12 Taking Stock
government programs. Their size was proof positive of what the future
looked like. Being at the vanguard of food production meant adopting
the latest technologies in genetics, fertilizers, nutrition, chemicals, and
antimicrobials.
As my years of education increased, the feasibility of farming as
a profession diminished. Three universities and three degrees later, I
rejected overtures to stay in academia and accepted a job with Farm-
land Industries, then North America’s largest farmer-owned coopera-
tive. With its storied history and customer base spread across sixteen
states in America’s heartland, I felt well positioned. I believed in
the company’s cooperative mission, liked my department’s focus on
quantitative analysis, and enjoyed the people I worked with. Though
I was no longer farming, I was firmly embedded in the modern food
system.
One day I was asked how more nitrogen fertilizer could be sold to
farmers. Farmland had the manufacturing facilities to turn out more
nitrogen than any other company in North America. So I formulated a
large mathematical model to evaluate its production, distribution, and
retail capacities. With my supervisor, we analyzed each of the com-
pany’s 2 markets. Then I programmed the computer to optimize the
entire system, from purchasing natural gas to retailing final products.
Pouring over the computer printouts, I saw the potential for substantial
increases in sales and profitability.
When the fertilizer division began to implement our recommen-
dations, the results did not disappoint. Overall sales and profit mar-
gins went up as farmers applied more fertilizer. So did yields and the
volume of products flowing through the modern food system. The
outcome was almost textbook perfect. Farmland, its farmer-owners,
food manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and consumers had all bene-
fited. From a market-economics perspective, society was better off.
My reward was a significant year-end bonus.
Though I valued the satisfaction (and compensation) of a job well
done, something was gnawing at me. While I was running different
scenarios on the computer, colleagues asked how much more nitrogen
could be applied before returns pointed downward. Preliminary results
suggested there were no immediate limits. In practice, I knew that
farmers would apply more and more nitrogen to maximize their profits,