Choices magazine has a very interesting article by the same title as the subject line which talks about how crop production agriculture is being reshaped in the U.S. It's only a few pages and reads easily and quickly, so use the following snippets as a teaser and don't skip the main article.
"Four dominant forces are currently at work—Growing and Diversified Demand; Technology; Resource Availability; and Societal Influences. "
"The competitive rivalry plays out most clearly in bidding for productive resources. Here, producers typically bid most of their long-term potential profitability into the price of fixed assets such as farmland."
"While still limited in number, there are more farm management companies pursuing large scale farmland investments operated through both internal and external management arrangements. Funding for these enterprises increasingly comes from equity markets. The relative ease with which parties with access to capital can enter crop production will limit the upside profitability potential for current producers."
"While competition in the customer segments will keep buyers from significantly influencing the general market, the number of producers in a given crop producing area and the lack of differentiation make bargaining against customers very difficult without significant scale. "
"While scale efficiencies normally suggest expansion of the farming operation size, producers will also have to purposefully improve the productivity of the land they manage."
These are only a few excerpts from an interesting article, and they don't give the flavor for the whole article, so do yourself a favor and read it. I think you'll find it interesting, whether you agree with it or not.
http://www.choicesmagazine.org/magazine/article.php?article=152
