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As High-Tech Farms Take Hold, Can Farm Towns Hold On?

That means farms on the Great Plains and in many other parts of the country have had to grow in size and adopt new technologies to make ends meat. He can’t just farm 80 acres and make a living, he says. “I wish you could. I think life would be a lot simpler, easier,” Biesemeier says. “And there’d be a lot more people out here if that was the case.”About a hundred years ago, farming was the way a third of the country made its living. It used to be the most common occupation in America.As more farmers adopt new technology, they become more efficient, drive down prices on the crops they produce, and “that means the people who have not adopted find themselves with high costs and find it very difficult to make any money, and many of them wind up deciding to get out of the business,” MacDonald says.All that has led to the trends that have shaped all of American agriculture: The average farm is growing larger, fewer farmers are doing the job and midsize farms are disappearing. University of Missouri rural sociologist Mary Hendrickson says sometimes small towns in Middle America are written off, discarded in national discussions as “throwaway places.” But, she argues, there is a lot of value held not only in rural communities, but also in the surrounding farms and ranches. Farmers manage a huge swath of America’s land mass. If we want a healthier environment, she says, farmers who manage land and water need support to reverse some of the negative economic trends plaguing the small towns they live in and rely on.“Farmers can’t do it on their own,” Hendrickson says. “So it’s going to take some investments from rural development agencies, from potentially people outside the region as well.”

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