The Cumulative Impact of Dairy Industry Restructuring

n recent years, the advantages of large-scale, mass production have been called into question across a spectrum of industrial sectors (Adams and Brock 1986, Best 1990, Piore and Sabel 1984). Within agriculture, the spread of large-scale, industrialized production is dislodging both a longstanding social system rooted in family farming and an agroecological system characterized by extensive land use, low levels of external input, plant and animal diversity, and regional selfsufficiency (National Research Council 1989a, Pimentel 1988). Historically, entrepreneurial, smallscale units of production mixing family assets and management with seasonal or permanent hired labor typified US agriculture. In recent years, however, vertically integrated, industrialized farming has begun rapidly displacing production dominated by single families. Wallace (1987) dates the onset of agricultural industrialization to the 1880s. Today, the 5% of farms that are the largest account for more than 50% of sales (Marion 1986). Concentration of production is most advanced in poultry, fruits, veg