During roughly this same period, farm employment declined dramatically -- from 12.5 million in 1930 to 1.2 million in the 1990s -- even as the total U.S. population more than doubled. In 1900, half of the labor force were farmers, but by the end of the century only 2 percent worked on farms. And nearly 60 percent of the remaining farmers at the end of the century worked only part-time on farms; they held other, non-farm jobs to supplement their farm income. The high cost of capital investment -- in land and equipment -- makes entry into full-time farming extremely difficult for most persons. As these numbers demonstrate, the American "family farm" -- rooted firmly in the nation's history and celebrated in the myth of the sturdy yeoman -- faces powerful economic challenges. Urban and suburban Americans continue to rhapsodize about the neat barns and cultivated fields of the traditional rural landscape, but it remains uncertain whether they will be willing to pay the price -- either in higher food prices or government subsidies to farmers -- of preserving the family farm. 109

The Future of US Economics