U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

SPECIAL EDITION

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

AGRICULTURE

FREE 2017 EDITION

POLICY CHANGES How a new presidency affects farmers

COLLEGE PROGRAMS Wide variety of degrees offered

SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES Harvesting crops and protecting the planet

Farming & Food Industries’ growing needs

CAREER PATHS Unique professions take root

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

AGRICULTURE SPECIAL EDITION

CONTENTS

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ROBOT WORKERS Automated equipment may ease labor shortage

BLUE RIVER TECHNOLOGY INC.

FEATURES 24

CAREFUL FARMING Agriculture remains a risky job

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SUSTAINABLE FUTURE New techniques help farmers preserve land

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TRACTOR SUPPLY Century-old company caters to all farmers

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This is a product of

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Jeanette Barrett-Stokes jbstokes@usatoday.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Jerald Council jcouncil@usatoday.com MANAGING EDITOR

Michelle Washington mjwashington@usatoday.com EDITORS

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CLOCKWISE: PROVIDED BY ERIN EHNLE BROWN; USDA; NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICES

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50 58 62

Antoinette D’Addario Rosalie Haizlett CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

THE NEW WHITE HOUSE

HEALTHIER EATING

Government helps consumers implement nutrition rules FOOD DESERTS

Bringing quality groceries to neighborhoods with voids

ON THE FARM

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INTERNS

WAITING FOR PERDUE

Confirmation process slow for USDA secretary nominee

Some policies yet to be determined under Trump

ALL EARS

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FIELD CROPS

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Contract farmers battle for change LIVESTOCK

Infographics on poultry and eggs, dairy, beef, pork

ADVERTISING VP, ADVERTISING

BUSINESS AND EDUCATION

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CHICKEN RULES

Matt Alderton, Brian Barth, Mary Helen Berg, Hollie Deese, Adam Hadhazy, Gina Harkins, Diana Lambdin Meyer, Adam Stone

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Corn growers await possible benefits under new president

Infographics on corn, soy, wheat, produce

DESIGNERS

Miranda Pellicano Gina Toole Saunders Lisa M. Zilka

POLICY

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Patricia Kime Elizabeth Neus Sara Schwartz Tracy L. Scott Debbie Williams

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Patrick Burke | (703) 854-5914 pburke@usatoday.com

MERGER MANIA

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR

Justine Madden | (703) 854-5444 jmadden@usatoday.com

Six major agriculture companies will soon be three AGRIBANKING

FINANCE Billing Coordinator

How farmers obtain funding in a tight market

Julie Marco

HELPING RURAL AMERICA

ISSN#0734-7456

USDA pays for tough-to-do projects

A USA TODAY publication, Gannett Co. Inc.

COLLEGE CLASSES

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Students find innovative ways to approach agriculture COOL JOBS

A farm photographer, a crop duster and a matchmaker OFF THE FARM

A look at the USDA’s Forest Service

ON THE COVER A tractor cultivates a field in spring. Photo by Getty Images.

USA TODAY, its logo and associated graphics are the trademarks of Gannett Co. Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Copyright 2017, USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. Editorial and publication headquarters are at 7950 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, VA 22108, and at 703-854-3400.

For accuracy questions, call or send an email to accuracy@usatoday.com

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POLICY

BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

HELP WANTED: AGRICULTURE SECRETARY

USDA post remains open while nominee awaits confirmation

By Mary Clare Jalonick

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RESIDENT DONALD TRUMP PICKED former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue to be his agriculture secretary in January, the final Cabinet member to be selected — and nearly two months into Trump’s term, Perdue may also be one of the last to be confirmed.

The administration gave the Senate the paperwork needed for Perdue’s nomination on March 9, nearly seven weeks after his selection. The Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee must have the

paperwork — including ethics forms and an FBI background check, which a spokeswoman for Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the panel’s top Democrat, said were still missing — before Sen. Pat Roberts, the chairman, can schedule a hearing.

