While fewer than 1 percent of Americans are directly involved in agricultural production, agriculture in the United States employs about seventeen million people in some phase of the industry, from production to retail sales. This includes workers hired by agricultural chemical companies which produce or sell agricultural implements and machinery, processing and canning plants, and wholesale and retail marketing firms such as grocery stores. In 1997 there were six thousand to eight thousand different agricultural products on the market. Agriculture is also big business, with assets of about one hundred billion dollars. This figure equals 88 percent of the combined capital assets of all the major U.S. corporations. American farmers now produce 76 percent more crops than the previous generation did on the same amount of land, and one-third of all American agricultural products are exported. This makes the United States the world's most agriculturally productive country and the largest exporter of agricultural products.
See also: Impact on Soil Resources, Modern Agriculture
|
