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North Dakota | I have been thinking about this for a few months. I farm and am involved in the ag finance area. I am concerned about where this Ag deal is heading and what I mean by that is support for our industry across this country. I recently was visiting down in Arizona and it was once again eye opening how little people know and care about agriculture and some of the comments I heard were to the effect of "Farmers are so loaded", "Must be nice to be involved with farming". I started thinking, why would people in the general public have this thought when they just hear the term agriculture?
Well the more I think about what we as an industry currently are doing, it really does concern me. Take for example, the agronomy area currently, soon in the upcoming months, the Winfields of the world will be flying people across the country to trips in the Caribbean/Hawaii, etc.... The general public will see farmers posting vacation pictures and tropical weather pictures. Where this starts to concern me is that from other citizens of this county, where do you think our support will be when farmers fall on hard times, as many already are today, or where will the support be when we talk about crop insurance where the US tax payer already pays 50+% of the MPCI premium, no matter how much a person farms???? Do we in the Ag industry really think that the general public will step in or even care about us in the future when they see many in the Ag industry living lives that doctor's don't even live???
I am concerned how the living standards have changed so much in just 10 years. 10 years ago, we were not being flown around to destinations all over the world by Winfields, CHS's. What happened to just focusing on trying to make our farms profitable and less focus on living a life like a CEO?????
Has anyone else out there had these thoughts??? There are still plenty out there that are living well within their means and trying to make a go of it, but it is very concerning what consequences this could have in the future for this industry. | |
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Agriculture's image problem
