There about 700,000,000 out of about a billion acres that produce the vast majority of our Nation's food and fiber. Our Nation's farming future is undergoing tremendous change as our farming system changes its technology base from a system that causes turbid water (muddy erosion) for clear water (unseen pollutants). The economy of their situation is driving the efficient to essentially trade mechanical tillage and their steel plows for chemical weed control via high tech herbicides and intelligent sprayers. Add to this trend toward no-till or chemical based weed control the rapid adoption ( 60% for soybeans and 40% for corn for our 1999 harvest acreage) GMOs (genetically modified organisms) that are resistant to the biocide effect from the herbicides; - well it makes for some interesting marketing lock-in for the Monsantos, Duponts, and the like. It just that the urban population is increasingly concerned as to what is in our water now that it is cleaner as well as the European fear of GMO products in "our" and now in "their" food chain. To all of this add the emergence of the Mapping Center for the "precision" farmer (estimated precision ag acreages for 1999 - eight million with 200 percent growth ) who uses GIS, GPS and CMC (computer machine control). Interested? Read more at: http://www.ag-consultant.com/WhatsinAg/purdue.html FYI MidNight Mapper 9/18/99 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
