Posted on 05/12/2019 5:29:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
I grew up on an Iowa farm surrounded by fields of black dirt. Every spring our crops burst forth from the ground full of life and opportunity. I was a boy working side-by side with his dad and grandpa too. It’s a story that in my lifetime has all but disappeared in Iowa. Small family farms have been replaced by corporate growers with thousands of acres. Family farm or corporate group, the rich soil of Iowa and the Midwest has been feeding the world for many years and with support from our nation it will continue do so.
After centuries of agriculture being a bedrock of American society and the national economy, the country’s farming sector now finds itself suffering from insufficient governmental investment. This has affected all facets of the industry, including a research and development (R&D) arm that desperately requires capital to pursue technological innovations in the field.
In the current environment, these advancements are more critical than ever. With the world’s population projected to balloon up to almost 10 billion by 2050, overall food production demand is also expected to increase by as much as 70 percent. Factor in the other obstacles facing today’s modern farmer, such as deadly livestock diseases and the damage brought on crops by climate calamities, and it’s clear that this most crucial aspect of American society is being neglected right when it needs governmental attention and support the most.
Agriculture remains a key cornerstone of the US economy, contributing $1 trillion to GDP and accounting for one in 10 jobs nationwide. However, governmental support for the industry has fallen sharply in recent years; in 1940, agriculture received as much as 40 percent of the overall budget earmarked for R&D, while today it receives less than 2 percent. This is despite the fact that investment in the sector has an estimated return of as much as 20 to one, raising questions about why the government isn’t devoting more funds towards it.
The drop-off in investment has come at a time when farmers are struggling to make ends meet. While beef production rates have steadily increased over the last five years, so too have prices – and at an unsustainable speed. Hamburger meat, for example, has shot up at over double the rate of general inflation, while the ongoing trade war with China has removed the market for many US staples, sending prices crashing to rock-bottom levels.
These kinds of difficulties have forced many farmers out of business (auctioneering firms specializing in selling off farm equipment from retiring families have seen business boom by 30 percent compared to last year). Meanwhile, the average age of farmers has increased from 50 in 1974 to 58 today, as young people leave the profession in search of more profitable pastures. Workers are also harder to come by; at the start of the 20th century, one in three Americans lived on farms, but today less than 1 percent of the population does. What’s more, mass migration towards urban metropoles have made farming an unfeasible career option.
This diminishing agricultural army is now not only short of manpower and of the funds to finance them, but is also running up against bigger, less predictable and more damaging foes than ever before. New and invasive diseases such as Bovine Respiratory Disease – which affects more than one in five US cattle and costs the industry an estimated $692 million each year – make it harder for farmers to achieve their necessary quotas and turn a profit.
Flooding has hurt farmers this year. The excessive flooding that plagued one million acres of farmland in the Midwest this spring is estimated to have cost the national economy a whopping $12.5 billion, with the agricultural industry bearing the brunt of that shortfall. The government has also indicated that its disaster fund will not be applicable to crops or profits lost in the phenomenon, leaving farmers out of pocket to the tune of millions of dollars.
While the above outlook may sound bleak, the good news is that there are a number of potential solutions to these problems, notably technological innovation. A shortage in labor could theoretically be addressed by a mechanical workforce, with plans already afoot to use machines at the seeding, spraying and harvesting stage in projects as diverse as robotic strawberry pickers, self-driving tractors and weed-detecting automatons.
In a world where over 70 percent of our freshwater is consumed by the agricultural industry, these kinds of resource-saving technologies could prove to be invaluable. At the same time, precision agriculture is expected to reduce herbicide consumption by as much as 90 percent, curbing the number of harmful contaminants the Earth is subjected to and optimizing crop growth in one fell swoop. Simply put, technology has the potential to be a no-brainer cure-all for all the industry’s ills.
Of course, these kinds of optimistic predictions are still some way from fruition and even further from mass adoption. However, with the right financial backing behind them, there’s no reason why they couldn’t provide the answer to the agricultural quandary that the world so desperately demands. Instead, it seems as though the US government have put the industry out to pasture at exactly the time when it is needed the most.
It’s no surprise that China – which invests nearly twice as much as the US in agricultural science – have an overall output that is worth over double America’s. Instead of shying away from the farming community that has provided the country’s backbone for so long, it’s time the government stood up straight and supported its agricultural sector with the funds it needs to allow the country to become the industry forerunner that it is clearly so capable of being.
Major Major’s father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all. He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle and extort for as much as he could get from whomever he could.
-- Joseph Heller
What does that have to do with this?
Are you a Luddite, afraid that if we actually don’t stunt investment in ag that all those illegals will be out of illegal American work — and not eating?
What does that have to do with this?
Are you a Luddite, afraid that if we actually don’t stunt investment in ag that all those illegals will be out of illegal American work — and not eating?
Oh, so now you resort to calling me ignorant.
