What is farming going to look like in 2020? Jan Johnson, founder of Millennium Research Inc., surveyed the American picture for a report last week to the National Agri-Marketing Association convention in Dallas.
As the United States goes, so goes Canada a few years later, so we may be able to take a lesson or two from her predictions.
Johnson sees three primary types of agricultural producers operating 13 years hence: commercial; recreational; and convictional.
Commercial producers will be those running the 20,000 to 25,000 large farming operations remaining in the U.S. They’ll each be farming more than 5,000 acres of crops that require large investment and high efficiency, Johnson said.
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These operations will each have two to five decision makers who are likely related by blood or marriage. They will be younger than the average 2007 farmer, in their late 30s to early 50s. They will be business oriented, entrepreneurial and will fully understand the value of marketing.
Most will be located in the Midwest, home of the current biofuel boom that Johnson thinks will expand into wider industrial uses for crops.
Recreational farmers, as Johnson terms them, are those who love to farm but lack the resources to make a living from it. They have low-asset production systems such as hay production or small cattle operations. Recreational farmers will mostly live near urban centres where they can commute to day jobs.
The third group in Johnson’s triumvirate is convictional farmers, defined as those who believe in a particular cause and farm accordingly.
Among them are organic and fresh market growers, free-range chicken and beef producers and those who produce so-called artisan foods. Johnson sees this group congregating mainly on the U.S. coasts and near big cities.
Canadian analysts have presented similar findings about the future of agriculture here. And as you read through the categories, you can probably think of a few people who fit in each camp and a few who straddle two or three.
There was one jaw-dropper in Johnson’s presentation: her estimate of farmland loss to other development. She said the U.S. loses two acres of farmland per minute. That works out to 2,880 acres per day or 1,642.5 sections per year.
By 2020, that’s a loss of 21,346 sections, or 13.6 million acres.
Is Canada’s rate similar? It’s doubtful, but without knowing Johnson’s methodology, one can’t draw an accurate parallel.
