agribusiness

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agribusiness A large-scale capitalist farming and food-processing organization and enterprise (producing fertilizers, pesticides, or machinery) which shares many characteristics of other advanced industries. These include, for example, the use of advanced science and technology, techniques of mass production, and extensive vertical and horizontal integration of processes and corporations. Thus, for example, one might find a frozen-food corporation, having long-term contracts with an array of large farms using computers to plan production of highly specialized produce to order, and being supplied with inorganic fertilizers and other materials by a company also owned by the food corporation. The effects of agribusiness in the United States are discussed in Richard Merrill ( ed.) , Radical Agriculture (1976)
and Susan George , How the Other Half Dies (1976)
. See also RURAL SOCIOLOGY.

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