Yesterday's painting

I did this tonal painting late yesterday afternoon at a cotton farm about 25 miles away. The individual who owns it is an NC State agronomics grad. His son went to State as well and the family grows literally thousands of acres of the improved Monsanto cotton that utilizes an integrated system of pest and weed control. Yields are enormous but I think the trade-off is that new seed has to be purchased from Monsanto each season. I don't know it for a fact but it may be that this sort of farming lends itself better to large-scale production than it does to small, marginal farms. It seems like Indian farmers were complaining about the expense of improved varieties for small farms not too long ago. Yet the pressure remains on companies like Monsanto to develop ways of boosting crop production - and human population levels favor larger scale farm producers of everything.