Defensive, maybe, maybe not... I'm new here... and I do want to start off on the right foot here... although I can be a bit of smart aleck at times, I mean no harm...

I guess my first question about where the farm kids went would be, did the farms become industrialized and get larger?

I'm not going to say automation isn't a boon to agriculture, I've seen first hand the successive generations of equipment on the ranch I worked on. I've found old horse shoes the equipment picked up out of the fields we work.

The ranch I worked on has been family owned for four generations, and I swear they never threw anything away... we have old tracked Caterpillars from the thirties on the property, and models all the way up to today's AGCO Challengers. We have farm implements that are built with wooden frames. And, we have Air Drills that seed the field and apply fertilizer at different rates in different zones in the field... tech's great... and I'll drive with GPS every chance I get...

I just had some pea combines drive by that replaced the old combines we have... one of the newer combines will do the work of four of our old ones.

And, I've watched videos of the newest prototype tractors that have no cabs working the fields... but I have a hard time believing they'll completely replace human drivers on the ground we farm. Driving off a cliff is a real hazard we face. We drive very steep hill sides that when the people from the Mid-West come to see us, their first question is, "You guys farm that!"

Technology will catch up, but sometimes I wonder if it's cost effective to spend hundreds, and hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars designing new farm equipment that is meant to replace farm hands that earn a little over minimum wage? Is the trade off worth it, or are engineers just doing it because they can? Is it really a problem that needs fixing?