The Western Economy
State of the Rockies: Agriculture Just 1 Percent of Economy
Surprising statistics shine new light on farming and ranching in the West.By Jill Kuraitis, 7-02-10
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The Rocky Mountain West is not an agriculture region anymore.
The myth – perpetuated by generations of farmers, the media and state legislatures dominated by agricultural representatives – is that growing food and ag commodities is the backbone of our economy. But an impressive and comprehensive study of the region reports that agriculture counts for just 1 percent of it and the number of people who own or work on farms is just 2 percent of the population, down from 35 percent at its peak in 1920.
Colorado College’s 2010 State of the Rockies report, now in its eighth year of research and reporting on issues that define our lives in the mountain west, is focused on agriculture. The report provides the statistical overview of the region’s industry, but also delves deep into agricultural history, land and water use, demographics, production, finance, organization, and a “foodprint” of Rockies’ agriculture, according to project leaders.
States defined as part of the Rockies are Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Idaho.
The average age of farm operators in the U.S. has increased from 52 to 57 years old, and only between 1 and 6 percent earn all their income from farming. In the Rockies, female farmers have increased by 257 percent. Ethnic diversity among farm owners and operators is also trending upward.
Other highlights from the report:
- The Rockies contain only 7 percent of the nation’s family farms.
- Continuing competition from corporate farms which produce huge crops to sell at lower prices, still threatens smaller operations. Just 4 percent of farms are responsible for 45 percent of sales.
- Organic crops, now counted as a separate and distinct category in the report, are grown on 678,000 acres, with another 37,000 being converted to organic.
- Rocky Mountain sales of livestock are higher than average, while sales of soybeans and corn are lower than average. Farmers are concerned with the futures and commodities markets and increased investment activity, which drives food prices up.
- Stressors to farmers also include bank failures, difficulty in getting loans from federal agencies, increases in property taxes, and rising costs of feed, fuel and contract labor.
The president of the National Farmers Union is quoted in the report: “Without a properly functioning and regulated futures market, a train wreck is headed straight for rural America that will jeopardize our ability to continue providing a safe, affordable and abundant food supply for this nation.”
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Comments
Where is high tech or minerals and mineral exploration? How about power production? Road construction and repair? Government? (and when we suddenly include government, where does it get its money). How much of our economy is involved in "switch 'em?" You know, where a part of the population stands around with either a thumb up their ass or in their mouth, and does nothing until someone of authority hollers "switch 'em."
I got in a heck of a fight with the PhD across the street who teaches at the local state university. She said incoming freshmen are so poorly prepared for college. I said she ought to tell that to a mirror, and not me, because I know the dirty little secret that her state supported school has two colleges within its university title: College of Liberal Arts, and College of Education. You are producing the teachers who fail to prepare the K-12 students for college. Perhaps the examination of the problem and its solution is on campus, and not with the general public. You cannot blame parents for everything. You produce the employees with credentials who produce the unprepared students. Physician, heal thyself.
So when august bodies at universities produce a number like 1% of the economy from traced to ag, what is the other 99% about? I have this basic problem of monetary physics that I am pondering in this conclusion. Ag creates value by using sunlight, soil, and water, with additions of labor and mechanization. Schools create no money. In fact, nothing is created until the creators feed themselves for the day. No water is diverted for irrigation. No hay it pitched to cows. No land is tilled. Nothing happens until food fires the body that has the will to go to work. Are we saying in this story that 99% of the food comes from elsewhere? Is distributed by non-farm connected companies? No trucks haul farm goods or supplies to and from ag operations? No trains run grain exclusively to the ports on the coast?
Sorry, Jill, the story just doesn't wash. Incomplete. Doesn't pass the walks like a duck test.
