Market Analysts Predict US Agricultural Transition to Large-Scale Agricultural Production by Huge Corporations
In twenty years, a very small number of agricultural enterprises will produce the lion's share of agricultural products in the United States, said Brett Schiotto, executive director of Aimpoint Research.
It will be large-scale farming with some internationally active operators, said Schiotto at the Agri-Pulse Food and Food Policy Summit.
Small farmers could excel in this model by focusing on niche or specialized markets, but mid-sized farmers will fail under the pressure of competition, where large corporations have advantages.
Evaluating the year 2040, Schiotto said federal support for agriculture in the United States could disappear, and gene editing would be the main technology.
Schiotto predicted that mid-level farmers will experience the greatest problems in the short to medium term. Buyers will simplify their supply chains as much as possible by dealing with a limited number of large manufacturers who can be guaranteed to meet quality and quantity requirements. “A lot of medium and small farmers will be out of the game,” Schiotto said.
In the 1980s and 1990s, some analysts already predicted a two-tier agricultural system in which many small farmers, on the one hand, and a small group of corporations, on the other, coexisted.
True, at that time experts did not go as far as Skiotto in predicting unprecedented levels of farm consolidation, the emergence of new technologies or the effect of tightening an increasingly narrow margin.
Producers who are most likely to succeed in the US agricultural industry should be highly effective leaders who are knowledgeable in marketing and able to quickly adapt to the market.
Consolidation is an ongoing and hotly debated topic in American agriculture at the moment.
According to Randy Dikhut, senior vice president of Farmers National Co., a company that sells agricultural land, farmers are actively buying land, especially if there is a market nearby.
Source: https://www.agroxxi.ru