The New American Farmer

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we really are and that there must be some kind of overall pattern for the world. I think when you get right down to it there's a closeness to God that farmers feel." But will Sons Mike, 19, and Gary, 18, share his beliefs? Says their mother Viola: "All I can tell you is what I hear them say: 'Mom and Dad don't get to go anywhere. The farm is their whole life.' "

Sons of the most successful farmers, naturally enough, see things differently. California's Gary Kitahara, 26, a third-generation Japanese American, studied chemistry, accounting and business administration, and "was never all that excited about farming"—even though his father George, 59, has made enough money growing nectarines, plums, peaches and grapes to buy not one but two airplanes to fly for fun. Says Gary: "I had seen my dad struggle, and there were times that it didn't look real good." But Gary's mind changed rapidly when Dad offered to buy him his own farm and take him into the family corporation, GVG Farms: "The money can be pretty good and the lifestyle is a little less hectic. I like that."

Another problem is whether farmers can keep up the rate of technological innovation that has made U.S. agriculture the productivity wonder of the world. So far, agricultural tinkerers are continuing to develop new techniques and devices. One of them: a herbicide sprayer with a receiver that catches any spray that does not hit a plant and recycles it into the pump, economizing on spray and preventing pollution of the ground. Another innovation is an irrigation system that covers even more ground than a center-pivot machine; it is a diesel-powered contraption that pushes a boom a half mile long and irrigates 320 acres at a crack.

Researchers are talking about having computers monitor the internal workings of cattle, so that farmers could calculate better how to fatten them. The computers could read radio-telemetry signals on body temperature, heartbeat and respiration rates from transmitters swallowed by the cows or carried on backpacks. Already, an electronic entrepreneur named Marvin Marshall tours the dairylands of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio in a Ford Econoline van packed with IBM computer equipment. In two hours he will analyze a farmer's dairy cows and whip out a formula for feed calculated to permit each beast to produce the maximum amount of milk while remaining in glowing health.

Scientists are changing the nature of crops so fast that, as George Kitahara puts it, "present varieties of fruit trees are obsolete before they are full grown." Consider, for instance, what scientists at the University of California at Davis are doing with the lowly tomato. They have developed a "square" tomato with a tough flat-sided skin that is ideal for both picking by machine and packing for shipment without bruising; it has become the standard tomato for canning. Now agrono mists are close to developing a tomato resistant to the salt that settles in irrigated fields or is blown onto cropland by sea breezes. One researcher quips: "I don't think we'll ever be satisfied until we've got a tomato that can be grown on the moon and whistles Yankee Doodle Dandy. "In general, the greatest problems concerning agricultural technology seem to be whether farmers can keep up with it and scrape