a population of New York State dairy farm households, we identified farm structural variables that influence farmers' use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and their consideration of intensive rotational grazing. Milk sales, division of hired labor on the farm, and ownership arrangements are found to be interrelated and predict relative use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers within a “conventional” confinement feeding system. Marketing strategies predict production practices within a confinement feeding system less reliably but do predict whether the farm has considered adopting an intensive grazing system. Farms that have higher saks, that use hired labor more extensively, and that are not single family operations are more likely to use chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Farms that sell to differentiated markets are more likely to look favorably on an eventual switch to an intensive rotational grazing system.

Keywords

sustainable agriculturepesticidesniche marketscraft productionmass productionrotational grazing
Type
Articles
Information
American Journal of Alternative Agriculture , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 14 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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