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| United States. Montana. Tractor in a field near Bozeman. Montana has a surface area of 380,000 square kilometers (145,000 square miles) and a population of fewer than one million. The state, nicknamed "Big Sky Country," with its landscape of canyons, mountain ranges, and impenetrable forests, remains partially unexplored, and its few towns are scattered over vast distances. Like Bozeman, named after a gold prospector, most of Montana's towns were founded in the nineteenth century by prospectors seeking gold, silver, or copper. It is hard to conceive of overpopulation in these immense empty or virgin spaces. Yet it is the rest of the crowded world that requires the vigorous agriculture of the plains of Montana. Modern and mechanized, it produces amazing yields in crops intended in great part for the world market, the United States being the largest exporter of agricultural produce in the world. To the large extent, the fluctuations of the world food market mirror the fluctuations in American agricultural policy. |
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