AS FARMS BECOME FEWER BUT LARGER

This region rightfully takes pride in its role helping feed the nation and beyond. Our agricultural endowment -- rich land, suitable climate, hard-working people -- contributes mightily to the way we lead our lives in these environs, giving us an appreciation of our natural resources, helping pay the bills and defining us as a people. The commerce of farming, however, is in a state of adjustment. The trend, nationwide and locally, is toward fewer but larger farms. The statistics that document this change are interesting to follow, but not cause for concern.

Times change, as does the nation. At the beginning of the century, America had urbanized pockets of industry but was largely a country grounded by agriculture. As the century moves to its conclusion, the farm-based economy has yielded its dominance to high-tech services and industries that are no longer chained to non-rural settings. While total farmland acreage has remained stable over the last 94 years, the average farm has tripled in size and the number of farms has been reduced by about 60 percent. By 2000, the number of American farms is expected to shrink to 1.7 million, down from 5.7 million a century before.

Missouri is not exempt from this trend. The recently released U.S. Census of Agriculture shows there were 98,082 farms in the state during 1992, down 8 percent from the count taken five years before. In Cape Girardeau County, according to another survey, there were 2,576 farms in 1900, but just 1,365 farms today. However, the average size of farms in the county has grown to 195 acres now from 136 acres at the beginning of the century.

Is this a bad thing? Certainly, a portion of American heritage -- the family farm -- is disappearing, and there is a cultural melancholy attached to that. Further, it is deplorable that badly fashioned inheritance tax laws provide a disincentive for handing down property and farm operations from generation to generation. This, however, is not exclusive to farming.

Like many aspects of American business, the market is shaping itself. There are fewer, more cost-effective farms because resources will allow it and free enterprise gives way to such a condition. Mechanization is a contributing factor in the reduced numbers of farms, and the labor phenomenon of technological displacement is hardly unique to the business of agriculture. Most importantly, America, unlike many other nations, produces enough food to adequately feed its population ... and numerous other populations. It is only if that trend changes that we should really begin to worry.

Even with Cape Girardeau County's diversified economy, agriculture remains an important part of our lives locally. Farmers in the county sell $36 million in products every year. Though sales have declined from 10 years before, they are still significant. From a cultural standpoint, we are still very much a rural society here, and that is not a badge we are altogether anxious to surrender for more metropolitan ways. The shifting nature of agriculture and its producers bears watching, but this observation leaves no immediate reason for alarm.