Danbom says a clue to the future is that rural life is getting less distinct from urban life. Farm families have just slightly larger families than urban cousins.

The bonanza farming era opened the North Dakota farming country and ended with tax changes and land price inflation before 1920. Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, Institute for Regional Studies, NDSU Libraries

"Since the 1920s, the farms being squeezed out were the middle-sized farms," Danbom says. "What changes is our definition of mid-sized farms. The people having trouble have farms big enough to demand their full attention, but not big enough to provide a decent income."

No problem, Drache says, with zeal. "We have the technology available in North Dakota to farm the existing land with one-third the farmers we have today. That shouldn't surprise anybody," adding, "We have fewer than 30,000 farms today.

"I'm assuming we have 10,000 real managers to take over these farms. Maybe I'm assuming too much."

By Drache's figuring, the state only needs 80 new farmers a year. The anti-corporate farming laws will only "slow the inevitable" of farmers tapping capital from outside agriculture.

Steam-powered tractors used for breaking sod spread from west to east in North Dakota. Institute for Regional Studies, NDSU Libraries

All see a polarization of farms, with large farms getting larger and a stable number of the smallest farms.

Danbom says most farm family income in North Dakota today comes from off-farm sources. Many farm couples now maintain one or two jobs and work on so-called hobby farms.

"The agricultural establishment ignores hobby farmers," Danbom says. "If you want to look at the farm mainly as a place to live, that provides you with a certain style and quality of life, rather than simply as a business, it seems to me that we have to recognize the stability of hobby farms as very positive."