Balance approach to farming
Dear Editor: I am writing in response to a recent editorial, “Agriculture policy hurts farmers, costs taxpayers”. Granted there are inefficiencies in any government program, whether it’s ag policy or how to bring world peace. We must all strive to do better in all things we do.
You mentioned that subsidies prevent farmers from adjusting to market conditions. That is partly true. For the last 6 years grain prices have been below the cost of production. If we as grain producers adjusted to the market signals we would not have planted but a very small share of the available acres in the last few years. We would do this only one time and chaos would ripple through our society.
It takes about 18 months to plan, plant, harvest and market a crop. Once you decide not to plant a certain crop it is a year before you can have the option to plant that crop again. If the market sends you a signal to increase milk production it takes 3 years to produce a calf and bring it into production.
Our industry has long-term planning horizons. If you plant a house in a cornfield that production capacity is gone forever, yet we give very little concern to farmland preservation. Market signals tell us every day we should seek a more lucrative profession than farming. If we all respond to these market signals we would starve.
We have about a 50 day supply of food on hand. If we don’t produce we cannot bring a new crop on line for 1 year or more. If we gave away our corn, the price of one pound of corn flakes would go down 4 cents. How much more efficient can we be? Ask the Europeans who starved during WWII how cheap food should be. Once you are hungry you realize how important a stable supply is. We as Americans have never been hungry.
If we insist on making our food supply the absolute lowest cost in the world we will be in for some unpleasant surprises. So very few of us are engaged in production agriculture that few understand how volatile our supply is. Ag subsidies have been a way of life for several generations. We are the cheapest, safest and most reliably fed people ever. Seems we are doing something right. We need a balanced approach to our food discussion.
Richard Burd
Uniontown