Young adults entering the agriculture industry have problems to fix if we want to continue feeding America. Every year we have less farmers and ranchers continuing their trade due to crippling debt or lack of resources.
The life of a farmer has often been romanticized in southern culture. Farming is in our music, the décor we arrange in our houses, and even the brand of jeans we wear.
I was blinded by the nostalgic beauty I associated with crop farming and raising cattle. Coming to ABAC has presented me with some difficult truths.
Our cattle trade with Mexico keeps cow/calf operations in TX alive and well, yet the flesh-eating New World Screwworm is slowing trade potentially to a halt. The threat of tariffs on fertilizers could cripple our crop farmers.
From 2022 to 2024, 166 million poultry have been culled and marked as loss due to the most recent Avian Influenza outbreak.
I could continue to add to the whirlwind of issues the American agricultural market is facing, but I think you get the point.
Every industry has new issues to face every generation—it’s just that ours is held together by a willpower to keep our country fed and clothed. Our farmers have changed with the times through the wave of precision agriculture and the latest technologies, but it’s not enough.
The people in our industry are faced with an array of challenges specific to their field, like disease, natural disasters, labor shortages, and ever-rising input costs. Somehow, they are expected to keep up with markets, representation in government, and with preventing monopolies from buying up every acre of soil.
At the end of the day, something must be done, and I find it unfortunate that farmers are left behind in our market. The farmer’s dollar shows that, for every dollar spent in a supermarket to buy their goods, the farmer will only make 15.9 cents. With so many advancements in technology and a growing pressure to produce more, the total US farm sector debt is projected to reach a record breaking $561.8 billion this year.
These people are taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to make enough to live a stable life, even though we know our world would be upside-down without them.
I sit here and wonder why they don’t all resort to selling produce on the side of the road. Who would blame them? Why is it that farm-to-table is so impossible to achieve? Farmers have had red tape and processing fees up to their necks for decades now. Yet, as they continue to set their nose to the grindstone, we buy a “thank a farmer” bumper sticker and move on.
They don’t need more thanks; they need relief. They need support from lawmakers, judges, activists, scientists, and everyday, hardworking Americans. They need our generation to find a solution and find it fast.
We need strong minds and the willpower to enact change if we want our future generation’s way of life to prosper.