Phrenological Pickers & Such

"My pigs live better than half the world," said Farmer William Conover of Rhodes, Iowa. Conover is right, of course. His coddled swine get plenty of food, shots, pills, antibiotics, running water and living space. Now they are going to have something even more remarkable: an automated maternity ward, invented by Conover, that will keep expectant pigs in the pink and enable one man to feed 46 sows in 3 1/2 minutes through a feed mixer with a rotating arm. Conover's maternity ward (cost: $30,000) was displayed last week at an exhibit in Brookston, Ind., which drew a quarter of a million farmers to inspect $50 million worth of the latest in farm equipment.

Hens in Factories. U.S. farmers invested $4.8 billion in plant and equipment last year--more than any manufacturing industry. Automation has transformed harvesting and animal husbandry. This year 80% of all U.S. cotton will be picked mechanically v. only 1% at the end of World War II. One company, two-year-old Gates Cyclo Inc., has seized a tenth of Denver's egg market with an automated egg "factory" whose caged hens are moved past conveyer-fed food and water troughs in climate-controlled circular buildings: the plant covers only three acres, runs 24 hours a day with a staff of 18. Today's cattle live in sanitary quarters, surrounded by stainless steel and the strains of classical music.

Farmers are profiting from dozens of new labor-saving machines, particularly in California, which produces 10% of the U.S. food supply but will lose its supply of cheap labor when a law admitting Mexican braceros to the U.S. expires at year's end. Newly developed pickers that enable 13 men to do the job of 60 harvested 10% of the California tomato crop this year. A Salinas firm has just started making a phrenological lettuce picker--it feels each head to determine if it is ripe--invented by agricultural engineers at the University of California. Other promising machines: a contraption that shakes peaches off trees into an inverted canvas umbrella, one that picks raisin grapes from trellised vines, one that plucks ripe cantaloupes from the earth while leaving green melons to mature.

Consultants in Fertilizer. This technological revolution has not only helped make U.S. farms the world's most productive, but is fast transforming agriculture into a big business requiring large capital, big acreage and sophisticated management. More and more farmers are incorporating like big businesses, partly for tax advantages and partly to simplify inheritance complexities. Battling to stay efficient and up-to-date, farmers are also leaning on a new breed of professional consultant, much as big corporations do. Colorado has more than three dozen farm-management associations, whose salaried staffs advise member farmers on everything from fertilizer to marketing and accounting.

Farmers should take in a near-record $36.6 billion this year despite a harvest that has been thinned by drought in many parts of the U.S. The results are even better for consumers. The products of U.S. farms are now so cheap and plentiful that Americans spend only 18.7% of their after-tax income for food v. 30% for families in England and France and nearly 50% in Russia.

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