New technology and the future
The basic technology of agricultural machines has changed little through the last century. Though modern harvesters and planters may do a better job than their predecessors, the combine of today (costing about US$250,000) cuts, threshes, and separates grain in essentially the same way earlier versions had done. However, technology is changing the way that humans operate the machines, ascomputer monitoring systems, GPS locators, and self-steer programs allow the most advanced tractors and implements to be more precise and less wasteful in the use of fuel, seed, or fertilizer. In the foreseeable future, some agricultural machines may be made capable of driving themselves, using GPS maps and electronic sensors. Even more esoteric are the new areas of nanotechnology and genetic engineering, where submicroscopic devices and biological processes, respectively, may be used to perform agricultural tasks in unusual new ways.
Agriculture may be one of the oldest professions, but with the development and use of agricultural machinery, there has been a dramatic drop in the number of people who can be described as "farmers." Instead of every person having to work to provide food for themselves, less than two percent of the United States population today works in agriculture, yet that two percent provides considerably more food than the other 98 percent can eat. It is estimated that at the turn of the twentieth century, one farmer in the United States could feed 25 people, whereas today, that ratio is 1:130. (In a modern grain farm, a single farmer can produce cereal to feed over a thousand people.) With continuing advances in agricultural machinery, the role of the farmer will become increasingly specialized.
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