The Urbanization of Rural America: Implications for Agricultural Economics

Abstract

T HE central thesis of this paper is that the United States has become an society and that those of us who work in the rural social sciences have not perceived the significance of the growing urbanization of rural America. This urbanization is incorporating a growing proportion of the total population of the United States, and it is rapidly modifying economic, social, and political structures throughout the nation. It has already proceeded to the point that the set of relevant issues faced by agricultural economists has been altered sharply. T. W. Schultz, in a recent article, stated the challenge as follows: Farm people and their leaders are not, in general, conversant with the ideas, the philosophical basis, and the historical processes inherent in the urbanization and industrialization of which modem agriculture is an integral part. The scientific and technological knowledge underlying modem agriculture is well understood by farm people, but the changing social and economic framework is still largely in the realm of myth [13, p. 128]. My contention is that agricultural economists also lack an understanding of the processes to which Schultz alludes in the quotation above. Our tendency to equate urban with big city has limited our understanding of the processes, restricted the scope of our programs in agricultural economics, and sharply reduced our usefulness to society. Although I agree with Boulding that agricultural economists have made a greater contribution to an understanding of technical change at the structural and micro level than any other group of economists [4, p. 12], our preoccupation with the problems of the farm firm has resulted in little or no attention to economic problems that are much more important to the majority of the rural population. The agricultural economist is fully mindful of the fact that most improvements in technology increase the marginal productivity of capital relative to labor, thereby providing incentives for the substitution of capital for labor in production. We also are knowledgeable about the scale effects of changes in technology and of the ensuing tendencies toward increased specialization of the firm. A great deal of very meaningful re-