Max Baucus: “more than 10,000 years ago, on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, people became farmers. They started growing…”

“more than 10,000 years ago, on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, people became farmers. They started growing crops of emmer and einkorn wheat. They harvested the grain with curved, handheld sickle-blades. And 5,000 years ago, Mesopotamian farmers yoked cattle to pull plows. The plows' bronze-tipped blades cut deeply, greatly increasing productivity. Today, in Ethiopia, wheat farmers still harvest their wheat with oxen or by hand. They use tools much like those invented 5,000 years ago. An Ethiopian wheat farmer harvests an acre of wheat in a week. A few weeks ago, in Montana, a wheat farmer whom I know near Fort Benton, in Chouteau County, finished harvesting this year's hard-red spring-wheat crop. He and his family drive a John Deere 60 series STS combine that they bought for more than $225,000, a couple of years ago. STS stands for the ``single-tine separator'' system that the combine uses for threshing and separating. The combine's rotor technology yields a smooth, free-flowing crop stream, giving the farmer higher ground speeds and increased throughput capacity. This Fort Benton wheat farmer harvests 5 acres and 220 bushels of wheat in half an hour. What the Ethiopian farmer can do in a week, the Montana farmer can do in 6 minutes. There are a lot of reasons for the difference: land, climate, seed quality, farming skills.…”