US agriculture is so advanced, what kind of group are American farmers?
Most Chinese people's understanding of American farmers stops at "wealthy," yet they have no deeper grasp of the word "wealthy" - it is merely an intuitive impression. So if we were to give a proper interpretation of American farmers, a newly emerging term in our country today describes it quite aptly: "professional farmer"! This kind of farmer is different from what we understand farmers to be. A professional farmer makes a living from cultivation and possesses professional agricultural knowledge. This is fundamentally different from being forced into farming today - professional farmers farm as an active choice.
In China, those who farm are the poor, yet in the US, those who farm are the rich. Let's look at a set of data. Currently, farmers make up half of our country's population, about 600 million people, generating 600 billion USD in income! Meanwhile, the US has a total population of 300 million, yet farmers account for only just over 2 million - but how much income did their farmers generate? 15 trillion USD!!!
From the above comparison we can perceive that, as in China, people with money and ability go to the cities to work, to hold positions in public institutions, and only those without skills or ability farm in rural areas. In the US, it is exactly the opposite: those without much ability go to work in urban factories, while the group of people with skills who farm are each and every one highly accomplished.
Could you imagine these things? This is actually the power of some American farmers. And in China, could farmers carry such weight? At least in terms of financial strength, farmers do not have the economic capacity to do these things.
We are all fairly familiar with soybeans. Our country imports 33 million tons of soybeans from the US every year, and the US has actually relied on just over 2 million farmers to create a model of comprehensive international exports of grains such as wheat, rice, soybeans, corn and sorghum. Meanwhile, our country's more than 600 million farmers actually still need to import grain from the US and Russia. It must be said that our country's agriculture and farmers still lag far behind the US.
In summary, although the American farmer group is not large in number, it has considerable say in the country and dares to defend its own interests. At the same time, American farmers are indeed relatively high in quality - "high" here does not mean moral character, but at least relatively high in scientific and cultural literacy.