The delay frustrated farm-state senators, who represent many of the core voters responsible for helping elect Trump.

“We need a champion for agriculture,” said Roberts, R-Kansas, on March 1 when asked about Perdue’s information. “We need him on board.”

Roberts predicted, however, that Perdue

would be confirmed quickly once the Senate Capitol Hill. Farm-state senators have mostly can get started on the nomination. praised his nomination, including Heitkamp, The only other Cabinet position still who said she would support him. unfilled as of March is that of labor secrePerdue, 70, is a farmer’s son who would tary. Nominee Alexander Acosta — chosen be the first Southerner in the post in more Feb. 16 after the withdrawal of the original than two decades. He built businesses in nominee, Andrew Puzder — was scheduled grain trading and trucking before becoming for a confirmation hearing March 22. the first Republican governor of Georgia The delay in Perdue’s confirmation came since Reconstruction. After his governorship, as some farm-state lawmakers questioned he co-founded a company called Perdue whether Trump was paying enough attenPartners that helped U.S. companies export tion to rural areas, which overwhelmingly goods including agricultural products. voted for him.

Perdue, from the small community of Trump’s 2018 budget blueprint, released Bonaire in rural central Georgia, is not on March 16, asked for $17.9 billion in related to or affiliated with the food funding for USDA, a 21 percent decrease of company Perdue or the poultry producer $4.7 billion from the 2017 budget.

Perdue Farms.

And after Trump’s address to Congress “From growing up on a farm to being on Feb. 28, Democratic Sens. Heidi governor of a big agriculture state, he has Heitkamp of North Dakota and Jon Tester spent his whole life understanding and of Montana both noted that the president solving the challenges our farmers face, and didn’t specifically talk he is going to deliver big about agriculture in his results for all Americans hourlong speech. who earn their living off “There wasn’t a the land,” Trump said in a The delay in mention of rural America, statement. confirming Sonny a farm bill or agriculture Perdue, in a statement workers, and these should released by Trump’s Perdue frustrates be focuses for any leader transition team, said farm-state of our country,” Heitkamp he began as “a simple said, noting that former Georgia farm boy,” and senators, who President Barack Obama he pledged to “champion represent many often omitted farm the concerns of American country in his speeches agriculture and work Trump voters. to Congress as well. “You tirelessly to solve the wonder why people in issues facing our farm rural America feel left families.” out and feel disenfranchised? Because they Perdue began his political career as a never hear anything about them.”

Democrat in the Georgia Legislature in the Tester said lawmakers need to keep rural 1990s. After switching his allegiance to the issues “front and center” for Trump, who is Republican Party, he was elected governor from New York City. “The tendency is to go in 2002. The victory over an incumbent where you know, and I’m not sure he knows Democrat completed Georgia’s shift to a rural America very well, so it’s just an solidly Republican state. opportunity to remind him that you’ve got Perdue focused on finding ways to save to pay attention,” he said. money while improving customer service by Agriculture secretaries are often from state agencies. He often referred to himself the Midwest, where corn and soybeans as Georgia’s CEO. dominate the markets. U.S. farm policy has Perdue, re-elected in 2006, is a devout long been favorable to those crops, and Southern Baptist who found a place for congressional battles over massive farm bills faith in his administration. In 2007, when every five years often divide along regional a withering drought gripped Georgia and lines. Southerners have pushed for subsidy other states, he held a rally in front of the programs that are more favorable to rice state Capitol to pray for rain. and cotton, which can be more expensive Under Perdue’s watch, Georgia adopted to grow. tough food-safety regulations after a deadly The last three agriculture secretaries were U.S. salmonella outbreak was traced to from Iowa, North Dakota and Nebraska.

