Why is the exit of farmers from U.S.agriculture bad for farmers who must leave but good for the farmers who remain?

APPLYING THE ANALYSIS The Exit of Farmers from U.S. Agriculture The U.S. agricultural industry serves as a good example of how losses resulting from declining prices received by individual producers create an exit of producers from an industry. A rapid rate of technological advance has significantly increased the supply of U.S. agricultural products over time. This technological progress has many roots: the mechanization of farms, improved techniques of land management, soil conservation, irrigation, development of hybrid crops, availability of improved fertilizers and insecticides, polymer-coated seeds, and improvements in the breeding and care of livestock. In 1950, each farmworker produced enough food and fiber to support about a dozen people. By 2011, that figure had increased to more than 100 people! Increases in demand for agricultural products, however, have failed to keep pace with technologically created increases in the supply of the products. The demand for farm products in the United States is income-inelastic. Estimates indicate that a 10 percent increase in real per capita after-tax income produces about a 2 percent increase in consumption of farm products. Once consumers' stomachs are filled, they turn to the amenities of life that manufacturing and services, not agriculture, provide. So, as the incomes of Americans rise, the demand for farm products increases far less rapidly than the demand for products in general. The consequences of the long-run supply and demand conditions just outlined have been those predicted by the long-run pure-competition model. Financial losses in agriculture have triggered a large decline in the number of farms and a massive exit of workers to other sectors of the economy. In 1950, there were about 5.4 million farms in the United States employing 9.3 million people. Today there are just over 2 million farms employing 1.8 million people. Since 1950, farm employment has declined from 15.8 percent of the U.S. workforce to just 1.2 percent. Moreover, the exodus of farmers would have been even larger in the absence of government subsidies that have enabled many farmers to remain in agriculture. Such subsidies were traditionally in the form of government price supports (price floors) but have more recently evolved to direct subsidy payments to farmers. Such payments have averaged more than $16 billion annually over the last decade. QUESTION: Why is the exit of farmers from U.S. agriculture bad for the farmers who must leave but good for the farmers who remain