Changing Structure of Agriculture and Resulting Statistical Needs

Abstract

A GOOD deal of literature on the topic of the changing structure of agriculture has been generated in the last few years. In fact, stated data needs on structure are now so extensive that a complete listing becomes a prohibitive task. Even a partial listing, however, calls for some priority basis for ordering statistics needed. Thus, it seems important to devote some brief attention initially to a definition of structure and to some of the important questions surrounding the structure of agriculture before moving on to an enumeration of certain key statistical needs. Structure, I take to mean essentially the number, size, and decision-making control that prevails for firms engaged in the production and marketing phases of our natural food and fiber industry.' Within this broader definition there are subsets of structure such as tenure, legal form, production composition of firms, degree of vertical integration, and financing basis. Though one's preference might be to neatly limit the structure of agriculture to production and marketing of farm commodities, it is clear that some segments of the food and fiber industry are integrated, formally or informally, into an interrelated continuum ranging all the way from the acquisition of raw materials used to produce farm supplies to the retailing of farm commodities and even to the point of disposition of some of them as prepared foods in eating establishments.