Sustainable Agriculture Requires Profits
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
A catchword that many advocates for changing American agriculture’s structure promote is “sustainable agriculture”. It almost ranks up there with “family farm” as being a popular approach to the business set-up for growing food and fiber.
Naturally, when you have a type of something that you’d like society to accept – you need a comparison for people to rant and rave against. “Factory farm” “Corporate Agriculture” and anything that conjures up large, uncaring and inappropriate production systems fit the bill for vilifying the types of agriculture that we shouldn’t have.
Recently at the 90th annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation, farmers and ranchers who surface, discuss and approve the public policy positions that guide the actions the organization works to accomplish, said that they thought there should be something about “profit” in the understanding about what “sustainable agriculture” is all about. http://fb.org/index.php?fuseaction=newsroom.newsfocus&year=2009&file=nr0113d.html
Real farmers and ranchers understand that when it comes to making a go of it, having enough money to take care of your family, pay the bills and put something back into the farm/ranch is necessary to stay in operation. It’s also not an automatic or guarantee that when everything is done at the end of the year, “profit” is going to be a result.
Unless you’ve actually been part of an on-going business enterprise and dealt with the details of the expenses that go with production and the income that comes from sales – you can’t always get your mind around the dynamics of how that all has to work.
When government regulators and advocates from outside of agriculture seek to impose requirements for how they think things should be…or when elected officials come up with new ways to tax or increase fees farmers and ranchers are required to pay – it’s natural for farmers and ranchers to work to prevent those proposals from being carried out.
“Sustainable agriculture” is portrayed as a more socially acceptable approach to agricultural production, building on the images of hard-work, often carried out on small-scale with limited-production. It’s implied that those who engage in this type of production (sometimes using organic, non-chemical methods) are more environmentally-superior to those who produce at a larger scale.
Fitting into a niche of being paid a premium for the lower level of production, the marketing theme is often based on inspiring the buyer to believe that they are getting something better than what’s available from other agricultural producers. While we don’t question the merits of promoting your product, we take serious exception to building up one approach at the expense of a different approach – when the actual outcome of the product is probably not any different.
Food safety standards don’t allow for inappropriate residues to be present…unless those standards have been violated, there should not be negative consequences for producers who provide quality products, but which may not be produced in the currently-perceived politically-correct manner.
Farmers and ranchers accept the responsibilities which are associated with doing their best in applying care to meet stewardship and health-related requirements. They take seriously the task of meeting their obligations in maintaining the quality of our nation’s food supply.
From the standpoint of long-term “sustainability” (and farmers and ranchers measure that in generations – not quarterly reports) they understand that doing their best to provide the bounty that our society accepts as a given is the basis for doing what they do.
A catchword that many advocates for changing American agriculture’s structure promote is “sustainable agriculture”. It almost ranks up there with “family farm” as being a popular approach to the business set-up for growing food and fiber.
Naturally, when you have a type of something that you’d like society to accept – you need a comparison for people to rant and rave against. “Factory farm” “Corporate Agriculture” and anything that conjures up large, uncaring and inappropriate production systems fit the bill for vilifying the types of agriculture that we shouldn’t have.
Recently at the 90th annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation, farmers and ranchers who surface, discuss and approve the public policy positions that guide the actions the organization works to accomplish, said that they thought there should be something about “profit” in the understanding about what “sustainable agriculture” is all about. http://fb.org/index.php?fuseaction=newsroom.newsfocus&year=2009&file=nr0113d.html
Real farmers and ranchers understand that when it comes to making a go of it, having enough money to take care of your family, pay the bills and put something back into the farm/ranch is necessary to stay in operation. It’s also not an automatic or guarantee that when everything is done at the end of the year, “profit” is going to be a result.
Unless you’ve actually been part of an on-going business enterprise and dealt with the details of the expenses that go with production and the income that comes from sales – you can’t always get your mind around the dynamics of how that all has to work.
When government regulators and advocates from outside of agriculture seek to impose requirements for how they think things should be…or when elected officials come up with new ways to tax or increase fees farmers and ranchers are required to pay – it’s natural for farmers and ranchers to work to prevent those proposals from being carried out.
“Sustainable agriculture” is portrayed as a more socially acceptable approach to agricultural production, building on the images of hard-work, often carried out on small-scale with limited-production. It’s implied that those who engage in this type of production (sometimes using organic, non-chemical methods) are more environmentally-superior to those who produce at a larger scale.
Fitting into a niche of being paid a premium for the lower level of production, the marketing theme is often based on inspiring the buyer to believe that they are getting something better than what’s available from other agricultural producers. While we don’t question the merits of promoting your product, we take serious exception to building up one approach at the expense of a different approach – when the actual outcome of the product is probably not any different.
Food safety standards don’t allow for inappropriate residues to be present…unless those standards have been violated, there should not be negative consequences for producers who provide quality products, but which may not be produced in the currently-perceived politically-correct manner.
Farmers and ranchers accept the responsibilities which are associated with doing their best in applying care to meet stewardship and health-related requirements. They take seriously the task of meeting their obligations in maintaining the quality of our nation’s food supply.
From the standpoint of long-term “sustainability” (and farmers and ranchers measure that in generations – not quarterly reports) they understand that doing their best to provide the bounty that our society accepts as a given is the basis for doing what they do.
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