From Subsistence to Production - Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community - page 13

number of workers on American farms decreased by 26.8 percent. Farmland, on the other
hand, increased by 31.8 percent during this period, in part to meet the food needs of a rapidly
growing population.
The second revolutionary change occurred shortly after the end of World War II, when the
use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides skyrocketed on American farms. The “chemical re-
volution” was propelled by the conversion of bomb-making and other war-related chemical
plants to agrochemical plants. As Richard Merrill notes, “… World War II can be thought of
as the instigator of an agricultural revolution.” The production of DDT, 2,4-D, and organic
phosphates increased dramatically after the war. By the 1970s, there were “over 100 indus-
trial plants producing about 1,000 pesticide chemicals variously combined in over 50,000 re-
gistered pesticides.” 20
Between 1945 and 1980, the use of synthetic fertilizers increased by 715 percent. One ef-
fect of the increased use of agrochemicals was to increase crop yields. This meant that less
land was needed to meet the food and fiber needs of the country. In the thirty years between
1950 and 1980, 175 million acres of farmland were taken out of production. During this same
period, crop yields increased by 75.4 percent.
Table 2.1 shows the relationships among numbers of farms, farm acreage, tractors, and
amounts of fertilizer used on U.S. farms. Both the number of farms and the amount of
farmland under production were high prior to the start of the two agricultural revolutions.
However, as the number of tractors began to increase, the number of farms decreased. Like-
wise, as fertilizer use increased after World War II, both the number of farms and the amount
of farmland in production decreased. Both mechanization and the use of chemical inputs con-
tributed to farm consolidation as smaller holdings were combined into larger, more efficient
units of production.
In the 1980s, a third agricultural revolution began to sweep across American farms—the
“biotechnology revolution.” Biotechnology, which includes genetic engineering and recom-
binant DNA technology, is increasing the output of both plant and animal agriculture. Unlike
the mechanical and the chemical revolutions, biotechnology promises to have significant im-
pacts on nearly all aspects of agriculture and food production. It is still too early to tell how
the biotechnology revolution will affect the use of land and labor. However, most observers
believe that it is likely to result in a greater concentration of production on fewer, but larger
farms. Less land and less labor will be required to meet our food and fiber needs. 21
Table 2.1. Changes in the Structure of Agriculture from 1910 to 1997: Farms, Acres, Tract-
ors, and Fertilizer