Read the exciting details about the agricultural wealth and prosperity
of Tomorrow's World as revealed in the pages of your Bible.
A DRAMATIC revolution in agriculture is just around the corner! It will produce far-reaching breakthroughs in food production and prosperity that will stagger the imagination. It will deeply and directly affect the life of every living person in every country on earth.
Here is an exciting glimpse into some of the tremendous — and wonderful — changes that will occur.
Agriculture's Fantastic Future
Vast new acreages of fertile, well-watered land will become available for growing crops and raising livestock. Perfect weather and bumper crops will be the rule — not the exception.
Hunger and malnutrition will be a thing of the past. Everyone in every land will be able to enjoy fresh, clean, wholesome, tasty, nutritious food — grain and nuts, meat and dairy products, and fruits and vegetables in unbelievable variety and abundance.
A large percentage of the world's populace will live on very prosperous family-sized farms. Millions of well-kept farms with spacious, beautiful homes will dot the landscape. Farm families will enjoy stable economic prosperity, radiant health, and a sense of satisfaction, accomplishment and fulfillment from their work.
They will strive to work in harmony with nature and the laws of God in every aspect of their farm operation. Farming will be a respected occupation and farmers will take pride in what they produce. Their goal will be to produce food that is high in true quality — not just a lot of bulk.
This means that careful attention and hard work will be given to building up the land. Natural methods of composting and fertilizing will be used to produce a healthy soil rich in humus and soil life — a soil whose produce will be practically impervious to insect plagues and disease. This fertile soil will be protected and further built up by proper tillage methods, diversification, crop rotation and other conservation practices. Such carefully managed soil will make maximum use of available moisture. It will not be plagued with erosion and a troublesome amount of weeds.
Instead of soil-depleting, one-crop farming — with its corresponding price-depressing surpluses — farmers in Tomorrow's World will raise a large variety of crops. These crops will be carefully planted at the right time on the right soil.
Pesticides and other harmful chemicals will, of course, be totally unnecessary. Forcing the soil by means of artificial fertilizers, which produce yields of inferior quality, will simply not be permitted.
Healthy Livestock and Poultry
Since animals play an important part in the ecology of the life cycle, tomorrow's farms will have a variety of poultry and livestock. Most of these farm animals will be allowed to roam freely over rich pastures. Animal wastes will be properly used to make an important contribution to soil fertility.
Though livestock may be temporarily penned up for fattening purposes, they will not spend most of their lives confined in crowded feedlots. Neither will chickens spend their lives cooped up in cages so small that they can barely turn around.
These farm animals will not be given a host of drugs and shots, and feeds of unnatural, unbalanced highly concentrated mixtures that cannot possibly produce high-quality meat. Rather, poultry and livestock will be given feed and forage that is clean, balanced and high in natural nutritional value. This wholesome feed will produce strong and healthy stock that will reproduce robust offspring of the same high caliber.
Selective breeding of both plants and animals will be practiced — but only to build up factors of true quality. Development and use of inferior hybrid strains will not be permitted. Neither will there be such practices as artificial insemination.
The high quality evident in the farm produce will also be reflected in the personal life of the farmer and his family. There will be hard work — but it will be challenging and rewarding. And farm life will not be a humdrum existence of toil and sweat from dawn to dusk with no time out to relax and enjoy life.
In Tomorrow's World the farm family will have better opportunity for personal improvement, education, recreation, travel and socializing. Then all farmers will be intelligent, educated, cultured individuals — in a profession looked up to by the rest of society. They will have a goal in life other than seeing how they can squeeze another dollar's or pound's worth of produce out of the land.
Nearby cities will offer a rich variety of cultural, recreational, educational and social activities for the farm family. And scenic areas and parks of natural beauty will be available for hiking, boating, camping, fishing, etc., just a few miles away.
Society will be agriculturally oriented in Tomorrow's World. Farming will be so popular that even city dwellers will want to take part in it. But not in the way so many do today when they "play at" farming to gain tax benefits.
Rather, people in Tomorrow's cities will want to have their own gardens and small orchards just for the pleasure of working with the soil, of being close to nature and of growing a part of their own food. Because of changes in Tomorrow's urban areas (as explained in "An Exciting Preview of Tomorrow's Cities" — see the March-April issue of TOMORROW'S WORLD), many people in towns and cities will have room for small-scale agricultural activities. Some will even keep a few chickens, cows, sheep or goats!
