commodity farming

Subsistence frontier farming was replaced by commodity farming after the construction of railroad networks in the 1850s and 1860s.

"It is impossible for a ranching family to survive without debt from generation to generation in commodity farming, without borrowing from the future on their land," Bob told me.

W. Scott Ellis, this year's president of the Vegetable Growers' Association of New Jersey, has taken the opposite route, away from market-chasing diversity to the relative predictability of commodity farming.