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To: Moominoid who wrote (22828)	8/19/2002 12:56:32 AM
From: Joan Osland Graffius	Respond to of 74559

David, You are correct that there was more productivity in certain areas of agriculture than others. For example in North Dakota where we have our land when I grew up my father farmed 640 acres with the use of one child during harvest. My nephew now farms 6,000 acres with help of a couple of college kids during harvest. The machinery has been the key of his ability to increase the amount of land they can handle. The bad news is the cost of this machinery had gone through the roof relative to the past, as the cost of machinery is higher now per acre farmed than previous periods. When you start talking about land production close to cities or in California, it is mostly used for vegetable and fruit farming for delivery to near by markets. This type of farming generally needs more labor than small grains, beans, sugar beets, etc. There has been productivity improvement in the use of fertilizer and pesticides as these farmers use satellite information for identifying areas that require fertilizer and pesticides. One thing that has changed is the education required for a person to farm these days. My father had a high school education and did just fine. My nephew has a masters degree in agriculture economics and needs every bit of it. There is a huge amount of technical information that must be known to maximize production. For example a given seed from a seed house will require a special soil and exact amounts of pesticide and fertilizers must be used to get maximum production. It is a tough business especially when Canada and South America have cheaper currencies. Joan