Industrialized Farming

80% of our food sales in the United States come from large farms even though they make up less than 8% of farms. Industrial farming is something that is relatively new. In the early 1900's the number of farms was around 5,740,000 farms with an average of 147 acres per farm and making up abour 38% of the American workforce at the time. By the late 1980's the number of farms was down to 2,143,150 farms averaging 461 acres per farm and now only making up 2.6% of America's workforce. The number of farms decreasing and the acreage per farm increasing is where we start to see where industrial farming started becoming a thing. Industrial farms are efficient is getting product  produced and distributed.

The vast markets that large farms have enables them to be able to produce more product faster than small farms. These larges farms have over $1,000,000 in their sales but only make up 4% of farms but it is 66% of all agriculture sales. These farms supply markets that a way bigger than they are which in turns gives them awful profits. In 2012 high records were reached when producers were selling $394.6 billion dollars worth of product but it cost them $328.9 billion dollars to produce those products. Industrial farms have great efficiancy which is why they are able to produce more and sell more to much larger markets.

Products on these large farms are produced differently than they way they are produced on the smaller farms. Industrial farms have better and faster equipment enabling them to cover more land faster thus producing more crops. In the early 1900's there was experiomental work done on crops to create hybrid plants that would be disease resistant, improving yeild and quality. By 1960 96% of of corn that was planted by the large farms was coming from hybrid plants. The crops produced by large farms is what is turned into the food we eat everyday like ceral, oatmeal, breads, and so on. Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture once said, "Large farms produce the vast majority of the nation's food."

The advancements that  have been made with technology is why these large farms are as efficiant as they are. Farming used to be done with your own two hands and if you were lucky you may have had horse drawn equipment. Now we have computerized farm equipment that can run themselves, no one realizes how amazing and important this is to farming. Horse drawn equipment didn't come out until the late 1800's and the first opened geared tractor didn't come around till about 1910. Technology advancements have greatly increased the productivity in crop production and the keeping of livestock. Tim Griffin once said "As the farms get larger it's easer to invest in labor saving machinery, technology and specialized managment, and the production cost per unit goes down." Technological advancements dont' just deal with field equipment it also deals with equipment used to take care of livestock, mostly in the cattle industries. To see the way cows are being taken care of now is amazing. It went from the farmer's own two hands to now some farms even having robots take care of the animals. Technological advancements don't just deal with equipment either though; it also deals with scientific matters like how we can genetically modify crops to "immunize" them against pests and diseases. Crop production is now twice was in was 50 years ago because of the advancements that have been made and we are also using nearly half the labor we were and roughfully 16% less land.

Industrial farms have proven themselves over and over again on how they can be highly efficient. The advancments in technology have aided us in being able to produce more crops faster and get them to larger broader markets. If we didn't have these large farms who knows where America would be because of just how much the people demand and how fast the want it. Without the rising of the large farms America's people wouldn't have lasted this long.