I'm watching the documentary "King Corn" on Netflix, it's quite interesting and the first half hour at least gives a really good description of modern farming. (datum: 1 acre = 200 bushels = 10,000 pounds of corn at the top end.)
As they were talking to to the farm supply store about fertilizer I got to wondering about what's marginal in farmers' decision making. You have multiple options for what to plant, how to fertilize it, what herbicides and pesticides to use, etc. I wonder how many of these factors are flexible and how many are determined by exogenous forces? That is, are your fertilizer and herbicide usages strictly determined by the type of soil and plant, or do you have a range of options? Are there a large number of marginal decisions to make, or is the number of acres to plant the primary marginal decision?
Earl Butz is apparently a large part of the reason why our farm subsidy system changed from limiting production to keep prices up to subsidizing any level of production and encouraging farmers to grow as much as possible. The documentary does a great job of showing the economics of corn farming and where all that corn goes without getting political in any direction (despite the producers' obviously evolving personal opinions.) I highly recommend it.
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