The New American Farmer

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world—has more than doubled the price of U.S. farm land since 1972, to an average $490 an acre last February; prime Midwestern corn and soybean land sells for $2,000 an acre. A tractor that sold for $16,000 in 1974 may cost almost twice as much now; it would have a few new features, but be no more powerful. The result is that farmers have been forced into financing decisions as intricate as those facing corporate treasurers. Borrowing money at interest rates of up to 12% to buy or rent additional land and invest in machinery can improve a farm's productivity and profits—or it can ruin a farmer who expands too fast while crop prices are falling, as many growers did in 1976-77. Indeed, the angry protests last fall and winter came largely from younger, undercapitalized farmers who borrowed and bought too much too soon and were badly squeezed by inflation.

Meanwhile, a sweeping change in federal farm laws enacted in 1973 has forced farmers to become marketing specialists. Nearly all crops these days must be sold on the private market. Washington will make cash payments to farmers if market prices fall below Government-set "target prices" that supposedly cover most—not all—production costs. But no longer will Uncle Sam buy and store crops to prop the price; federal purchases these days are limited to small amounts for foreign aid, school-lunch programs and the like. Instead, the Government encourages farmers to store on their own land any produce they do not want to sell immediately, by offering low-interest loans to build storage facilities. All over the Midwest, shiny new galvanized-metal bins with conical roofs have become as prominent as the traditional white frame farmhouse.

The result: instead of selling all their crops at harvest time, as they did for centuries (indeed, millenniums), farmers now spread sales all through the year. That forces them to face tricky questions: Will wheat or corn or soybean prices be higher next March than now, and if so will they be enough higher to justify storing 80% of the crop until then, or only 60% of it? To complicate matters further, a farmer can work out deals to sell part of his crop in October, say, but get the cash next January if that would be better for tax purposes. All of which should stir pride in the ghost of William Jennings Bryan, who insisted in his 1896 cross-of-gold speech that "the farmer ... is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain."

The successful farmer today must understand enough engineering and science to participate in a technological upheaval that is changing the very shape of the land and the nature of his crops. Says Lawrence Rappaport, chairman of the department of vegetable crops at the University of California at Davis: "Agriculture is now in perpetual revolution, and there is no end in sight." People flying over the West and Midwest see an unusual pattern on the terrain below: not the familiar farm land with checkerboard squares, but large polka dots, the result of costly ($50,000 each) center-pivot irrigation machines that automatically propel themselves around the fields in a circle. Some of the strawberries that Americans buy and eat are cloned. Yes, cloned. The process in brief: plant tissue is mushed up, placed in a clear, jelly-like mix of nutrients and injected with hormones