Word: benedict
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...past era are fast selling out to the farm "manager" who "reflects wistfully" that he spends more time in a three-piece suit than in his fields. The new archetype of the farmers "who make U.S. agriculture the nation's most efficient and productive industry" is Pat Benedict, who has $3.5 million in assets, 3,500 acres planted in wheat and sugar beets, and who averages a return of 3.5 per cent on his investment. Pat runs his farm with calculators, computer print-outs and "precise operating schedules...
...concluded that most economies of scale "are achieved by the one-man fully mechanized farm. While the most efficient farm size has increased in the last decade, due mainly to tractor improvements, this 1973 report found that most farmers need a much smaller acreage and capital investment than Pat Benedict. For instance, a vegetable grower in California produces at his maximum potential on a farm of 200 acres with less than one-fifth of Benedict's investment in machinery, and a corn farmer in Indiana on a farm of 800 acres. This point is born out by the "postage stamp...
Over the years, Benedict has averaged a return of only 3.5% on the $3.5 million present value of his investment. Of course, since he bought much of the land and many of the machines when prices were lower, his return on original investment is substantially higher; nonetheless, in theory he could enjoy a larger income by selling out and putting the money in bank certificates of deposit paying around 9% interest. Such profits on even the most efficient farms are too meager to interest big corporations. The fears that the family farm would be taken over by "agribusiness" have proved...
...only Benedict exempted from chores is two-year-old Luke, and even he tours the fields regularly, bouncing on his father's lap in a pickup truck (his present on his second birthday: a toy tractor). Besides the supervision and paperwork, Pat labors with his hands too, doing most of the machinery repairs himself...
...wife Fran, 43, is somewhat in the background; the Benedict family is a decided patriarchy. A farmer's daughter, she worked as a stewardess for Braniff Airlines and met Pat during a layover in Fargo, N. Dak.; a sister of Pat's who worked at the hotel where Fran stayed introduced them. Fran is the secretary of Benedict Farms and does the bookkeeping. During planting and harvesting seasons she also runs the farm's communications network, relaying messages by private FM radio band between Pat's pickup truck, the other machines in the fields and the outside world?meanwhile whipping...