And I am off to spray Delegate to protect the blueberries from Spotted wing Drosophila, an Asian vinegar fly that lays its eggs in ripening berries, and raises its larvae there all the while ruining the berry and allowing bacterial infections to occur. APHIS pays no attention to fruit flies during import inspections. There are too many kinds associated with fruit. Gee. We didn't know there was a fruit fly that attacked fruit that was not damaged. The oxymoronic "protection" we get from the US Govt. is frightening. We have no border protection unless, of course, you are smuggling snakes or parrots or tiger skins or ivory. Drugs, money, guns, people, bad ass pests, ho hum, those a necessary for social and biological diversity. Gotta get them tiger skins!
Ya know, the NEW WEST is nothing but the daily enviro comminique. Let's not have any pretense that it offers any balanced debate on the enviro issue.
Is it me, or does anyone else sense the New West is about to go under. Theres a tiny add at the bottom and one in the middle. I love the "real estate" ads promoting urban sprawl in the forests. Theres a lot of "empty" space on the screen. They conjured up the "twitter" section to cover more embarrasing space. Ad revenue must suck. Perhaps if they appealed to more than just 10% of the Wests population, more advertizers would follow. It's tough for western media to sacrifice their idealism for the bottom line-but endless enviro endorsement doesn't sell papers kids.
Thanks for the link to the interesting report Jill, and your summary of it. Fascinating compilation of statistics, and it sounds like the students who did the grunt work had a good experience. The finished product is impressive.
Note that the population of "the Rockies" (as they term the states between the 3 west coast states and the plains) is 7% of that of the US, so the "only" in the bullet item about family farms (in this summary) shouldn't be too surprising.
On pg. 14, the table of 2008 employment by occupation tells us what the "other 99" are doing:
34% "Management, professional and related"
18% "Service"
25% "Sales and office"
11% "Construction, extraction, maintenance and repair"
10% "Production, transportation, and Material Moving"
In the aggregate, pretty close to the same as the US overall, although states vary within the region. (Idaho has 3% Farming, fishing and forestry, Wyoming's big in extraction, etc.)
One of the key findings (p. 20) was that the peak of the Rockies farm population was 35%, reached in 1920; today it is 2%.
Debates over land use, particularly over what happens on public lands, are a pretty big issue in "the Rockies" and, in fact, most of the most acrimonious debates over the management of our public lands are centered in this region and the articles and commentary in NewWest reflect that situation. From logging and grazing to snowmobiles and endangered species, the "good old boys," from bearbait to fotowarped to even Tommy "the KKKlown" Klumker, are pretty much unanimous in wanting those "others" from the cities and the east and the coast and the federal government to just butt out in favor of devolution to "local" control.
One of the points that is always absent from these discussions is that less than 7% of the actual "owners" of the public lands in "the Rockies" even live in the region and, since this region is the most urbanized in the country, the kinds of rural and small town hillbillies that call for this devolution to "local" control constitute far, far, far less than 7% (perhaps as little as 2% of that 7%) of the actual "owners" of the public lands they want to control. So, in essence, we have a tiny fraction of 7% of the population demanding to tell much more than 93% of the population what to do with public lands that overwhelmingly belong more to the more than 93% than to these bellicose "ignorant whiners" who actually have a less than 7% share in the ownership of the properties.
This analysis actually underestimates the imbalance in actual "ownership stakes" because, given the much lower average education levels and the resulting relatively smaller per capita share of overall tax revenues coming out of the rural and small town areas in this region, the more than 93% of the national population that actually owns these public lands actually pays a disproportionately higher share of their upkeep and management costs.
So, when you look at the facts, this push for devolution to "local" control actually flies right in the face of the property rights and open democracy talk being spewed by its proponents. When you take a good look at the facts, a tiny minority of loudmouthed "good old boys," from bearbait to fotowarped to even Tommy "the KKKlown" Klumker, just want to confiscate the property rights of over 93% of the owners of the public lands in "the Rockies" and disenfranchise them from the democratic process as well.