Georgia-made peanut butter. He moved Trump began picking department heads the state office that issues water permits in November, but he waited until Jan. for irrigation from Atlanta to south Georgia, 18 — two days before his inauguration — to closer to farmers. He also poured millions choose an agriculture secretary. At the time, of state dollars into Go Fish, a program that farm-state lawmakers and farm groups said aimed to lure bass fishing tournaments. they worried that the new pick would be Perdue, an Air Force veteran, already has at a disadvantage getting started. Obama’s family serving in Washington. A cousin, agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, was former Dollar General CEO David Perdue, confirmed on Obama’s inauguration day. was elected to the Senate in 2014.

In the weeks after he was chosen, Perdue held several meetings with senators on Jalonick writes for The Associated Press.

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POLICY Farmers who rely on workers from other countries, such as this Mexican field hand in California, fear that new immigration rules will worsen a labor shortage.

KNOWNS &

UNKNOWNS What will President Trump do for agriculture?

By Brian Barth

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GRICULTURE IS RARELY A major talking point in presidential campaigns, and the most recent election was no exception.

While President Donald Trump represents a clear change in political ideology from the Obama administration, how that will translate into new policy regarding agriculture remains to be seen: â–ś Trump is attempting to crack down on illegal immigration, but will he overhaul the H-2A agricultural guest-worker program to allow more legal workers to enter the country and relieve labor shortages? â–ś The multination Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement that could have benefited farmers is now off the table; will Trump act in other ways to protect the interests of agricultural exporters?

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RON SACHS /POOL/GETTY IMAGES

President Donald Trump displays the executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation trade treaty that could have benefited farmers.

▶ And the president has already taken steps to cut back on governmental regulation, including asking for a review of a controversial rule that affects farmers called the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. Will this result in the rolling back of other, similar environmental regulations?

Trump’s 2018 budget blueprint, released on March 16, may be an early indicator. It asked for $17.9 billion in funding for USDA, a 21 percent decrease of $4.7 billion from the 2017 budget. Only two other Cabinet departments — the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department — took larger hits.

The nomination of former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue as agriculture secretary could also offer some insight. Unlike Trump, Perdue is not seen as a disruptor in political circles; rather, he’s known as a traditional conservative politician.

Bob Young, chief economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, predicted that Perdue will likely agree with the president on rolling back environmental regulations that affect farmers but may counsel against executive actions that could diminish agricultural exports or spark a trade war.

But most important, said Young, is that Perdue, who was born into a farming family and has owned and operated a variety of agribusinesses (but is not related to the owners of Perdue Foods), “very much understands the ag sector. I think he is a very grounded guy and is going to have a very common-sense approach at the USDA.”

SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

It’s still unclear how immigration rules will affect a guest-worker program that permits temporary employment of foreign fieldworkers. This California farm hires Mexican workers.

While there has been a lack of clarity on Farmers Union and former North Dakota agriculture policy in the first weeks of the agriculture commissioner, describes the Trump presidency, there’s been no shortage current state of the H-2A agricultural temof speculation. Deborah Atwood, executive porary guest-worker program: “Virtually director of AGree, an organization launched every agricultural organization out there in 2011 by the not-for-profit Meridian recognizes the need for comprehensive Institute, a think tank that facilitates political immigration reform. We are very dependent consensus across the agriculture industry, on an undocumented workforce because convened a panel of experts in January to the immigration laws in place today do not discuss impending policy work well at all.” issues.

Currently, 53 “We had organic percent to 70 percent of “We don’t know farmers, mainstream fieldworkers are believed farmers, retailers, to be undocumented what will make nutritionists, anti-GMO immigrants, mostly from people, pro-GMO people Mexico. A 2014 study the cut in the next — but despite all the commissioned by the farm bill.” diverse interests, there Farm Bureau found that were a surprising number an “enforcement-only” of common concerns,” policy — the combination — Deborah Atwood, Atwood said. “When we of tighter border control executive director of AGree went around the table and deportations favored and asked people what

by Trump — could cut net keeps them up at night, farm revenues as much as the common refrain was not being able to 30 percent to 40 percent due to production find a legal workforce. That really helped losses and the higher cost of employing break the tension in the room. Whether native-born workers. In 2016, labor it was Walmart or DuPont or an organic shortages had left crops to rot in the field in farmer, they all said, ‘Oh, my gosh, we all at least 20 states, according to an informal have this issue.’ So I think it’s important to survey conducted by the Farm Bureau. note where the industry can come together How does all that square with Trump’s to make progress on the big policy debates.” immigration agenda? During the campaign, some of his agriculture advisers signaled that Trump was sensitive to the needs of IMMIGRATION AND LABOR agricultural employers and would step “A square peg in a round hole” is how gingerly in that regard.