But how will this wonderful world of agriculture come about? Will it be by man's achievements in agricultural science and technology? Let's look and see what man has planned for the future of agriculture — and see how it compares with the future just described.
"The efficient farmer of the year 2000," says an impressive study entitled Agriculture 2000, "is a super breed of farmer, with super skills and super tools. The heart of his operation will be a control center equipped with a wide array of electronic wizardry to help him produce crops two to five times as abundant as today."
The report describes unmanned tractors that are controlled by computer tape, buried wires or sensing devices. The courses of these tractors would be plotted on headquarter units similar to radar sets which follow today's airplane flights.
Other new machinery projected by the report are huge four or six wheel drive tractors powered by electric drive, fuel cells or efficient storage batteries. Cabs would include air-conditioning, food warmer, coffee maker, refrigerator, television, and even a sink.
Plant growth is expected to be automatically recorded, and simply by turning a dial the farmer will provide proper light, water and nutrients.
Production of cows' milk is predicted to quadruple. Man even plans to manufacture "identical" milk from carrot tops and pea pods. New varieties of corn will produce plants that look more like small pine trees! Fertile ova will be transplanted from superior cows into common incubator cows, allowing a superior cow to mother as many as 1000 calves in her lifetime.
The report foresees staggering production figures. It predicts yields of 300 bushels of wheat per acre, compared with today's 27; 175 bushels of soybeans, compared with 25; 30 tons of forage, compared with three; 30,000 pounds of milk per cow, as compared with 8,000; and 1000 pounds of beef at 10 months of age, compared with 750 today!
And how are these staggering production figures to be achieved? By the three magic wonders of modern agriculture: greater mechanization and automation, greater use of chemistry, and man-manipulated genetics.
This is the kind of agriculture man has planned for the coming years. But something is terribly wrong with this projected picture overall. See if you can tell what the big problem is as we explore man's mechanical, chemical, and artificial agricultural views of future farming.
Chemical Care from "Cradle to the Grave"
Today many farmers feel they could not survive without chemical pesticides and fertilizers. But we are told that the use of chemicals in agriculture is just beginning. Not only will chemical pesticides be used with greater efficiency and precision in eliminating pests, and not only will chemical fertilizers become more refined and powerful, but scientists now envision "cradle to the grave" chemical regulation of plant growth, development, yield and quality! It may surprise you to learn that the following plant processes are either presently under control or are being experimented with to come under such control:
Root initiation and development; speeding up or slowing down germination, whichever is desirable; control of vegetative growth and form of the plant so it can be accommodated by "once-over" mechanical harvesting.
This control involves regulating the branching and leaf orientation, the time of flowering and fruit set, the color and enlargement of the fruit and the control of fruit ripening. It includes abscission control which prevents the premature dropping of fruit yet loosens the fruit to make mechanical harvesting easy.
Artificial lighting and automatic feeding have already become widespread in livestock and poultry operations. Experiments with controlled environments show that all animals have a "comfort zone" and that temperature and humidity exert a marked influence on performance. Man hopes to raise livestock of the future in controlled environments (some even predict in high-rise, apartment-like dwellings!) and feeding is planned to be computer-programmed to meet specific needs. Estrus (sexual excitement) will be synchronized, and ovulatory rates regulated with the ova being fertilized artificially with sperm of known genetic material.
With chickens, an effort is being made to break through the egg-a-day barrier. It is reasoned that the hen should not have to act as a packaging machine and be required to produce a limestone container for each egg. If the shell could be discarded and if only the "membrane envelope" were produced, much of the time and energy now used in egg production could be eliminated. Such shell-less eggs already constitute more than 5 percent of the market!
Hogs that will be marketed in 100 days from birth and beef animals that will be marketed in six months are other predictions. The goal here is to get as much gain from every pound of food being fed as possible. One experiment with caged piglets produced close to one pound of gain for one pound of food!
As of last year plastic roughage went on the market for cattle! This product stays in the rumen and provides a "scratch factor" needed for efficient digestion of grain and supplement. It eliminates the need for roughage and has even increased feed conversion by 10 percent!
The recycling of animal wastes as reconstituted foods for livestock and poultry is another trend that is catching on fast. This accomplishes two purposes: It gets rid of the waste and provides cheap feed.
Now, let's see what's the problem with all this.