The Plains of Plenty

Everything planted in the ground by man would grow as if by magic, filling out with an amazing fruitfulness, as the long warm days passed in endless array.

--O.E. Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth

Just as good earth and climate around Epernay, France, provide nature's ideal spot for nurturing champagne grapes, the Midwest's long growing season, heavy spring or summer rains and rich, two-foot-deep topsoil are perfect for grain cultivation. Kansas and Oklahoma are wheat country. Just north in the hardy soil of Illinois and Iowa lie the great corn belt and vast fields of soybeans. Farther north, in the Dakotas and Minnesota, grow wheat, soybeans, sugar beets. Here is the richest farm land east of Eden, where the biblical seven years of bountiful harvests are usually followed not by famine but by seven more years of plenty.

In addition, the modern farmer has helped nature tremendously and created one of the most advanced and productive sectors of the American economy. Mechanization has vastly expanded his reach. As late as 1955 there were more horses and mules than tractors in American farmyards. Now there are 4.4 million tractors on 2.7 million farms. A U.S. farmer today can seed 300 acres of wheat a day, vs. 85 acres in 1950. Meanwhile, land grant state universities, which were started under a program of President Lincoln's, have researched and spread technological breakthroughs. Out of the agricultural experiment stations in the early 1930s came means of cross-pollinating two types of purebred corn. The resulting hybrid was particularly hardy and produced 50% higher yields. Later the Green Revolution, for which U.S. Scientist Norman E. Borlaug won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, produced more bountiful strains of wheat with strong stalks to bear the weight of larger yields. U.S. wheat output likewise increased 50%.

Pesticides and herbicides were produced by researchers in companies, universities and the Government to conquer the plagues of locusts and other insects that regularly beset grain crops. Bug-and disease-resistant seeds were developed. As a result, U.S. corn country has not suffered a severe blight since 1970. During the past decade petrochemical fertilizers again increased harvests.

These innovations created spectacular crops. Since 1940 the American wheat yield per acre has more than doubled, from 15.3 bu. to 34.2 bu., and the corn output has almost quadrupled, from 28.4 bu. to 109.2 bu. Soybeans, which grow lavishly in the same weather and soil conditions as corn, expanded spectacularly. Production increased from 555 million bu. in 1960 to 2.2 billion bu. last year. While a Soviet farmer grows 45 bu. of corn an acre, his American counterpart produces 109 bu.

The abundant American harvests arrived just in time to satisfy a meat-hungry world. More affluent and more demanding consumers around the globe wanted beef, pork and poultry rather than simply bread and cereals. As a result, the vast majority of American agricultural production is for animal rather than human consumption. Ninety percent of the corn crop is fed to livestock, while soybeans are the largest single source of protein for animals.

Relaxed East-West relations also opened major new export markets. In the 1960s American farm products were sold mainly to Britain and The Netherlands or given away to India, Egypt and other developing nations as foreign aid. Through the '50s, and well into the '60s, the U.S. simply did not know what to do with its surplus grain and stored it at a cost of billions. But in the past decade the surplus production began being exported to the Soviet Union, China and newly rich Japan. Americans take justified pride in high technology exports like computers or jet planes, but the largest U.S. sales abroad by far are agricultural products; they account for just over one-fifth of all U.S. exports.

As American agriculture has become more productive, it has become both larger in scale and more expensive. In 1950 there were 5.6 million American farms, averaging 214 acres. By 1978 the number of farms had fallen by one-half, but the size had almost doubled to 400 acres. Small farmers earning less than $20,000 annually are still 70% of the total, but the remaining 30% take in 90% of all cash receipts from agriculture.

Grain farms in Cass County, N. Dak., one of the largest counties in the state, average 1,000 acres, and good wheatland costs $1,500 an acre. Thus the typical Cass County farmer is running a business worth $1.5 million just for property. Then comes equipment. A tractor that sold for $16,000 in 1974 now costs at least twice as much, and farmers already talk glumly about the advent of $100,000 combines.

Modern farm-belt agriculture, however, has brought with it a new manifestation of an age-old problem --soil erosion. Inadequate conservation measures combined with very heavy planting have led to excessive runoffs of soil into rivers and streams. In such Plains states as Nebraska and Kansas, where often only scattered trees break the wind, some farmers watch helplessly as their most valuable asset blows away. The Agriculture Department considers the loss of five tons of soil an acre annually to be excessive; below that, the land can renew itself fairly well. Yet Illinois farms are eroding at an average of 6.72 tons, and losses are also high in parts of Iowa, Tennessee and Missouri. Farmers, often with federal prodding and financial help, have begun to adopt better conservation techniques.

Despite the mechanization and scientific revolutions, the modern giants of the earth still fear the whims and challenges of nature. Last week, while farmers outside Fargo, N. Dak., fed their livestock and waited to plant their spring wheat, temperatures fell to 18DEG below zero, and the steady icy winds were a bone-numbing 15 m.p.h. Cracked U.S. Congressman Mark Andrews, who is a North Dakota farmer: "Up here we say that 40 below zero keeps the riffraff out."

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