Roger Johnson, president of the National

“We’re not going to do anything that will cripple (the) industry,” said Sam Clovis, Trump’s national chief policy adviser and one of his agriculture advisers, prior to the election.

Still, the reality is that the proposed border wall and the threat of mass deportation is almost sure to slow the immigrant flows that farm employers rely on, so exactly how the president will strike that balance is an open question.

TRADE AND TARIFFS

Nixing the TPP was not popular among most agriculture trade organizations, which saw the agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries, including the U.S., as a boon to the farm economy at a time of steep declines in revenue across the sector. The TPP would have reduced tariffs in nations where trade agreements already existed and opened up markets in countries that did not already have trade agreements with the U.S. But Young expects that some of the sweeping measures found in the TPP will be replaced incrementally through bilateral agreements with specific Asian countries.

Japan, for example, is very interested in American beef, he said, and there is no reason that the TPP should be seen as the only way to get more of it over there.

Young said he has not yet seen any signals from the new administration about how Trump’s “America First” vision of the economy will apply to specific export crops that help sustain many local jobs in rural

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POLICY America.

“So far we’ve seen a lot of noisy conversations about trade, but we haven’t seen a lot of conversations about trade promotion yet,” he said.

Implicit in those conversations, of course, is the notion of applying more business acumen to trade policy in order to “get a better deal,” as Trump has often said.

“So we’re hopeful,” said Young.

Atwood said no one in agriculture wants a trade war. But in her talks with constituents across the spectrum of agriculture, she has found interest in negotiation and in revisiting existing trade agreements.

“Things have changed since NAFTA was written 20-some years ago. If we are going to reopen it, what can food and agriculture benefit from?” she said. “What are the points that we would want to make improvements on? How do we get a better deal for key export crops, while being careful not to cause harm elsewhere? Those are the things we’re looking at.”

REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT

Trump campaigned on a pledge to roll back regulations that burden economic growth. Indeed, one of his first executive orders mandated that federal agencies repeal at least two existing regulations for each new one implemented, a move that may have profound implications for agriculture.

Scott Pruitt, the new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has a long record of opposing some environmental regulations that can limit how farmers use their land, including the controversial WOTUS rule, drafted to clarify how the EPA can enforce the Clean Water Act. WOTUS, first put forward by the Obama administration in 2015, is currently tied up in the courts and has yet to be implemented. It is opposed by most farm groups, including some that are known for environmental advocacy, said the NFU’s Johnson, placing his own organization in that camp.

The rule defines the scope of which bodies of waters are covered by the 1972 Clean Water Act — mostly “navigable” waters such as rivers and lakes. But it also includes some upstream areas that might feed into those waters, or are inside floodplains of those waters where water may pool during wet periods. Those opposed to the rule say this oversteps the bounds of the act, regulating land that is sometimes wet as though it were water, encompassing more than 90 percent of the nation’s landmass in the process. They say this endangers farmers who have no way of knowing what is and is not liable to be regulated under the rule and could be fined if they interpret it incorrectly; farmers may also find themselves required to apply for federal permits to use CO N T I N U E D

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

MELANIA TRUMP WILL KEEP THE OBAMA PRODUCE GARDEN Michelle Obama’s garden stays.

First lady Melania Trump said through a spokeswoman in February that she is committed to preserving gardens at the White House, including the bountiful one planted by her immediate predecessor.

