TheFirstFurrow

With Congress back in their districts for August Recess, we thought it’d be a good time to talk about some federal issues that are a high priority for Farm Bureau. Wrapping up this week: regulatory reform.

All Americans have an interest in a regulatory process that is transparent and fact-based, respects the will of Congress, and observes the separation of powers in the Constitution. Federal regulations have a direct impact on farmers and, over the years, the breadth and extent of that regulatory landscape have increased. Farm Bureau has taken a stand against regulatory overreach and is working to reform the federal regulatory process and preserve farmers’ and ranchers’ land-use and water rights.

Regulatory Overload

Today, farmers and ranchers are faced with a flurry of requirements through the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, the Food Safety Modernization Act, immigration and labor regulations, and interpretation of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act—to name just a few.

Often, these requirements are the result of federal regulations; sometimes they emanate from court decisions. But no matter how they are established, the result often can be controversial. Stakeholders disagree on the language in the rule, and affected parties disagree on the science, the data or the models underpinning one or the other.

Farm Bureau strongly believes that all Americans, including farmers and ranchers, need a regulatory system that is fair, transparent, adheres to the will of Congress, takes economic impacts into account and respects our freedoms.

This week, we thought we’d explore a topic familiar to most people in the agriculture community: land-grant colleges. In the process of researching the history of land-grant institutions, we stumbled upon a fantastic write-up from the folks over at Back Story Radio, and instead of trying to out-do them we figured we’d just share their content with you. We hope you enjoy!

We hear it all the time.  We throw it around with authority – “oh, it’s a land-grant school.”  But what exactly does that mean?  And where did the land-grants come from?

If you’ve watched the news recently, then you’ve probably heard President Trump discuss trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). While we aren’t going to get into the details of either trade deal, we do want to emphasize the importance of agricultural exports to our economic success as a nation and here at home in North Carolina.

Agricultural Exports in the U.S.

To keep it short and sweet, the graphic below demonstrates the importance of agricultural exports to the U.S. economy and lays out several good reasons why there is a great need for a trade deal that works for agriculture. Two key points to pay careful attention to:

1. The $129.7 billion in total value of U.S. agricultural exports actually surpassed USDA’s forecast
2. The $1 Trillion in total value of U.S. agricultural exports since 2009 is the strongest period for U.S. ag exports in history

Growing up on our small farm in Travis County, Texas, I would occasionally see the survey form from the Texas Crop and Livestock Reporting Service on my dad’s desk. Dad retired as a pilot from the US Air Force after a 28-year career, including flying B-29’s during WWII in the Pacific. My parents bought the rural house and acreage in central Texas so that, among other reasons, my two brothers and I could learn the lessons of hard work while they held down jobs off the farm. Little did I know at the time that I would one day be a “bureaucrat” sending out those survey forms to thousands of farmers across the nation. During my 32 ½ years working for USDA National Agriculture Statistics Service (formerly known as the Crop and Livestock Reporting Service), I have seen and measured firsthand the tremendous changes in agriculture – yet the reason for conducting agricultural statistics surveys really has not changed.

Being a successful farmer in the 21^st century means more than owning a tractor and a few acres. It means having the ability to adapt to constantly changing situations and environments, staying up-to-date on cutting-edge technologies, and knowing how to effectively communicate with employees, the public, government officials, salesmen, scientists, and lawyers, just to name a few. What’s sometimes overlooked when we talk about all of the important things farmers do is the simple but essential act of farmer-to-farmer communication. It’s National Pollinator Week, so today we’ll take a closer look at one way in which farmers are working together using a new voluntary communication tool called DriftWatch that is gaining momentum across the US.

Last week, we talked about the benefits to consumers of buying farm products locally at farmers markets and roadside stands. Today, we’re going to discuss a couple of ways farmers can benefit from selling farm products locally.

Last week we told you about the difficult year North Carolina farmers had in 2015. This week we want to show you how that bad weather has converged with a few other factors to put many farmers in a really tight spot as they prepare for the 2016 growing season.

First of all, weather is always a wild card in agriculture. Here’s a chart (Figure 1) showing how weather events have affected US corn production over the last 50 years. Nearly every decrease in crop yields can be attributed to some adverse weather event. Farmers certainly understand this and do everything they can to manage risk, but there’s only so much they can do when extreme events occur.

There’s no such thing as a perfect year when it comes to agriculture, especially considering the diverse geography and climate of our state. There will always be uncertainty when it comes to the weather—will we have a freeze, drought or flood? But in 2015 we had all three in a single year.

We could spend days discussing the role weather played in crop loss last year, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a farm that didn’t experience some sort of weather event. But today, we’ll focus on the Waterlogged Fall of 2015.

If you need help remembering what we’re talking about, this picture should help jog your memory.