Housing development in the Tualatin Valley the farmer who reaped the benefits of higher prices. Consumers learned that packaging, processing, transporting and retailing operations accounted for 94 percent of the rise in food prices. For every dollar spent on food, half is spent moving that food around. United States agriculture is the most productive per worker in the world, yet it is the least cost effective in terms of energy spent for calories consumed. Our ability to sustain current production levels is in question from an energy standpoint as well as an environmental one. It has been estimated that we have lost one-third of the topsoil from United States cropland in use today. An inch of topsoil takes between 300 and 2,000 years to be replaced. According to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) figures, the state of Washington loses about 20 pounds of topsoil for each pound of wheat produced. Ground water depletion, acid rain and increased usage of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides have contributed to reduced soil productivity by destroying organic matter. Increasingly sophisticated technology, introduced to improve crop yields, has escalated the costs of farming while eliminating jobs. Rising land values, limited loan availability, and the acceleration of capital requirements have created a trend: farmland concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. The USDA estimates that more than two-thirds of all United States farms have disappeared since 1920 while the average farm size has tripled. Twenty-five percent of American agriculture is controlled by conglomerates such as International Telephone and Telegraph (I.T.&T.) and Ralston Purina through vertical arrangements (contracting or direct ownership of production), declares Agri-Finance (Feb. 1981). Before leaving office with the Carter administration, former Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland released a report pronouncing many of the existing farm programs not only obsolete but also skewed to favor the larger operators. Tax breaks, federal loans and price support programs have all been used to expand the land holdings of industrial farms and encourage non-farm land investments, undermining the family farmer. Productivity gains and economic benefits have been used as justification for this type of agriculture, yet numerous studies, including several USDA reports (Feb. 1967, Jan. 1981, July 1981) find the smaller family farm (approximately 450 acres for a moderate-sized wheat/barley farm in the Pacific Northwest) to be a more efficient farm production unit, providing more jobs and greater support for the local economy, and more environmentally sound than its industrial counterpart. Another agricultural trend is that of
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