In the 21st century, America no longer needs farmers

In the 21st century, America will no longer need farmers.

According to Prof. Steven C. Blank, Cooperative Extension Economist for the Resource

Economics Department of the University of California-Davis, the USA will not only not need farmers, ranchers should also vanish.

In plain English, neither group will be able to compete with 3rd world plantations. America’s highways will be lined with desserts and fallow (unfarmed) land. The value of farmland will slowly diminish except around cities where it will be consumed by cement, suburban malls and houses. In the last decade, there has been a loss of 3% of farmland in the country.

Agribusiness will blossom and prosper by buying agricultural products (even perishables) from overseas.

Technology, transportation, and processing are now at a level to get rid of the American farmer.

The increasingly urban/suburban consumers won’t know (or care) where the food comes from. Why? PRICES ARE GLOBAL. COSTS ARE LOCAL. Farmers won’t be able to compete. Farms wither. Many little towns stagnate.

Incidentally, Blank likes farmers. He works with farmers all the time. He doesn’t like what he sees. If anything, he wants farmers to talk with each other about survival strategies now in case what he sees in future trends are correct.

Personally, as a non-expert in this area, I got interested in Blank’s article in THE FUTURIST because I live in Iowa and because I still am moved when I hear the words “family farm” even though I know there aren’t many small farms left. I am also interested in trends because I belong to a futurist “think tank” that creates alternative futures for corporations, various levels of government, organizations and consumers.

Further, I have a selfish interest that farmers survive. If the tax base shrinks so does money for public schools.Farmers support schools and as a public school teacher, my job is threatened. Right now, although for different reasons, Sioux City may lay off up to 102 school teachers.

Most of my adult life, I have assumed that in farming "Mom and Pops" would be consumed by bigger farms and bigger farms would be taken over by corporate farmers. Research (www.nass.usda.gov/census/) seems to support that view. In the last decade, there are 329,117 fewer farmers in the USA. I also assumed that when I spend one hundred dollars for groceries, a few dollars goes to the farmer, and the rest goes to the processors, promoters, packagers, transporters, wholesalers, and retailers.

However, I never considered that Americans would have to quit farming. There has to be a way to fight back.

Incidentally, according to Blank, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands are almost completely out of farming and Germany is moving toward abandoning agriculture.

What about the projected 11 billion people that should live on the planet at the end of the 21st century?

Third world plantation owners will sell their product to the market’s most profitable source which is First world countries. The locals can starve or be malnourished and live in squalor.

I had a chance to interview the author by e-mail and asked him about farmers raising non-food

sources. Tree farms look promising. However, I am now clearly out of my area of expertise. I tell you about this because I was simply startled by the trend, and I don’t want farmers to go out of business.

If you want more, buy: Steven C. Blank’s THE END OF AGRICULTURE IN THE AMERICAN

PORTFOLIO (Quorum Books/1-800-225-5800/greenwood.com) or e-mail sblank@primal.ucdavis.edu

or call: 1-530-752-0823. Or see the April 1999 issue of THE FUTURIST, P. 22-27.

What I would hate to see is vacant farm houses, deserted farmland, dying little towns and villages in Iowa.

Perhaps, there is a way that the sun doesn’t set on American agriculture.

Talk to Professor Blank. Read his book.

Joel Snell

Prof. Social Science

Kirkwood Comty College

Research Fellow

Arlington Institute

Arlington, Va.

1-319-398-5532

1-319-398-4911

jsnell@kirkwood.cc.ia.us