patretroleum institute ceo jack gerard discusses the alternative energy experts and hubert hamer and jerry hagstrom look at how farming and agriculture have changed over the last few decades. washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >>> coming up at 10:00 a.m. eastern, a forum on religion from georgetown university's berkeley centers on religion, peace and world affairs. scholars will discuss the arab spring, religious extremism and the obama policy for dealing with religious issues. you can see it live starting at 10:15 a.m. eastern here on c-span 3. >>> they would wear garments made of home spun cloth. and this home spun cloth would be much more rough textured. it would be much less fine than the kinds of goods they could import from great britain. but by wearing this home spun cloth, women were visibly and vividly and physically displaying their political sentiments. >> sunday night at 9:00, george mason university professor on the role of women during the revolutionary war, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3. >>> former national security advisers zbigniew brzezin

host: what has, jerry hagstrom, been driving this structure of american arms? guest: one of the big drivers would be technological efficiency. farm equipment gets bigger and it is easier to produce more with a bigger tractors, the bigger harvesting equipment. people operate on bigger acreage is. also, the margins for farming are always low. as people retire, the number of farmers decrease. the number of acres does not vary that much. it goes down some because of the conversion of land for other uses, but that is a big factor. host: is there a connection between subsidies and a number of guest: farms that is a subject of the -- the number of forms? guest: that is a subject of debate. the number in the 1930's was much larger and there are critics of farm policy to say that the bigger farmers to get more subsidies use that money to build bigger operations, either buying more land or being able to buy bigger equipment. host: the next slide looks at the size and scale of farms. what are we looking at? host: if you put a -- guest: their teeth of stories you want to l

host: what has, jerry hagstrom, been driving this structure of american arms?uest: one of the big drivers would be technological efficiency. farm equipment gets bigger and it is easier to produce more with a bigger tractors, the bigger harvesting equipment. people operate on bigger acreage is. also, the margins for farming are always low. as people retire, the number of farmers decrease. the number of acres does not vary that much. it goes down some because of the conversion of land for other uses, but that is a big factor. host: is there a connection between subsidies and the number of farms? guest: that is a subject of debate. the number in the 1930's was much larger and there are critics of farm policy to say that the bigger farmers to get more subsidies use that money to build bigger operations, either buying more land or being able to buy bigger equipment. host: the next slide looks at the size and scale of farms. what are we looking at? host: there are two stories you want to look at. you have a lot of small operations. 84% of the farms only produce 7% of