Accelerating Into Tomorrow

Henry A. Robitaille, agricultural manager, The Land, Agriculture office, Epcot Center, Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, FL.

To maintain U.S. agriculture at a competitive and profitable level, productivity and production efficiency resulting from new knowledge and technology must continue to increase. In only 45 years, 1 farmer has gone from feeding 19 to 116 people by using better fertilizers and feeds, tractors, genetic hybrids, irrigation, and pesticides. Problems like soil erosion, aquifer depletion, and environmental pollution have occurred, but work on these problems is now leading to newer technologies like conservation tillage, learning to grow plants in weeds and stubble to minimize soil exposure; drip, surge, and other new approaches to irrigation; and integrated pest management using an increasing variety of available tools to manage crop and pest interactions.

There are many dramatic examples of increasing productivity in all agricultural areas. To illustrate only one, animal scientists in a recent comparison found that 33-pound pigs fed a 1907 diet gained 7 pounds in 60 days, while those on a 1983 diet gained 63 pounds, a ninefold increase in productivity.

Increasing productivity may mean even fewer farmers in the future. But it also means many exciting new careers in fields like biochemistry, agricultural engineering, plant and am-Mal sciences (genetics, breeding, physiology and pathology), entomology, agricultural economics, and soil sciences.

The potential to increase productivity is, by no means, exhausted. Consider, for example, that the average yield for eight major U.S. crops corn, wheat, soybeans, sorghum, oats, barley, potatoes, and sugar beets is estimated to be only 20 percent of the record yield of the same crops. Of the unrealized 80 percent of the potential yield, stressful conditions (drought, salty soils, suboptimal temperatures, etc.) account for about 70 percent, with the remaining 10 percent attributable to insects and diseases. For all crops, record high yields are 3 to 7 times greater than their average yields.

And in the future, record yields too will be increased as plant physiologists understand phenomena such as the efficiency of basic nitrogen fixation, and water and nutrient uptake. A recent Agricultural Research article projected increases in yields of corn from an average of 113 bushels an acre today to 275 and 385 bushels an acre by the years 2000 and 2050, respectively. These yields exceed the highest experimental yields ever produced. New methods of growing, processing, and marketing will all be developed.

Future Tools

Computer science and biotechnology are two disciplines that will affect all areas of agriculture in the future.

Agricultural engineers find numerous and diverse applications for computers at The Land. On tomorrow's farms as well, computers are moving into areas like "expert systems" and robotics controls. Here, background plants grow hydroponically; soil-less growing will find limited applications on earth but important applications in space agriculture.

Computer Science. Computers will be increasingly used to control operations and systems like pest management and irrigation with great precision. High cash crops will be grown in sophisticated greenhouses where computers will control 1) the root and shoot environments, 2) robots that seed, space, irrigate, manage pests of, fertilize, and harvest the plants, and 3) marketing selections for maximum profit. Tomorrow's tractors will be intelligent machines that use computers to plant, prune, selectively harvest, super cool and field pack crops automatically and with great precision.

Support for these kinds of developments will come from agricultural engineers like Roy Harrel at the University of Florida, who has already developed a prototype robot to harvest citrus.

Horticulturist uses tissue culture for rapid propagation and production of disease-free clones.

Biotechnology. Horticulturists and foresters are already using one area of biotechnology called tissue culture to clone huge numbers of disease-free vegetables, ornamentals, and forest trees starting with tiny plant parts and sometimes even single cells.

In doing genetic engineering, molecular biologists who introduce new genes into plant cells also depend on whole plant regeneration to see expression of that gene. In one example, plant genetic engineers succeeded in transferring the structural gene from the major storage protein in bean seeds into tobacco plantlets, where it did produce the bean seed protein at low but constant levels.

Animal scientists are excited by experimental results with bovine growth hormone produced industrially by genetically engineered bacteria. The hormone can increase milk production by 10 to 33 percent without proportionately increasing feed intake, at least on a short-term basis.