The Business of Agribusiness

Agribusiness is the interrelated and coordinated food and fiber system. Agribusiness firms do not meet in smoke-filled rooms plotting the destruction of family farmers; but they do share a similar perspective—that short-term profit maximization is the key to success. Financial institutions are another set of agribusiness input firms; the input they provide is capital. The farmers home administration illustrates the role of the state in strengthening capital and agribusiness power while perpetuating the myth that family farmers exist and are viable. The federal role in providing farm loans has helped to disguise the inability of family farmers to survive in the marketplace and hence to provide a larger population of farm families to be exploited by agribusiness supply and processing firms. Agribusiness displaces family farmers with large-scale producers who are less technically efficient but more profitable and more tightly integrated into agribusiness.