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 GrowthWorld Population: Doubling TimeThe 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.

Remember there are 2.2 million farms in the U.S. : Fewer farms are responsible for the larger portion of agricultural sales

Constructed by Lynsey Such

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 PolicyDaryll 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 productionFarmers 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.

USDA: Selected Farm Characteristics by Race of Principal OperatorFarms and Land in Farms

American Indian or Alaskan Native

Asian Black or African American

Farms (number) 37,851 13,669 33,371 2,109,303Land in farms (acreage) 50,859,898 1,453,328 3,645,289 914,527,657

Operators Reporting One Race All Principal Operators

Operators from 84,891 farms consider themselves to be of a different race

Career Shifts

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

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.”

John Ikerd University of Missouri

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

• 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/lec122sts/hobsbawm5.html

• http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/NAF4-Reconnecting.htm• http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Oklahoma%20Farming%20with

%20Grass%20-%20Status%20%20Trends.htm• http://www.agmrc.org/business_development/getting_prepared/valueadd

ed_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-but-misunderstood-survey-shows