Research in the United States
Estimates of crop losses in the United States each year are approximately $5 billion to weeds, $4 billion to insects, and $3 billion to diseases. This total loss of $12 billion a year is about $22,500 a minute.
In an effort to reduce these losses and to raise the standard of living, agricultural research has become more specialized and more complex. Over the years it has gradually changed from trial-and-error attempts to increase production to the actual study of basic questions. To study such intricate systems as the leaf of a plant or the liver of an animal, agricultural science has had to draw from every other science. The use of radioactive tracers and radiations in research looks especially promising to agriculture.
In fact, agriculture has already begun to benefit from the applications of such research. Radioactive techniques have been used to study soils, plants, microbes, insects, farm animals, and new ways to use and preserve foodstuffs. Radioactive atoms are not used directly by farmers but are used in research directed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and Atomic Energy Commission, by the agricultural experiment stations of the various states, and by numerous public and private research institutions. From such research come improved materials and methods which are used on the farm.
In more highly developed countries agricultural research has brought a shift of emphasis from production to utilization. In the United States today, each farmer produces enough food for himself and 25 other people. Moreover, for every person who works on a farm, there are two or three other people who sell him goods and services or process and distribute the things he produces.
In agriculture, as in all areas of research, the number of questions to be asked of Nature seems infinite. Future generations seeking to answer these questions will probably rely more on techniques using radioactive isotopes than on any other methods known today.