The occupation of farming has been with mankind from the beginning of time. In fact, when God told Adam and Eve that they should make their living by the sweat of their brow, mankind has tilled the soil ever since then.

Today, farming is a big business and a fascinating thing to observe. To become a successful farmer these days, you should have to embrace lots of hard work of the thinking kind. It is because farming takes good business principles and decision making ability.

Some farmers are tending 500 to 1000 acres or more of land using some of the most sophisticated machineries on the planet. If you could sit beside the farmer when he is farming his fields, you would see a computer display in his combine harvester that feeds off of a satellite, showing his rows and his position at all times.

That is amazing in itself. However, the display also shows readout of the amount of crop that is available for harvest and the yield in accordance to the current prices. It also shows whether he is making a profit or not at all after he is harvesting the crop.

Many huge farms today are owned by corporations that run the farming business just like they run any other large businesses. They don’t call the people out in the fields as farmers. They call them managers. The crops that are grown at these corporate farms are in keeping with pre-planned formats. These were decided upon months before and are based upon future weather predictions.

Another big farming project involves the raising of hogs and cattle. This serves the purposes of providing meat for the society and for overseas shipment. These hogs are fed with computerized feeders. And each has portion measured precisely with the proper mix of nutrients, antibiotics and hormones to ensure proper growth. On one hand, cattle are raised in feed lots in much the same way where they don’t have much to do, but eat and sleep. Then, they are led to the slaughter houses for processing. Chickens are also raised en masse in a similar manner.

There are also family farmers who are in business for long time. They are few and far between, but you will still be able to find one. There are plenty of them in the Amish country located in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and some of the western states. Even the smaller family farmer may have as much as one to two million dollars tied up in equipment, livestock and seed from season to season. Farming has a lot to do with the weather.

It has been said that farming is one of the most dangerous of occupations. This is due to long hours of working around animals and heavy equipment, as well as weather related hazards. People who farm for a living would not do anything else. For most of them, it has been an occupation passed down from generation to generation. It is a serious legacy that has prevailed. And even with the hazards that are ever present from the weather and the occupational dangers, farmers show the rest of us what true grit and hard work can possibly accomplish. They are indeed an inspiration to us all.