Download Agriculture - My Illinois State

Changing
Demographics
and the
Disconnection
of Public with
Agriculture
Presented by Lynsey Such
Agriculture Historically
• Hunting and gathering was the only mode of subsistence for 99% of
human history.
• 200 years ago 90 percent of the U.S. population lived on farms and
produced their own food to eat.
• Today 2% of the population produces the food, including fruits,
vegetables, meats and dairy, that everyone eats.
• There are 2 million farms in the United States today. The number of acres dedicated to
land is decreasing yet the population is increasing.
Population Growth
World Population: Doubling Time
The number of years required for a
quantity to double at a fixed annual
rate (exponential growth).
Growth Rates:
• World: 1.2%
• United States: 0.7%
Source: U.N., World Population Prospects: The 2002
Revision, Panel 1: Basic data.
Population Growth and the Effect on Agriculture
The United States population is increasing yet the number of acres
dedicated to farming is decreasing, this is because of an increase in
EFFICIENCY!
“Today’s farmers produce 262 percent more food with 2 percent
fewer inputs (labor, seeds, feed, fertilizer, etc.), compared with 1950”
Economic
Environmental
Agriculture and Industrialization
Specialization: Specialize in doing fewer things
• Produce more with less work
Standardization: Standardizing the tasks of
specialized workers
• Products become interchangeable
• Coordination between specialized workers
We now start to see a shift away from small
family farms and into larger operations.
Constructed by Lynsey Such
Remember there are 2.2 million farms in the U.S. : Fewer farms are responsible for the
larger portion of agricultural sales
Industrialization and Separation
The industrialization of the American food system began with
FOOD PROCESSING
• Meat packing industry in the late 1800s . The Jungle (Sinclair 1906).
• Value-added food: adding value is the process of changing or
transforming a product from its original state to a more valuable state.
• What we get off the shelf is different that what is produced on the farm
• Ex: Wheat  Flour  Bread
Industrialization and Separation
Industrialization of Food Retailing
•
Regional Supermarket chains replacing “mom and pop grocery stores”
• Walmart- early 1990s, Wal-Mart used its position of dominance as a discount
retailer
•
“Away from home” food market. McDonald’s “golden arches” started displacing
local restaurants in the late 1950s.
Industrialization and Separation
Vertical Integration: where the supply chain of a company is
owned by that company.
• Issues lie with a lack of communication through the marketing chain.
• Producer from consumer went from personal to impersonal with a growing
economy
Producer
Processor
Wholesale
Retail
Consumer
Agricultural Policy
Daryll E. Ray in Policy Pennings
The agricultural industry needs help from policy makers because of disconnection
between agricultural production and consumption needs (demand).
Problem: Farmers have no production control compared to other industries.
Aggregate net farm income is at reasonable levels so why does the producer receive such a little
portion of the total price?
Economically: when prices drop production should decrease and farmers should reduce their
volume of output, instead in agriculture we see over production
Farmers produce as much as they can in hopes that another Yellow #2 corn producers has crop
failure.
Miscommunication in the Media
Are Jobs in Agriculture Declining
Yahoo Study of “most useless degrees”
Useless Degree #1 - Agriculture
• Number of Students Awarded Degree in 2008-
2009: 24,988
• Typical coursework: Crops, plant diseases,
animal husbandry, basic veterinary science.
• U.S. Department of Labor projects 64,000 fewer
jobs in this field over the next seven years.
Career Shifts
“Job Loss or Movement”
10 percent of Americans are involved in traditional
farming.
However…..
New Agricultural Categories have been established:
Agribusiness Management, Agricultural and Natural
Resources Communications, Building Construction
Management, Agriscience, Resource Development and
Management, Parks, Recreations, and Tourism
Resources, Packaging, Horticulture, Forestry, Food
Science, and Fisheries/Wildlife.
Career Shifts
USDA: Selected Farm Characteristics by Race of Principal Operator
Farms and Land in Farms
Farms (number)
Land in farms (acreage)
Operators Reporting One Race
American Indian
or Alaskan Native
37,851
50,859,898
Black or African
American
13,669
33,371
1,453,328
3,645,289
All Principal Operators
Asian
Operators from 84,891 farms consider themselves to be of a different race
2,109,303
914,527,657
Disconnection is not just an
Issue in the United States
Results of the Cambridge poll in the UK
• Results: has revealed widespread affection for agriculture, even
though there is a surprising level of ignorance about the sector and its
contribution to the economy.
• 72% feel that they do not know much, or know nothing, about the sector.
• 10% of respondents knew, to within 10 percentage points, the actual amount of land
that is farmed nationally.
• Farming takes up about 75% of available land in the UK
75% of respondents said it played an important role in protecting the environment
Can we Reconnect
John Ikerd
University of Missouri
Most consumers, particularly younger consumers, have no sense of where their food actually comes from.
Farming is just like any other manufacturing process that turns raw materials into finished products. But,
there is no sense of connectedness between the people who eat and farmers who tend the soil to bring forth
their food.
To reconnect people with agriculture we have to understand a
cause:
“Our economic system has evolved over the past two-hundred years to accommodate
industrializing production and distribution processes. Again, it is no coincidence that
competitive capitalism emerged as the dominant economic model during the
industrial revolution.”
Can we Reconnect
“If the dominant trends of the past two hundred years were to
continue, there would be little hope for reconnecting people”
The theory of universal cycles implies that trends never continue forever.
The sustainable
agriculture movement
• Are people losing
confidence in the
industrial, free-market
economy?
• Ecological soundness,
economic viability, and
social responsibility will
bring back an appreciation
for traditional agriculture
Sources
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https://suite.io/valerie-prax/3fb622m
https://suite.io/valerie-prax/3fb622m
http://www.fb.org/index.php?fuseaction=newsroom.fastfacts
http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/PamMack/lec122
sts/hobsbawm5.html
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/NAF4-Reconnecting.htm
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Oklahoma%20Farming%20wit
h%20Grass%20-%20Status%20%20Trends.htm
http://www.agmrc.org/business_development/getting_prepared/valuea
dded_agriculture/articles/
http://agpolicy.org/weekpdf/074.pdf
http://www.agday.org/education/careers.php
http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Full_Report/Volume
_1,_Chapter_1_US/st99_1_060_060.pdf
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/farming-loved-butmisunderstood-survey-shows