I have studied war esp. WWII. We did retool and manufacture weapons of war in record time. We also managed to feed our people and our troops so they could do the job required of them.
And besides, you throw out a Straw Man argument. I advocate for strong defense, I just happen to know that feeding the people behind the scenes and our troops is part of a smart, powerful, military defense.
Uh. NO. The author is barking up the wrong tree. Agriculture is getting plenty of gubment help already.
We have a NRCS, used to be USDA, office here. I still can’t figure out what they do. I guess they take care of the upstream flood control lakes. I saw them go by Friday with a four wheeler which is the first time I have seen them out in ages. Once upon a time they helped build ponds and control erosion and help with pasture improvement. Now? Not sure. Their advice to me on improving bermuda pasture was to “manage for bermuda” that is all.
The gubment has given billions upon billions in support to farmers with ethanol mandates. Where do you think the money comes from for the boom in farm equipment sales we have seen or the Taj Mahal like barns and farm shops featured on the Morton and other farm building sites? What has driven the price of farm land up to stratospheric levels?
Land grant colleges all across the nation consistently and persistently do research as do private investors. Where does the author think all the GMO varieties of crops have come from?
Let’s have a conversation about the poor family farmer when we get through looking at some of the massive private farm machinery collections housed in well kept buildings scattered across the farm belt. Someones are doing pretty well with farming.
How about the billions of pounds of cheese the gubment owns that have been bought for price supports?
When I see one of these articles pining for the family farm and wanting more gubment support I see someone pining for a bucolic way of life that has been replaced by economy of scale. There is a reason for 60’ or more spread air planters and it does not fit the small family farm any more. My little slice of the world may have once supported a family but not nearly in the style we are accustomed to now. It is just not possible. My wife grew up in pretty much a shack on a large family farm that made ends meet. It would not come close to being much more than just enough and living in a shack now.
Farming does not need more money to support the family farm. That would be just another form of welfare and we have more of that than we can afford right now.
“You’re facing court-martial for what you said about the Colonel.”
“I NEVER said that about the Colonel!”
“But WHEN did you never say it?”
“I ALWAYS never said it!”
-———————JH
Amen to that. Deere is shooting itself in the foot.
I’ll start to worry when farm land starts sitting idle.
“The government is not the answer.”
More true than you know - in MD farmers cannot spread $hit (excuse me) NUTRIENTS (that’s what they call manure in Maryland) unless it is in the allowed government time frame.
How in the world do you tell that to a cow.
AND the other thing that a college lernt, book readin, never set a foot on a farm idiot came up with is the manure storage idea. So the dairy farmers are required to build a $700,000 manure storage pit, it is open and all the rain water fills to the brim.....the stench is unbearable.
Never used to be this way - STUPID PEOPLE with college degrees screw up everything.
“Investment” you say?
After the untold billions that the Ethanol industry has cost the US gasoline buyers over 20-plus years this is preposterous.
Cotton?
I think you should study up on tobacco. The US Capitol has all kinds of tobacco flowers as design elements. Where is cotton depicted as prominently?
I don’t think that’s how economic output is measured.
Bingo!
A JD 2600 GS2 display costs HOW much??
Now, for a real look at the glamorous wine/farming/industry.
We know a man, whose grandparents owned a farm/ranch/vineyards in the California Valley. His parents in their 90’s still live there and still farm/ranch/ and have producing vineyards. He grew up farming and working in a vineyard.
He went to UC Davis and was one of 3 farm kids (his joke/words) and got a degree in winemaking.
Then, a prominent early winemaker got to know him and paid for his MBA at Stanford. Again, there were 3 farm kids in his class of close to 300. He worked at the family farm/vineyard on weekends and summers.
Since then, with the help of the winemaker sponsor, his dad and grand dad, he became known as an expert of what land to plant grapes on and where/when and what grapes and the tending to and of the grapes after planting.
Also, what land not to use and what grapes not to plant.
He is not the norm in the wine industry. Below is the unfortunate norm in the wine industry.
A common joke in the Wine Industry: “How do you make a million $’s in the wine industry.”
Your parents and grandparents give you 30 to 50 Million $’s to invest it and to make wine. Then, you buy land, plant a vineyard, build a winery and a tasting room with the 30 to 50 Million $’s given to you.
If you are lucky after a 5-10 years, you then make a million $’s by selling your vineyard and winery for a million $’s.
Of course you can’t factor in the 30 to 50 million $’s you spent to get that Million $’s. It is gone forever, like 5-10 years of your life.
PS: California Dairy Farmers have the same $hitty problem thanks to the enviro legislators.
The best possible government farm policy would be no policy at all.
Mine was about folks getting upset over agricultural subsidies...your’s is valid on another level.
I can buy milk at less than $2 a gallon in central Indiana.
What's cost in California?
(I know it's CRAZY in Florida!)
With no kids or grandkids at home, we don’t buy milk except to cook with and in small containers.
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