analyzing their problems and formulating action to achieve educational
 improvement, economic opportunity and social advancement and, thereby, to
 promote the national well being. Farm Bureau is local, county, state, national,
 and international in its scope and influence and is non-partisan, non-sectarian and
 non-secret in character (AFBF, 2003, para. 2).

 The strength of Farm Bureau from the county to the national level begins at the

 grassroots with individual members who decide to become active and take on leadership

 roles in the organization. In the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., all that seems to

 matter are the interests of the powerful agribusiness organizations that speak for large

 producers and maybe the environmental groups that have an upper-middle class

 constituency. While people in farming communities are small in numbers, they are a

 significant force within their districts and states and should not be discounted

 (Hassebrook, 1999).

 In the past ten years, agriculture and farming have been dramatically restructured

 (Purdy, 1999). Hassebrook (1999) states that the family farm is dying and farm

 ownership is being concentrated into fewer hands. As the agricultural industry has

 become more concentrated, decision-making concerning agriculture has shifted from the

 independent producers to those in influential positions at the top of large agribusiness

 organizations (Swenson, 1999).

 Present trends indicate that the family farm as the nucleus of United States
 agriculture is slipping away. There is a movement toward a dual agriculture. At
 one extreme are many small farms, most of them part-time. Fifty percent of all
 farms, as defined by the U.S. census, market only about three percent of all farm
 products. Most of these farmers depend on non-farm income for their living.
 They are not easily dislodged from farming (Breimyer & Frederick, 1999,
 paragraph 19).

 As specialized commodity producers have grown in both the size and proportion

of total agricultural production and as rural economies have diversified, another kind of