1. Where have all the farmers gone?
Brian Halweil

2. The shift from rural areas to cities
Falling incomes
Rising debt
Rural poverty
Attraction from urban life -- higher income and more opportunities

3. Reality
unemployment and ill health in the cities
marginalization of farmers: a vicious cycle

4. Why the farmers quit farming?

5. The power of technology and mechanization in a industrialized society
Widespread using of chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides
“outsource” expenditures
Prevailed players in a food industry– the processing and packaging business

6. Result from the high technology
Farmer’s profit margin dropped dramatically
Small farms are being driven out; fewer farmers on bigger tracts of land producing a greater share of the food supply
farmers are becoming more dependent and lost the diversity of crops

7. The squeeze from food cartels
Centralized control of the food system from the agricultural oligopoly
Mergers, takeovers and alliances make few agribusiness firms be extremely profitable: widening gap between farm prices and retail food prices
The result of seeking high profit of corporate bureaucracies: the quality of the food?
Farmers are losing control of the production process: problem from the bank, contracts and so on

8. Result from the high concentration
higher price; lower quality food
losing professional farmers with extensive knowledge

9. Backfire towards rural community: tearing of the social fabric
poverty
crimes
social class distinctions
mental stress
lower rates of medical protection
breakdown of families ties
high rates of suicides
security threats

10. Ecological disruption
Lost of crop diversity; simplified crop system
Simplifying the ecology of a field can result in nitrogen pollution, water pollution (algae blooms) , gargantuan amounts of waste …
Big enterprises are less concerned about the pollution and resource degradation
overuse of antibiotics caused growing antibiotic resistance in food-borne bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter