Agriculture is a unique industry—made up of millions of individual firms, each an individual business with its own manager. Many of these also are basically family and living units. The physical products of agriculture are used primarily for food and direct human consumption, and many are necessary for life itself. Once these needs are met, however, other uses for the products of agriculture that will yield favorable prices to farmers seem limited. These and other unique characteristics of agriculture cause it to be beset with problems not encountered by all industries.