Profits And The Farmer: A Matter Of Perception

I don’t know about you, but I am quite weary of the cannon fodder being blasted into the Heartland over “increased farm profits.” My Google News Alert for agriculture keeps sending me stories about wild farmer profits .. well, I should clarify that. The stories are often balanced once you get to the end, but more often than not they lead with, “We pay more while they get rich,” the “they” being agribusiness, with farmers first in line. The link here is just one example … I think I received this story about 8 times from different media outlets.

The problem I have is that my friends here in the big city where I live don’t really understand anything about farming today, and don’t understand the tremendous reinvestment that must go back into farming operations to make them run efficiently and profitably. I was over a friend’s house for dinner and laid out the the technology of real-time kinematic GPS systems — how they work and what they do — and he literally sat in stunned silence. I’m still not sure he believed me, but clearly he had no idea how far farming has come.

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A part of our mission here at PrecisionAg is to tell that story, and other stories of technology use in ag, as much as possible. Not just because it’s cool, but because of the real benefits it brings to the farm, and to us as consumers of food. I’d encourage you all to share your success stories and let Americans know what’s really going on in rural America. Profits mean investment in new technology, which leads to efficiency and benefits for all, just like any industry. If folks understand that feeding a growing world is not magic, that it takes investment and hard work by a progressive population of growers, we may not be needing to defend ourselves as an industry quite as often.

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