National Agriculture Day, March 20

With the approach of a possible recession and all the other bad news that could affect U.S. farming over the next few months, perhaps it’s appropriate to pause for a moment and reflect on the continued strength of the farm sector.

Arguably, this is the most appropriate time of all to reflect on the continued vibrancy of U.S. farming, considering that this is National Agriculture Week and that Thursday, March 20, is National Agriculture Day.

True to stereotype, farming, despite all of the technological advances that have occurred within the last few decades, remains an overwhelmingly family endeavor. More than three million people farm or ranch in the United States. Almost 99 percent of these farms are operated by individuals, family partnerships or family corporations, according to statistics posted on the National Ag Day Web site.

And the agricultural sector in this country still wields a powerful influence within the overall U.S. economy: More than 22 million people are employed in farm or farm-related jobs, including production agriculture, farm inputs, processing and marketing, and wholesale and retail sales. But despite this continued economic influence, the farm population continues to age. For example, the 2002 Census of Agriculture reports that 50 percent of farmers are 55 years of age or older, up 3 percent from 1997.

Some other statistics are worth considering. For example, U.S. farmers produce

• 46 percent of the world’s soybeans
• 41 percent of the world’s corn
• 20.5 percent of the world’s cotton, and
• 13 percent of the world’s wheat

Additionally, one U.S. farm supplies food for 133 people, and only an acre of land in the United States (roughly the size of a football field) can produce

• 42,000 pounds of strawberries
• 11,000 heads of lettuce
• 25,400 pounds of potatoes
• 8,900 pounds of sweet corn, and
• 40 pounds of cotton lint.

Undoubtedly, this partly accounts for why Americans spend less on food — for example, about 2 percent of their disposal income on meat and poultry — than any other developed nation in the world.

Much of the success associated with U.S. farming can be attributed the Cooperative Extension model, developed in the United States and copied throughout the world. Working with the nation’s land-grant universities and particularly with their Experiment Stations, Extension helped transform a bleak farming landscape into one the most efficient, adaptive farm sectors in the world.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at March 19, 2008 02:37 PM