One out of four Americans lived on a family farm. Politicians toured the country trying to convince farmers to vote for them. The 50s mantra was "Children in China are starving". Farmers felt important because they were being called on to feed the world. Most farmers made a decent living raising chickens, hogs, cattle and crops to feed their livestock and sell. Swamps were drained so farmers could grow ever more food.

Scientists at Land Grant Universities transformed farming. They invented chemicals to control weeds and insects. Invented improved tillage methods that decreased soil erosion and the cost of preparing and tending seed beds. Scientists hybridized seeds and perfected fertility in ways that increased crop yields more than 100%.

Hogs, turkeys and chickens and cattle were bred, fed and confined in ways that caused them to more quickly grow to market size. Milk cows, hogs and chickens were bred, fed and cared for in ways that caused them to produce more eggs, meat and milk.

Fear of famine inspired Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson to build and fill "Ever-Normal Grain bins" across the country. The goal was to store an extra years' worth of grain in case this nation suffered a crop failure that threatened famine. Anything farmers grew was valued.

It was a hard life. While farm life memories are idyllic in reality farming consisted of long hours of hard dirty dangerous work for very little reward. Livestock must be tended every day, planting and harvesting requires working from sunrise to sunset all day every day until the season ends. All we did was work.

None of us farm kids believed our vocational agriculture teacher when he told us to get prepared to live a new city life because almost none of us would spend the rest of our lives on a family farm. We did not pay attention because each of us thought he was talking about someone else. By the late 50s increased mechanization greatly decreased the number of workers needed on farms and then the exodus escalated.

Politicians no longer court the farm vote. Less than one, in one-hundred fifty Americans, now live on a farm. Where each square country mile used to hold two, three or four family farms, each one complete with a house, tool shed, corn crib and barn, the usual sight last summer was one lone house per mile by itself surrounded by huge corn and bean fields. There was no longer a livestock farm anywhere near where I was born and raised.

Profit margins are small. A farmer must efficiently manage a massive operation to earn a living. Prices paid farmers for what they grow are about the same as sixty years ago; costs have grown astronomically. Combine harvesters and tractors now cost almost a million dollars each. Expensive genetically selected seed beans and hybrid seed corn must be purchased from dealers and farmers cannot legally replant corn seeds they have grown.

Beef cattle, chickens and hogs are confined in small smelly pens that limit their ability to walk since the goal is to fatten them to market weight as quickly as possible. Modern dairy farmers use automated feeders and milking machines to milk thousands of cows.

In reality what occurred is a miracle. Yesterday's small family farms could not feed the nearly eight billion hungry people now alive on Earth.

Farmers need grit, foresight and good judgment. Advanced technologies have dramatically increased yields with fewer resources but massive farms are dependent upon highly complex technology. This makes farmers, and the people who depend upon them, vulnerable to single point failure.

Access to manufactured necessities like fertilizer and expensive machinery that breaks down, and living in an increasingly complex global market place, makes farming more unpredictable than ever. Mother Nature always has the final say. While climate change makes the rest of us uncomfortable one extreme weather event can bankrupt a farmer.

Farm country is inhabited. What I observed was most people living out in the country, in a McMansion with a huge perfectly mowed lawn while pretending to be a farmer, actually commutes daily to and from a city -- or is a retired elder who was raised on a farm, earned money elsewhere and returned.

There is one sure way to tell which new rural resident is NOT a real farmer. Real farmers keep animals outside. Citified country dwellers live in McMansions with their cats and dogs sleeping inside the house, like real farmers take care of their kids.

Farmers are now big business owners.
What is different is the business of farming
is critical to our survival.