With the advancement of agricultural productivity, American family farms have entered a phase of mechanization, modernization, and information technology.
Large farm machinery such as combine harvesters, hay balers, seeders, and four-wheel drive tractors are widely employed. These tractors are equipped with satellite navigation systems in their cockpits, enabling automatic seeding and fertilization by utilizing trailer buckets to dispense seeds or fertilizers.
Astonishingly, approximately 20% of family farms even utilize helicopters for seeding purposes.
The proliferation of information technology has transformed the Internet into an essential platform for U.S. family farms. It facilitates the procurement of agricultural production materials, sale of agricultural products, and access to valuable information such as weather forecasts, market demand, agricultural product prices, pesticides, and agricultural equipment.
During this period, U.S. family farms have adopted a cooperative production model. Farmers have delegated activities ranging from seed breeding and purchasing production tools to crop production, processing, transportation, and marketing to specialized agricultural service organizations.
By entering into contracts with these entities, they ensure the provision of quality products and services, thereby enhancing profitability and mitigating market risks. Notably, the average contract productivity of family farms in the United States has risen from 32% in 1996-1997 to 37% in 2007.
Over the past century, the history of family farm development in the United States has repeatedly demonstrated the indispensability of land transfer for scalability and intensification. As modernization has progressed and resources have been reallocated, family farms have continually expanded their scale and resource allocation, concentrating resources among exceptional farmers.
This trend has led to accelerated development and increased resource acquisition as farm sizes grow.
American agriculture has long held a prominent position among the world's most developed agricultural systems. The family farm model has served as an exemplar for many nations. However, as modern agriculture advances, an increasing number of people in the United States are recognizing that only the freshest ingredients can truly deliver delicious food.
Statistics reveal that, on average, producing one calorie of food in the United States requires approximately ten calories of fossil energy. Consequently, experts express concern regarding the future sustainability of large-scale industrial agriculture.
In response to these concerns, a growing number of experts in the United States argue that small, diversified operations must gradually replace large-scale industrial farms with ecological farms. Researchers such as Peter Rosset, an agricultural economist at the U.S.
Food and Development Policy Institute, have analyzed data from various countries, demonstrating that small, diversified ecological farms can achieve two to ten times the output per unit area of large industrial farms.
Moreover, ecological farms are more conducive to protecting soil, groundwater, biodiversity, and community life, making them environmentally friendly and sustainable.
John Eckerd, an agriculture expert, concurs with this perspective in an interview with a think tank researcher.
He emphasizes that as the challenges of fossil energy shortages and climate change become increasingly prominent, and soil degradation resulting from industrial agriculture reduces yields, large-scale industrial agricultural production methods will struggle to meet the needs of human survival in the 21st century.
