[經濟廣角]令人稱奇的賺錢機器

提到美國的農業你首先會想到的會是什麼呢？是發達的機械化？是一望無際的原野還是什麼其他的呢？無可置疑的，與中國農業相比，美國的農業技術非常的現代化，但在本文中，我們爲您介紹的並非是路人皆知的現代化機器，而是一種新的農業旅遊經濟——穀物迷宮，它不僅增加了農民的收入，更增添了一道美麗的經濟風景線。

An Amazing Moneymaker

For city dwellers(城市居住者) and suburbanites（住市郊的人）, the month of October may just seem like a 30-day prelude （前序）to the spookiest（幽靈般的） night of the year. Far removed from "the land," it's easy to forget that October is also harvest time, when the rewards of the growing season are finally reaped. That also makes it the perfect time of year for cornfield mazes（穀物迷宮）.

According to the USDA（美國農業部）, between 1974 and 2002, the number of corporate-owned farms（企業擁有農田） in the U.S. increased by more than 36 percent, and between 2005 and 2006, we lost 8,900 farms. Family farms, as most folks know, need all the help they can get--and ag-tourism (農業旅遊)like corn mazes is one way family farmers are increasing profits.

One man in particular has pushed the corn maze craze to the next level in the U.S. Brett Herbst started his own corn maze in American Fork, Utah（猶他州的亞美尼加弗）, in 1996, after reading about a similar enterprise in Pennsylvania. A recent agribusiness graduate （農業綜合企業畢業生）of Brigham Young University（楊白翰大學）, he rented land and got to work. Herbst then helped his sister and a friend create mazes the next year. After the second year, the media began reporting on the mazes.

"So many people heard about [the corn mazes] from all different parts of the country. That's when people started calling us, and saying, 'Hey, we want to do something like this. What would it cost?' And we're going, 'Huh, we could probably charge money for this,'" recalls Herbst, who then started The Maize, a company with three full-time employees and many seasonal workers （季節性員工）that helps more than 190 farms create mazes each year in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Designs are only limited to the farmers' imaginations: Past maze themes include Napoleon Dynamite（拿破崙）, Gerald Ford （福特）and John Wayne（約翰韋恩）. Herbst, who still rents land to run his own maze in Lehi（利希，地名）, Utah, but owns a farm in Springville, Utah, even won the Guinness World Record for the world's largest corn maze in 1999 with a cosmic, space-inspired design.

Though most corn mazes are open to visitors only during October, Herbst starts helping his clients design the mazes in February. Some folks cut their own mazes, which begins when the corn is low in June, while others pay The Maize to do it. Herbst also offers marketing support, including a page on his website, though his clients arrange for their own aerial photographs （飛機上拍攝的照片）of the mazes. In the late autumn and early winter, Herbst takes care of his financial tasks and finishes up his own farming work. Then it starts all over again.

Out on the Farm（農場之外）

Laurie and Ken Graff are using The Maize's services on their family farm and ranch （農場和牧場）in Hondo, Texas（得克薩斯本州）, for the seventh year--though they do things a little differently. "Our maze is grown out of hay grazer（乾草）, the stuff hay bales are made out of. Corn doesn't grow well in late July when our maze is planted, due to excessive heat and bug problems（持續的高溫和蟲害問題）," explains Laurie, whose 900-acre farm and ranch have been in Ken's family since the 1850s. They've had more than 110,000 visitors to their maze, not including their current season.

Laurie says they first decided to create the maze to diversify（多樣化） and generate more income. Herbst explains that's often the case. With multinational companies（跨國公司） taking over the agriculture business, it can be very difficult to compete. "The family farm has 20 acres or 100 acres. How do you compete with this corporate farm that's got 50,000 acres and is bringing stuff in from Mexico or Australia," asks Herbst, who has helped create more than 1,200 mazes since 1996. "Ag-tourism（農業旅遊） and corn mazes are an avenue to drive people directly to your farm and get that income directly from the consumer."

Extending the Experience（擴張經驗）

Indeed, it's the value-added experience（增值的旅遊經歷） that brings visitors to farms. Most corn maze operators offer other activities, like hay rides（坐草車）, bounce houses（充氣傢俱）, farming demonstrations（農場解說）, apple picking（採摘蘋果）, pumpkin patches（收穫南瓜）, mini mazes（小迷宮） or petting zoos（愛畜動物園）. "Successful mazes often are part of a larger ag-tourism business," says Dan Looker, business editor for Successful Farming magazine（《成功農場》）, who adds that some farmers also have opened bed and breakfasts or started companies allowing customers to be a farmer for a day.

"They aren't farming in the traditional sense," Looker says. "In fact, a maze is an entirely new business with a whole new set of planning requirements--crowd control（人羣控制）, parking（停車）, increased insurance liability（增加保險責任）, additional hired help（額外的臨時幫工） and the need to provide complementary services like food, refreshments, souvenirs, which also increase revenue."

In Temecula, California（加利福尼亞的蒂梅丘拉）, a growing area outside of Los Angeles, the Big Horse Feed and Corona Ranch and Land Company（公司名） offers different activities each weekend at its corn maze like "Old Fashioned Farm Days（傳統農場）," which features demonstrations of blacksmithing（手工鍛造）, wool spinning （羊毛紡紗）and sheep shearing（剪羊毛）.

"It's family entertainment. Everybody can enjoy it from 4 to 80," says Rose Corona, who runs the family ranch and business with her brother Steve. They donate all the profits from the maze to organizations like the YMCA（基督教青年） and the Marine Corps（海軍陸戰隊）. "It's not anything fancy, but I think a lot of people think it's amazing because they never get a chance to go on a farm."

Chinese Agriculture VS American Agriculture

Nobody would deny that Chinese agriculture has entered a new era，但是與美國相比，我們仍然有很長一段路要走。 美國農業的生產方式和生產力水平都屬世界最發達農業之列。The reason why it is so successful is partly due to its resourceful materials, and certainly part of their desire to create. 作爲世界農業的重要組成部分的中國農業該如何吸取經驗呢？

l、Learn the advantages of US agricultural policies

美國是一個市場經濟發達的國家，伴隨着農戶根據市場價格信號、按照利潤最大化準則自由地配置農業資源以推進不斷現代化的過程，US government itself takes a lot of measure to meet the needs of the market，and intervene and control the development of agriculture，促進了農業代化的順利發展。政府的干預措施起初只限於流通領域，以維持農產品價格爲中心。從1933年羅斯福新政起，干預政策從流通領域延伸到生產領域，on one hand, it supports the price; on the other hand, it reduce the agricultural products, that is, to stop planting the over-grown products.

2、The constittute od American agricultural policies

農業保險（Agricultural insurance）是美國實施農業保護的一項非常重要的手段和方式。美國國會於1980年通過了農作物保險修正法案，將聯邦農作物保險公司的股金增加兩倍多，which covers all kinds of crops. 政府對農戶所交保險費的補貼比例在50-80％，農戶只需交納少量保險費就可得到全額保險。爲減輕自然災害給農民可能造成的風險損失，政府對從事農業保險的機構提供大規模的保費補貼，從而使農民能以較低的利率普遍參加農業保險。1990年修訂後的農業法規定，凡參加聯邦農作物保險的農作物，在遇災害時可根據農業保險的有關規定獲得較高的賠償，即使沒有參加保險的農作物，如遇災害時，也可獲得按常年產量水平的40％給予賠償。

So, we can introduce the successful ecperiences of US agricultural policies, paying more attention to the construction of the infrastructure, and researching to build a useful system to our country.