“As a mother and as the first lady of this country, Mrs. Trump is committed to the preservation and continuation of the White House gardens, specifically First Lady’s Kitchen Garden

and the Rose Garden,” said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a senior adviser to Mrs. Trump, in a statement. The first lady and President Donald Trump have a 10-year-old son, Barron.

Michelle Obama planted the garden on the South Lawn in 2009 as one of her first big projects and as the foundation for her signature initiative, “Let’s Move.” She sought to reduce childhood obesity through the program by emphasizing good eating habits and exercise.

Several times a year during her tenure as first lady, Mrs. Obama ventured down to the garden to help with plantings and harvests.

The garden produced hundreds of pounds of fruit and vegetables yearly.

Some of it was used to feed the Obama family as well as guests attending White House events such as state dinners. Some of the sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, lettuces, herbs and other crops were given to neighborhood food kitchens.

Mrs. Obama referred to the 2,800-square-foot plot in 2016 as “my baby” and expressed hope for its continued presence at the White House. A month before Trump won the Nov. 8 election, she dedicated an expanded and improved garden with hopes of cementing it as her legacy.

She also announced $2.5 million in private donations to maintain and preserve the garden.

— The Associated Press

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“We’re not going to do anything that will cripple (the) industry.”

— Sam Clovis, President Trump’s national chief policy adviser and an agriculture adviser

fertilizer near ditches and streams on their property that may eventually flow into larger rivers.

“We felt that WOTUS went too far,” Johnson said. “Having said that, if it is rolled back, we’re going to be in the same place that we were before, which is lacking clarity from a farmer’s standpoint on how the Clean Water Act applies. So I think there is still going to have to be some sort of a fix.”

Beyond WOTUS, Johnson said it’s reasonable to expect a softening of food and agriculture rules across the board, including a number laid out in the twilight of the Obama administration that Trump has already suspended, pending further review. The trick will be for federal agencies to balance the regulatory rollback with the perennial needs of ensuring a safe food supply, protecting the environment and supporting the rights of both consumers and producers.

“We expect more of a free hand given to business,” said Johnson. “But no one wants to see things like food safety standards getting compromised along the way.”

FUNDING AND SUBSIDIES

GETTY IMAGES

Temporary bodies of water, such as this vernal pool in Connecticut, may be subject to a controversial clean-water rule called WOTUS that President Trump wants to revisit, to the delight of farmers.

Hand-in-hand with a softening regulatory environment, agriculture policy experts also predict that budget cutbacks are coming to the USDA, which may affect a variety of programs that both farmers and consumers have come to depend on, including crop subsidies, conservation programs and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Other agencies, including the EPA, have already seen proposals for such cuts.

“We don’t know what will make the cut in the next farm bill,” said Atwood.

“But my sense is the pain will be applied across the board.”

What this boils down to, she said, is doing more with less. With that premise in mind, her hope is that Perdue, once he’s confirmed, puts on his political hat and makes nitty-gritty recommendations about what to include in the upcoming 2018 farm bill.

“I did a straw poll of about 100 people at one of our meetings recently,” she said, “and the consensus was he should

put out a policy book to give guidance to Congress on what a workable farm bill should include, just like (President Bill Clinton’s USDA secretary) Dan Glickman did.”

THE FARM ECONOMY

Trump campaigned on a message to address working Americans’ economic concerns, which are arguably more acute among farmers right now than almost any other group. He’s paid attention to farmers in the past; in 1986, in the midst of a national farm crisis in which thousands of farmers across the country lost their land to foreclosure, Trump gave $20,000 to the widow of a Georgia farmer to help pay her mortgage and keep the farm in the family.

Given that net farm income in 2017 is projected to be 50 percent below 2013 levels, economic anxiety in rural areas is again reaching a peak. What might that portend in terms of Trump administration policy? That’s anyone’s best guess at this point, but if the economic woes in the agriculture sector deepen further, the president may have to offer some sort of relief if he intends to keep his campaign promises.