Since Jill is a self-declared Idaho partisan (not a bad thing to be, if pursued with objectivity), she ought to take this same line of reasoning, add a little more specific research, and tell us how the "stakeholder" spread on those Snake River dams shakes out. Idaho might claim the water; but, do Idahoans even realize what percentage of the state population benefits from the dams versus what percentage would benefit from salmon in numbers that would shame the great bison herds of the past? Then, although Idaho might claim the water, the dams and the fish belong to that pesky other 93% of America. How does the percentage of people benefitting from the dams stack up against what the rest of the "stakeholders" want? America is already so obese that our inability to find fit recruits for our armed services is considered a national security threat. How many more cheap potatoes, irrigated with subsidized water at the expense of the salmon, do we need? How much more money does the Simplot gang need given their tiny share of the overall ownership stake? Yes, yes, I know. As soon as you make the water case, they'll go on to the cheap power argument; but, take a crack at it, one argument at a time.
I have no doubt the number of "farmers" is quite low. I guess we can really blame John Deere for building bigger tractors. However, I have no doubt that Great Falls, Helena, Billings would dry up and blow away if we quit growing Wheat, cattle, and corn tomorow.
Note to enviro propoganda minister-stop using such unbelievable numbers such as 1%. It just invites inquiry and really just isn't believable.
Real Mikes contention that the 93% should rule over the 7% only highlights the environmental imperialsim that is east and west coast environmentalism. He contends Montana should exist only "so some enviro who's stuck in a traffic Jam in Vermont can feel good about himself just knowing theres wilderness out there in Montana". In their eyes Montana is only an environmental colony of the elitists. Workers of the world unite against these bourgois elitists!
By the way... First, departments of agriculture are dominated by redneck weasels like you; they're always going to use any self-promoting statistical gimmick possible, spin every possible statistic, to promote their own importance. The true picture across the region is still the same; agriculture in "the Rockies" doesn't even pay for itself, much less compensate for the damage that ultimately gets picked up by those urbanites in Vermont.
Second, maybe farmers are buying 90% of the gas at that station in Harlowton; but, I'll bet you can trace most of the dollars they're using back to a government subsidy program paid for by that much better educated guy or gal stuck in that traffic in Vermont. Actually, Vermont has a relatively large agricultural base that, except for dairy, isn't nearly as subsidized by the government as anything you see in "the Rockies" and, even without government subsidies, the folks in Vermont don't whine about the government as much as the people in this region. To a much greater degree, they obey the law, tell the truth, pay their taxes, and figure it's a citizen's responsibility.
Third, I'm sure that most of those farmers trading at that station in Harlowton spew the same stuff about values and principles that you always do; but, I bet that most of the rest of the dollars they're using, the ones that aren't government subsidized, are off the books income that those highly principled folks don't pay taxes on. In fact, "logger," I bet you never in your entire life cut a tree that wasn't government subsidized and I bet you went ahead and spewed whiny complaints about people on welfare all the while you were cutting it. I bet, if you ever did cut a tree that wasn't government subsidized, you didn't properly pay taxes on what you got for cutting it.
It is the 4th. So, just shut up, crawl off to get drunk someplace, and tell yourself and your slobbering friends that you're all patriots.
I'd certainly entertain the various states' Department of Agriculture analysis, keeping the understanding that they have a vested interest in drawing their sector as large as possible. Nevertheless, the mechanization of agriculture and the application of cheap energy has changed our way of life. I'd say "irrevocably" except for the fact that the end of the era of cheap energy is very likely upon us, with repercussions likely to surprise us all with their tempo and power.
The study is quite extensive, and while I've scanned and read parts of it, I'll make this my last comment before I go through it more carefully.
I recommend that to others as well. This pissing match between whatever you want to call your two sides is rather pathetic, especially to the extent that you want to deny facts in evidence, or move right ahead to the name-calling.
There are economic stats in the report, and while they might not put ag's production in the context of comparison to everything else, one could find that information without too much trouble (assuming you wanted to, rather than preferred to just make stuff up).
If anyone attacking the study's observations wished to take the trouble, he'd also find that this survey is sympathetic to agriculture in general, and to its current problems in particular. That's kind of what the whole thing is about, eh.