View article

AsTRAcr A growing body of literature has linked the increasing concentration of agricultural production to severe ecological problems. The most prevalent argument has been that large-scale farmers are less concerned about the environment and, therefore, less likely than small-scale farmers to employ environmentally sound methods and practices. However, we propose an alternative hypothesis predicting that small-scale farmers cannot preserve the environment as well as large-scale farmers because of environmental and institutional constraints. To test this hy-pothesis, we examined the relationship between farm size and estimated soil loss using data drawn from a random sample offarmers in a midwestern county. Large farms were found to have lower estimated soil loss than small farms, primarily because the land farmed had less potential for erosion. The implications of these findings for developing an …