| Abstrakt: |
The article describes farmland consolidation trends in the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin farmland has undergone a historical transition which reflects what has been happening at the national level. Total number of farms in the U.S. and Wisconsin reached a peak in 1935, at about 6.8 million and 200,000 respectively. Since then, there was a steady decline in farm numbers of about 1 percent annually until around 1950, when the trend accelerated and rates more than doubled until 1980. It should be noted that despite the decline in acreage and farm numbers, Wisconsin has experienced yearly increases in many categories of agricultural production, particularly dairy produce. In sum, the state's farmland has exhibited a long term pattern of decline in total acreage, increase in average farm size and increases in many rates of production. Among the most significant effects of the Wisconsin consolidation trend has been its creation, and continued encouragement of, inequality patterns with respect to farm size and production scale. Some data provided point out that there has been a developing pattern of bimodality in the distribution of Wisconsin farms by size. This emerging pattern is further compounded by several governmental policies which at present clearly favor the farmer who is operating on a large scale. One of these is the policy of price supports. Another area of policy which come to bear upon the unequal distribution of size for Wisconsin's farms is that of taxation. A third policy are which merits attention is that of credit availability. |
