During the 80s the decline of family farms impressed itself on the minds of Midwesterners, via media coverage of forced foreclosures and rural suicides.

Now in the 90s the tragedies of the previous decade are no longer widespread phenomena, and thus the continuing decline of the family farm does not attract as much attention as it once did.

Nonetheless, the decline continues.

Many young people who would be the inheritors of their families’ land and profession are opting for safer careers, and consequently, land continues to be transferred into the control of corporations and wealthy, large scale farm owners.

The reasons for this are numerous: lower birth rates in rural areas, shrinking profits and advances in technology which require greater investments to stay competitive.

The fact that many of the young people who would be the inheritors of family farms witnessed the problems their parents faced during the 80s is yet another reason, as are further obstacles created by pro-business legislation.

The result of the decline remains largely the same. Family farming is being replaced by the more efficient “monoculture” of the corporate farm.

These large scale operations are often characterized by greater specialization (one type of crop grown, one type of animal raised) and by the practice of reshaping of the landscape to make it more productive.

Creeks, churches, what have you, are systematically eliminated because they are deemed obstacles which lessen productivity more difficult and because their elimination makes way for harvestable land. Homogenization is more efficient.

Emphasis on efficiency often produces a blindness to ethical concerns, and this holds true for corporate farming.

The appropriation of smaller, family owned farms into larger farms owned by investors and overly wealthy individuals has a number of negative consequences.

A study by anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt suggested that such appropriation tends to create rural communities which have less adequate community facilities (schools, infrastructure, etc.), have lower standards of living for the majority of their members and which have fewer institutions where their members may participate in the democratic process.

Most obvious of all, though, is the the fact that the rise of the corporate farm and the decline of the family farm are yet another part of the trend in this nation toward a greater concentration of wealth and resources in the higher economic classes.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann has done some very good work on biblical attitudes regarding monopolization, attitudes which clearly indicate that the Old Testament condemns the appropriation of smaller farms by corporations and the wealthy. Bruggemann cites the following passage:

“Do no remove an ancient land mark/ or enter the fields of the fatherless;/ for their Redeemer is strong;/ he will plead their case against you.” (Proverbs 23:10-11).

The practice condemned here is essentially the same as the one we witness today.

The wealthy gain control of larger and larger amounts of land, destroying traditions of inheritance and attempting to more fully control sources of economic wealth.

It also seems worthwhile to note that there seems no reason for us today to limit this critique solely to the attempt to monopolize land devoted to agriculture.

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Tyler Wayne Roach is a senior in philosophy, English and religious studies from Des Moines.