Of course, commodity crop payments are designed for that purpose, said Johnson. What’s unusual right now, he said, is that revenues have tanked in agriculture across the board, not just in a few markets. That puts a strain on the funds allocated by Congress for relief payments — even more so if the budget is cut, as is expected.

“Historically, crops and livestock prices are countercyclical, but they are all in a tough spot right now,” he said.

Johnson, an economist by training, makes the case that the new administration may be forced to tread lightly in that regard to not undermine the already-weak farm economy.

“We don’t know yet how much of a crisis the current downturn will become, but it’s important to realize that the agricultural economy operates differently than the rest of the economy in that there is no reliable self-regulating mechanism to reduce surpluses,” he said. “That has always been the rationale for why we need the commodity programs, and I don’t think that is going to change.”

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FOOD Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe serves lunch to Richmond school students.

State and federal agencies are doing what they can to ensure students get healthy meals.

GUIDING GOOD HEALTH

LANCE CHEUNG/USDA

How new online tools can help Americans kick unhealthy habits

By Gina Harkins

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HE COUNTRY’S TOP HEALTH experts want Americans to use their electronic devices for more than checking Facebook and playing Candy Crush.

About a year after releasing a fresh set of nutrition guidelines, the federal departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services are equipping Americans with new tools to improve their diets.

Officials have created new mobilefriendly nutrition trackers, online tip sheets for doctors and web-based school meal application programs. The goal is to give

everyone access to good nutrition options — and that means materials need to be digital.

“We really need to meet (people) where they are,” said Jackie Haven, acting executive director for the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. “What we know right now is that everyone is always on their phone and on their devices, so we want to make that information accessible.”

Getting Americans to improve their diets is a top priority for people like Haven. Soaring obesity rates can cause health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes.

“What is kind of startling is that half of all Americans — 170 million people — have one

or more preventable chronic diseases where diet can play a role,” Haven said. “So we really take our mission very seriously and do our best to bring information to consumers.”

The government releases new dietary guidelines every five years, with the latest round running through 2020. Each update is more scientifically rigorous than the last, said Kellie Casavale, a nutrition adviser with HHS’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Experts are now studying best practices for infants, toddlers and pregnant women for the next round of updates, she said.

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FOOD big health benefits, like packing a lunch instead of eating out.

The guides also provide tips for getting past common barriers to healthy eating.

Patients might argue that they can’t afford healthy food items or say they don’t have time to cook. Doctors should show empathy and celebrate small successes that will help build patients’ buy-in.

The toolkits can keep doctors informed about the latest dietary guidelines — many aren’t expert in the area — especially as the guidelines change, Casavale said.

The SuperTracker can also serve as a reporting tool so health care professionals can see what their clients are eating, said Brooke Hardison, director of nutrition marketing and communications in the USDA’s nutrition policy office.

“We have a pretty robust reporting system,” she said, “so a clinician can recommend SuperTracker and then the user can take the reports and bring them back as a conversation starter with their physician or nutritionist.”

STREAMLINING THE PROCESS

USDA

Nutrition apps such as the USDA’s SuperTracker, below, help consumers track what they eat, making sure they get the right amount of nutritious foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables, every day.

“These populations have specific health needs that are different from the populations currently covered by the guidelines,” Casavale said.

Meanwhile, officials are urging Americans to make use of new tools that can help them fill their plates with healthier foods.

GOING MOBILE

When it comes to getting healthy, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

“Everyone has their own way of healthy eating, their own lifestyle and situations,” Haven said. “That’s really how we base what we’ve been doing.”

The USDA has mobile-friendly tools like its SuperTracker (supertracker.usda. gov) and Choose MyPlate (choosemyplate. gov) websites to help users get nutrition recommendations that are right for them.

SuperTracker’s My Plan tool, for example, uses a person’s height, weight, age, gender and activity level to determine their suggested calorie intakes by food group.

