Pigs, Profits, and Rural Communities

Using the pork production industry as an example, this book illuminates the processes and consequences of agricultural industrialization for the social, economic, human, environmental, and political health of the rural United States.

This book illuminates the processes and consequences of agricultural industrialization, particularly within the swine production industry, for the social, economic, human, environmental, and political health of the rural United States. Contributors come from widely divergent backgrounds including a former U.S. senator, farmers, a veterinarian, a medical psychologist, an agricultural economist, a biological ecologist, a farm organization president, and anthropologists. Set within the theoretical framework of Walter Goldschmidt's research on the community consequences of industrialized food production, these contributions show that the increasing divergence of ownership has real human costs that continue to be ignored by economic developers and policymakers.

Kendall M. Thu is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Iowa. E. Paul Durrenberger is Professor of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University.