Corporate Farming In The United States

Corporate farming is not new in the United States. The companies of “gentlemen adventurers” setting out in the seventeenth century to establish settlements in the New World were not corporations in a modern sense, but in organizational form and motivation they bear a striking resemblance to corporation farming ventures of recent decades. The twin lures of short-run profits and long-run capital gains have been major forces in shaping land use patterns and institutional structures throughout America's history. For over 300 years repeated efforts were made to use large scale organizational forms to reap these rewards in agriculture. Up to 1950 the record was one of almost consistent failure.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)