Future Farmers of America

When I was in high school, even though as a City boy at the time, we thought of anyone wearing one of the denim jackets with the gold FFA symbol embroidered on the back as; kickers. There was usually another word in front of that but you can guess.

Secretly though, I admired those jackets – even wanted one for many reasons.

40-something odd years later I find myself a sort-of farmer although I like the term rancher better. To me farmer says “row crops” and things you grow and rancher says things you raise. Right now we aren’t raising anything but kids and dogs, but I digress.

The editor of Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, for whom I write, asked me to attend a local Beef conference. I went, listened, ate well (very nice prime rib – what would you expect?) and came away with this observation: I can’t do the math but the average age of the 160+ attendees was older than I am (55 and fast approaching 56!) There were a few younger couples but most of the folks were my age and older.
One of the presenters showed a chart revealing that even though prices aren’t great and the economy is in shambles, one bright spot for beef producers is we – the U.S. – are exporting more beef than we import. And this for only the second year in the last 20 or so that his chart covered.

But if the people in the room are an indication, this trend will swing back the other way unless there starts to be many more kids wearing those cool FFA jackets again. I see them – my daughter was in FFA for 2 years. But I don’t see lots of them. Who is going to produce the beef for us to eat in a few years?

Another simplistic observation that shows my total lack of economic knowledge: doesn’t it make some sense that if I’m shipping out so many tons of beef to countries around the world but some of those countries ship back almost as many tons of beef – what if some of it just stayed where it was? Imagine the reduced shipping, packing, storage costs? Reminds me of the C.S Lewis comment about “being sixpence none the richer;” if I give you sixpence so you can buy me something as a gift, I’m “none the richer” once you give it back. We may have a net gain in exports versus imports but what about the cost? Some bright MBA will have to explain that one to me.

But the long term issue seems to be how do we encourage more young people to go into or stay in farming and ranching? My oldest daughter and her husband raise cattle in Montana but what will keep them at it? And for how long? And if they stop – where will our next pound of beef come from? Well in my case I know – our freezer because we raised it ourselves and will continue to do so as long as we have some land and grass.