The state of agriculture in North America has made it to the pages ofTimemagazine, which recently described farming as the best job of the 21st century.
I’ve made it through more than four decades of living on the Prairies and I have never, ever heard such a thing applied to farming in the economic, as opposed to the lifestyle, sense.
People even want to invest in farmland through mutual funds and other fancier options. Suddenly, farming is not just profitable, but kind of sexy.
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That appeal is even trickling down to the next generation. In last week’s Western Producer,Kevin Hursh wrote about lecturing to an ag policy class at the University of Saskatchewan. When he asked how many of the students planned to return to the family farm, even Hursh, who has noted that young people are getting more interested in farming, was amazed when half the hands went up.
Also in last week’s edition, we reported on Farm Credit Canada’s recent survey of farmers and consumers, in which FCC asked respondents if they would encourage friends or family to get into agriculture.
Eighty percent of the producers said they would. What would they have said 20 years ago? Ten years ago?
It was interesting to see the divergent opinions of consumers and producers in the survey results. Everyone more or less agreed that farming could be described as weather-dependent (no kidding) but only 16 percent of producers described agriculture as struggling as compared to 40 percent of consumers. That’s quite a statistically significant disconnect.
On the other hand, 25 percent of producers said their industry was essential, while 39 percent of consumers said it was.
That’s interesting, too. I’m here to tell the other 75 percent of producer respondents that farming isn’t just essential but is increasingly seen to be so.
Otherwise, why would farming, and its prospects, be making headlines in publications likeTime?Every conference I attend or speech I hear focuses on the point that there are more people in more countries who need to be fed. Those numbers keep rising. It has become something of a mantra to talk about population growth and farming’s role in feeding the world.
Maybe it’s not next-year country any more. Or maybe, as the Saskatchewan prudence comes out in me, we’ll find out next year.
