Tech Advances Spurring Stability in Great Plains

A survey of long-term trends in population, farm income, and crop production in the agricultural Great Plains published in the October 2007 issue of BioScience finds that technological advances have greatly increased production of major crops and allowed rural populations to remain stable over the past 50 years even as metropolitan populations have soared.

The advances lead to market expansion, such as improved crop varieties, irrigation, and fertilizer use.

Conversely, the survey also shows that rural counties with extensive irrigation have increased their populations slightly, although less-irrigated counties that offer fewer opportunities for farm-associated work have decreased their populations slightly. The Great Plains' population is therefore overall falling behind that of the country as a whole. Additionally, their proportion of people over 55 has grown rapidly creating a disproportional imbalance in population that may tend to a destabilizing trend.

The authors of the survey report, William J. Parton and Dennis Ojima of Colorado State University and Myron P. Gutmann of the University of Michigan, note that the increases in crop productivity that are spurred by technological advances have had significantly substantial negative environmental impacts. These negative environmental impacts include loss of soil carbon and high nitrate runoff especially in irrigated areas, which are those that are having population increase. Moreover, farms have become more dependent on government subsidies to meet the increased costs of agricultural inputs (technological innovations and advances in equipment and seeds through corporate Research and Development (R & D) programs) and fuel.