My views

What really surprised me was how much money we spend on a farming industry that doesn't function as an efficient economic system. Farmers, especially large family farms, are subsidized by the government to produce too much corn and soy beans, which makes it possible for big corporate purchasers of their products to save money, but then resell it to consumers for bigger profits. As I understand it, American tax payers subsidize farmers, big corporations buy the subsidized product, largely corn or soy beans, which is then sold to food producers, from cattle farmers to cereal and cookie manufacturers, who then sell it to consumers at prices higher than they should be paying because the government subsidized, through their taxes, it in the first place. I want to see family farms stay in business, but this sort of system seems horribly inefficient.

Also surprising was just how trapped the farmers were into growing a particular crop. Amherst, Massachusetts, the town where I grew up, has a plow and a book on its town seal to symbolize it is both an educational community (with Amherst College, Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts within its borders) and an agricultural community. I'm no farmer, but even I would notice that different farms grew different crops from year to year. Sometimes it was corn, sometimes squash, sometimes even flowers. In more rural and larger scale farms, the farmers seem to have no choice but to grow corn or soybeans because if the grew something else they would have no market for their produce, or have to transport over very great distances.