In some other parts of the Basin, the implications of a modern unified economy are a threat to traditional farms and farming methods. Labor costs, the need for expensive machinery, superior methods of storage of foodstuffs and easy transport over long distances have put Potomac farmers into competition with other regions, even other countries, where the same products they supply can be raised on an industrial scale of investment and profit. Thus the worth of a field of tomatoes in the Northern Neck of Virginia is affected by massive irrigated production in the Central Valley of California, and thus a Shenandoah farmer may barely break even or suffer a loss on a rather good crop of wheat in the old "bread basket of the Confederacy." Such influences, even though dulled a bit by protective State and Federal farm programs, are putting a premium on specialization, ever larger farms, and an "agribusiness" approach, with high capital and operating expenses. Their effect on many family farms in the Basin's mountain regions, places with limited acreage of marginally productive land, is severe. These may have supported the clans that own them reasonably well for a century or more, but they cannot compete with Ohio. Unless their owners are willing to keep on farming while holding down a job in town for supplementary cash, they often move away and the places go out of cultivation. Some are consolidated into grazing or forestry units or bigger farms, some stand abandoned, some go on the market as vacation retreats and "hobby farms" for wide-ranging metropolitans. Richer regions share the troubles. In the classic valley of the Monocacy, some of whose dairy farmers have to import feed now from the Midwest because they cannot raise it cheaply enough themselves, the size of the optimum farm, one that can compete effectively in today's market, has swelled in the past few years from about 150 acres to about 600, according to a study by the State of Maryland. The problem is compounded by rising land prices influenced not by productive value but by the presence of Megalopolis just over toward the Bay. Sprawl throws a long shadow. Eyeing this array of difficulties, many farmers' sons are prone to seek another livelihood, and the average age of the men who do the farming grows higher all the time. Tiring, many sell out, and thus the family farms that make up the greater part of the Potomac's much-loved rural landscape dwindle in number and change in use. It is not necessary to be mawkish to see this as a loss. In part it is inevitable, but in part too it may be rooted in policies that can be altered and adjusted to keep the farms productive.