“We heard from someone who lost 75 pounds last year with help of the SuperTracker,” Haven said. “Others have been able to reduce their (body mass index) or lower their blood pressure so they don’t need their medications anymore.”

Research shows that most Americans care about the healthfulness of their food, Haven said. Nutrition tools help people see when they’re hitting — or missing — the mark.

It’s important to provide tools that give patients or clients an objective look at their daily habits, said Angela Lemond, a

registered dietitian nutritionist and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

“It really provides a bird’s-eye view of a day, a week and even a month’s worth of food and activity patterns to identify things to slowly change for the better,” she said.

Since the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines were released in January 2016, Haven said they’ve gotten more than 210 million views online. SuperTracker has seen more than 13 million user sessions during that same period, she said.

The government’s online tools have prompted outside organizations to build on them, too. The ShopWell smartphone app (shopwell.com) uses the USDA and HHS dietary information to help shoppers make healthier food choices when they hit the grocery store by scoring foods based on their nutrition values. The Fresh Baby website (freshbaby.com), which offers recipes and nutrition tips to prevent childhood obesity, also uses information from Choose MyPlate in its education materials.

CONVERSATION STARTERS

Discussions about healthy eating habits between patients and health care professionals can sometimes be awkward. When

people aren’t ready to make a change, they don’t always comprehend how to apply a practitioner’s advice, Lemond said.

Doctors, nurses and dietitians must guide their patients or clients into small dietary changes that fit their lifestyle. “Otherwise, it does not translate,” Lemond said.

To help bridge the gap, HHS is encouraging doctors to use new online toolkits that will help them start conversations with their patients about nutrition (health.gov/dietaryguidelines).

“Health professionals are important partners in ... helping patients to understand the connections between health and nutrition and physical activity,” Casavale said. “Health professionals can initiate discussions, provide referrals to registered dietitians and nutrition educators and encourage patients to follow up in seeking nutrition counseling.”

New materials for doctors encourage them to ask their patients what kinds of groceries they typically buy — maybe they’re quick to reach for sugary drinks when they’re thirsty — and how they might make healthier versions of their favorite dinner recipes. They’re also encouraged to suggest ways their patients can make small shifts in their daily routines that can have

Building good nutrition habits during childhood is important, and school breakfast and lunch programs help make that possible for kids in all income brackets. Now a new online application designed by the USDA may simplify the process for students in low-income families.

The new web-based online model for free and reduced-price school meals guides families through the application process.

The app walks parents and guardians through the information they’ll need when applying for the school meal program.

They’re prompted to answer questions about the students who will receive the meals, the programs that make them eligible and household contact information.

School districts can host the online application on their websites by downloading the free, open-source code for the program from the USDA website (fns.usda. gov/school-meals/web-based-prototypeapplication). It includes security features to protect families’ privacy and can help local school districts get accurate reporting from households that apply for school meal benefits, according to USDA officials.

The customizable app can help streamline the application process for the more than 100,000 schools across the country that participate in the National School Lunch Program. A simpler electronic application could help prevent errors that deny eligible children access to meals.

Vital growth occurs during school-age years, Lemond said. Sometimes, the meals students get from school provide their only access to the nutrients they need to learn and grow.

“For some low-income children, the food they get at school is the only food they get all day long,” Lemond said.

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FOOD

CONVENIENT STORES Bringing healthy food to underserved areas

The Clark Park Farmers Market in Philadelphia takes part in a program that encourages SNAP users to shop for healthy foods.

ALBERT YEE FOR THE FOOD TRUST

By Mary Helen Berg

“W

OW.” NOTHING MORE — just, “Wow.” That’s what the Rev. Reginald Flynn of Flint, Mich., imagines shoppers will say when they walk into a brand-new 27,000-square-foot neighborhood grocery store and see shelves brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables.

The North Flint Food Market, scheduled to break ground in 2018,

is a key project of the North Flint Reinvestment Corporation, Flynn’s ambitious effort to create local jobs and rebuild a corner of his hometown.

