No other segment of our economy has made the advances in productivity that agriculture has. The problem arises from the cost of highly sophisticated equipment needed to free our work force for other endevors. In the early 1900's about half of our people actually lived on the farm. today that is less than 2%. It can cost $200,000 to buy a grain combine and other equipment is priced comparably, yet no one will even write a farm loan in our county unless you own the land free and clear and are willing to accept less than a 1% return on that investment. If farmer's did not love their life style and independance we would all starve because they just wouldn't do this as pure business men. The result of this has been more corporate large scale farms even if they are operated by families and a lessening of attention to animal welfare, purity of produce, and concern for the quality of the output. Machinery is highly sophisticated. tractors guide themselves through the fields, fertilizer is applied using global positioning systems, and seed placement is very precision, all resulting to a reduction of labor and increased costs of production for prices that won't pay the bills.
It really hasn't improved much except for the equipment such as tractors and bigger machines like the ones that gather hay. Using pestecides has cost us dearly. The pestecides are incredibly horrible to eat and it is the main cause of why the bees' population is decreasing. It is said that if all the farm land now were to be used without pestecides and it was all natural, there would be enough food to feed 60,000,000,000 people. That is 10 times our current population. Also, putting all those animals in pins without light and grass and giving them absolutely crappy conditions is such a horrible farming technique. I actually did an entire report on this and I came in second place at the regional competition.
biotechnology, i.e. inserting fish DNA into strawberries to make them frost resistant.
Irrigation and High yielding seeds are introduce.Machines almost replaces the humans which save time and produce even more crops.
