Today, Technology treadmill is a term used in agriculture to describe the cycle of improving technology, reducing the cost of production, and increasing farm sizes. The technology treadmill theory was first described by Willard Cochrane in 1958 to explain the increasing land consolidation and ownership of farms and to show how the treadmill creates incentives for people to leave farming and become landowners.
The technology treadmill begins when a small amount of farmers adopt new technology early. These farmers make profits for a short while because their production costs are lower than other farmers. As more farmers get on the treadmill and adopt the technology, overall production goes up, prices go down, and profits are no longer possible – even with the lower production costs. Consequently, new technology must be created to make profits possible again. Furthermore, the remaining farmers are forced to sell their products at lower prices and if they want to remain competitive, they must get on the best treadmill too. Those farmers who do not get on the treadmill go down in the price squeeze and the more successful farmers expand over them.[
The way I see it, we can approach it one of two ways, go back to supply management, set asides and price supports, which would require tariffs to prevent cheap beans from coming into Carolina ports (probably ain`t gonna happen). So, the probable alternative is to learn to love $2 corn and $6 beans and adjust our inputs accordingly. Maybe that means boycotting smartstax seedcorn and fungicide and planting straight (look ma, no hands!) $70,000 pickups and $10,000/ $300 rent land. Maybe $80/bag seedcorn, planting a little crooked, rust colored machinery and maybe land values will have to tumble back to the $2,000 range and $150 rent?
Maybe farming will have to go back to real farmers, instead of those that "spent themselves rich" over the last decade? We are in a period where we`ll have to make our money when we buy, not so much when we sell.
