My out-of-date idea of farming by Kamila Moravcikova

When I think about the agriculture or farming I think about ma granfather's small piece of soil he used to have. I think about how it used to smell there. I can recall the wonderful smell of a field full of corn that was ready to go. I think about the sun, hot weather, my grandparents working really hard. It had that special atmosphere, like you were doing something natural, something that allowed you to be close to your roots. Nowadays, I'm realizing that my picturesque portrait of farming is completely wrong. It's because I don't think about the agricultural chemistry, chemical insecticides, nutritional needs of farm animals, hydroponics, plant breeding, gene manipulation, genetic engineering or machinery. Actually, I do think about machinery, if one old almost immobile tractor counts. Well, things've changed a lot. But I was almost struck speechless when I realized that farmers use computers! And they do not use only accounting software or stuff like that. Have you ever heard about crop yield management or computer-driven soil testing? My simple idea of growing some crop suddenly faded away. Agriculture is in progress. People involved in agriculture and agriculture business collaborate with universities and have annual farm computer users' conference and are not afraid to go further. However, then I found out, there are still countries that use just simple machinery and do not use computers, and the agriculture and farming are still about strong hands and backbreaking never-ending underestimated work.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080110/ap_on_hi_te/farm_scene;_ylt=AvmwS3Ke9RyJTrV9joAJB5Ks0NUE

by Kamila Moravcikova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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