What will it take to bring an industry together, conflict, catastrophe, money? The agricultural industry is without question, the most important industry in the world. The industry feeds us, clothes us, provides materials to build homes, it cleans our air and creates the ecosystems that sustain the microbes which support all life. Life without agriculture is impossible.
The question I’m constantly pondering a solution to is, how to get the industry to work in unison with itself. Cattle ranchers have different needs from someone growing row crops which has different needs from someone harvesting in aquaculture or container grown landscape material. Despite the individual different needs, they do have commonalities. They all need water, they all play a huge roll in our environmental stability, they all pay taxes and support local economies. The agriculture industry is the most essential, and the fact that it is not regarded as the most important industry in the nation is part of the disconnect between Ag and the modern American. Agriculture is the second most profitable industry in the state of Florida producing $10.22 billion dollars of agriculturally sold products in Florida in 2022.
Former president John F. Kennedy famously said,” The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways”. Where are the carbon credits for horticulturalists who produce thousands of CO2 reducing plants per year, every year? Farmers using regenerative farming practices that sequester nutrients into the soil with cover crops are given minimal if any tax breaks or incentives. Many farmers and growers are environmentally responsible because they know it is right, it’s what keeps their crops healthy and their land and animals productive. All of this is happening while the worlds’ leaders hold climate summits that throw vast sums of money at problems. Trying to build machines for pulling carbon from the air and paying companies who will invest in these machines as well as incentivizing them with tax credits. We grew thousands of those machines last year, they are called trees and shrubs, where is my check? Farmers have developed feed structures for cattle that reduce the amount of methane gas produced from cattle by 30%. I don’t see government assistance to make sure this product is available to the farmer at little to no cost; farmers just have to work it into the budget.
The problem the Ag culture has is being good at problem solving. Being creative, fiscally responsible, and self sufficient makes people expect it from you all the time. The Ag world is well known for being able to ‘make it work’. Give those Ag folks a roll of duct tape, crescent wrench, tech screws, bailing wire and stand back because whatever was broken and needing fixing is going to work again. The Ag community got this way because they had to make it work with what they had, there was no money for new equipment or tools. You learn to adapt to survive, and keep the doors open. There is a serious amount of pride in the Ag community at how skilled they are at ‘making it work’, and it is unfortunately becoming our Achillies heal. The grit that it takes to make a living in the Ag industry is unlike any other. On many days grit, pride, and Jesus are all you have working alone in the middle of a field, there is no help coming.
When you ‘make it work’ year after year stringing together profits and some financial stability it becomes second nature to ‘buckle down’ or ‘tighten the belt’ a little more when taxes go up. It has become so engrained in the nature of the Ag worker to just ‘Make it work’ that when the demands start to come from a direction they shouldn’t, like our local government, we don’t even question them. We get to work, solving the problem without a conversation among ourselves to ask, is this right? How are the other commodities being treated that run the world, like energy and building materials. There are massive negotiations happening with these industries to promote fair compensation, for example, energy companies after hurricanes. While agriculture is threatened with imports from out of the country with ¼ of the labor costs at half the cost. Most recently we see tariffs being used to curb buying from outside the United States and this is an effective tool. However, when Ag doesn’t get a seat at the table and growers whose customers are overseas buyers, they lose their contacts and entire crops, not due to personal failure but rather a sudden lack of a market. They could have grown something else or just not spent the money on seed for that crop, but now they are already past the point of no return and stuck with a crop they cannot sell. Which in turn, puts farmers in debt to seed companies and banks. The AG community is not getting the proper seat at the table to ensure they can be successful like other industries are. This is how family farms go out of business and a reason why 61% of first year farmers contemplate suicide. When COVID hit and contracts were cancelled by cruise lines, farmers were on the news throwing away commodities with little or no assistance from the government to recoup those losses like the energy companies receive when additional work has to be completed to recover from a storm. We need those farmers to be whole so they can produce next years crops just like we need the power lines fixed. Government subsidies cannot be exclusive to massive conglomerate farms and must be available to the local farmer.
Members of the Ag community have a different level of burden. Most non-Ag jobs are completely separate from their personal life. If you lose a regular job, you might be paycheck to paycheck but you can get another job with your skillset, you could sell a car or ask for a mortgage payment deferment on your house to buy some time while you work things out. On the farm, everything is tied together. Typically, your house is on the farm’s land, so if you lose the farm, you lose your house. Your truck is a farm owned truck, if you lose the farm, you lose your vehicle. Paying up front and triple the regular price of fertilizer will cripple a farm when your crop is suddenly only be worth 1/3 of the previous value due to a trade war and local market saturation.
United States agriculture is the nations most important level of national security. In mid evil times when someone tried to take over a castle there was one strategy that worked better than anything else, cut off food supply and starve them out. The United States has an extremely robust yet frail food network system with only 1% of Americans holding the job title of farmer. In Florida, farm land increased during the last Census, but farm owners decreased. Food is the easy example but horticulture is equally important. If the majority of lands in the U.S. which are privately owned do not maintain good soil health and promote healthy ecosystems our crops will die. If the majority of soils like the soil in your yard cannot live without constant irrigation then you’re part of the problem. Your landscape cannot retain water, which we need to support the ecosystem. If you cannot retain water we end up with droughts and disease. Without healthy soils we lose soil moisture, and lack of soil moisture creates desertification. This means you’re not getting rainfall and lack of rainfall means we are relying on our aquifer, which needs rain water to recharge. Bottom line, without healthy landscapes we will not be able to retain water so we will run out of water and be unable to grow crops. This simple example doesn’t include the population growth in FL which is mathematically already going to exceed FL water capability in our lifetime. Everything is connected and this is the reason Ag needs a seat not just at the table but should be at the head of the table.
The idea that cattle, crops, horticulture, and aquiculture are separate is crazy and these individual groups need to step up together. Money talks and when billions of dollars of industries stand up together people pay attention. To get the kind of attention that Ag needs to take our country into the second half of the 21st century we will need to stand up with a unified voice. Attention America, Ag needs to be receiving fair compensation for the work being done and the tools necessary to do the work. We need to be recognized for the good we do for the environment and not demonized for destroying it. The importance of what our industry provides deserves recognition which leads to meaningful community support and government support. Many organizations should be receiving subsidies for the positives they bring to their local environment. It’s time to make sure the people who keep our country alive, operating, and healthy get a seat at the head of the table.
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-Written by John Taylor
The Veranda View 