Farming: Rural industry undergoes its own revolution
By MICHAEL HOWIE
News-Gazette City Editor

   By the time the 20th century began, East Central Illinois' heritage as an agricultural region had long been established.
   At the start of the 21st century, agriculture finds itself going through the same revolutions the rest of society has seen.
   One Champaign County farmer recalls how his father looked at a field that was "the best field of corn we've ever raised" – all 40 bushels per acre, a yield that today would be considered anemic.
   Soybeans, not even planted in 1900, help fuel cars and trucks today.
   The farm of today bears little resemblance to the farm of 1900.
   Except the land.
   Sixty seconds out of town, you're in acre upon acre of some of the richest farmland in the country. That land plays a role far beyond its ability to produce crops. It is a bedrock for taxes for most rural school districts. It represents a way of life. But that lifestyle is changing, as the rest of society does.
   If one expert is right, agriculture will see "as much technological change in the next decade as we have in the past 200 years."
   It may see other changes, too: fewer owners taking on larger parcels of land; distant buyers dictating, by their purchasing decisions, what crops will sell; more and more technology available to help farmers make decisions and even drive their equipment for them; and scientists able to manipulate genetics in ways unheard of in 1900.