In a tractor now?

Iseki 55HP half-track tractor


Yeah, well, "You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy". Sports cars, luxury cars... whatever. But a TRACTOR like this one - well, that's different! Hans got a picture of me as close to driving this baby as I'll ever get. As in, US$55,000 out of the box. Not to mention I have no place to use it.
There are lots of people who COULD use it who will never get to drive it, either. They could use a lot of our technology to help feed themselves, but it's too big a step from a hoe to a 55 HP bomb like this (A/C, tape deck, sound proof cab, etc.). And, they lack the infrasructure and economic /marketing strucures to utilize it's potential.
Most of them lack food as well.
This is another symptom of the widening gap between haves and have-nots in our world. The question is not only how long this unfair distribution of resources can go on, but how long our labor-saving, techno-dependant food supply system can continue to meet our nutritional needs. Food prices have risen in the last 60 years, but the prices farmers get for their produce have risen hardly at all. Some are even lower. Increases have gone to suppliers of agricultural technology, and the processors and distributors of food. Farmers have survived by radically increasing output-per-person. The system requires a lot of petroleum.
So, will this technology prove to be sustainable, or will the vexing problems it has spawned (soil depletion, antibiotic-resistant microbes, pollution, etc.) make radical changes necessary? Either way, I would feel better if the large portion of the population which neither knows nor cares where their food comes from, as long as prices don't increase, would take a more active interest, and help address these issues before a serious collapse of production occurs.