The store would be an oasis in a “food desert,” an area defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a low-income region where residents live a mile or more from a supermarket.

After two Kroger stores and a Meijer supermarket shut their doors within eight months, many Flint residents found themselves in such a desert, at least five to 10 miles from a store that sells fresh fruit, vegetables and meat

with little to no access to healthy food, said Flynn, founder and president of the North Flint Reinvestment Corporation.

More than 41 percent of Flint residents live in poverty and recently, access to nutritious food became even more critical. In 2015, residents learned that toxic levels of lead were found in the city’s drinking water; the city had already been issuing boil-water notices for months.

The amount of lead finally fell below federal limits in January, but residents are still being asked to drink filtered water. Healthy food can help combat

19+ MILLION

AMERICANS ARE LIVING IN FOOD DESERTS

lead; fruits, vegetables and other foods rich in iron, calcium and vitamin C help clear it from the body.

“The research is showing that access to healthy foods and proper nutrition is CO N T I N U E D

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FOOD The Rev. Reginald Flynn is among those trying to restore healthy shopping to Flint, Mich. The city bus system has special routes that take people to grocery stores.

SALWAN GEORGES/ DETROIT FREE PRESS

one of the things that helps mitigate the effects of lead which our families have been exposed to,” said Flynn, pastor to 300 congregants at Foss Avenue Baptist Church in Flint. “It’s important for them that we are successful.”

At least 19 million Americans live in food deserts at least a mile from a grocery store in urban areas and 10 miles from a store in rural regions, according to USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS). Congress mandated the study of food deserts, also known as low-income, low-supermarket-access census tracts, as part of the 2008 Farm Bill, said Shelly Ver Ploeg, an ERS economist.

But it takes more than adding shiny new markets in these neighborhoods to address this thorny problem, Ver Ploeg said. In fact, the number of supermarkets in the U.S. actually increased between 2010 and 2015. But the number of lowincome households and those without cars also increased — meaning healthy food often was still out of reach for many.

“People’s choice of where to shop and what to purchase is complicated, and the proximity of stores is one factor, but there are lots of other factors,” such as food and fuel prices, education, income level and access to transportation, Ver Ploeg said.

Across the U.S., government programs and nonprofit efforts such as Flynn’s are trying to eradicate food deserts, where

people are more likely to buy meals at fast food restaurants and convenience stores than from fully stocked grocery stores.

The federal government has spent nearly $500 million since 2011 to expand food access, according to the USDA. Recent efforts span from local corner stores to cyberspace.

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service has launched a two-year pilot program that allows participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly referred to as the food stamp program) to order groceries online. Seven retailers, including Amazon, FreshDirect, Safeway and ShopRite, have signed on to supply groceries in seven states beginning this August.

To improve access to healthy foods at brick-and-mortar stores, the USDA released the Healthy Corner Stores Guide in 2016. The guide provides strategies and resources for communities that want healthier options for small retailers.

In addition, stores that accept SNAP will be required to offer a broader variety of nutritious foods beginning in May 2017, according to new USDA rules. Previously, SNAP-authorized stores were required to stock a minimum of 12 staples such as vegetables, fruits, dairy products, meats and bread. The rule change now requires a minimum of 84 different staple foods.

That rule could backfire, discouraging

The number of supermarkets in the U.S. increased between 2010 and 2015 — but so did the number of low-income households and those without cars. retailers from taking part in SNAP in cities like Baltimore, where most people live within a few blocks of a corner store, said Joel Gittelsohn, professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Retailers who find the rule change too onerous could drop SNAP, making healthy food even less accessible in food deserts. And, Gittelson added, if retailers who accept SNAP are found not to be in compliance with the new requirements they could lose their ability to accept SNAP, and that could likely put many of them out of business.

But, he added, making improvements to convenient and ubiquitous corner stores could increase food access more

effectively than adding new supermarkets.

“We have to think about using a variety of different approaches. No single approach is going to be sufficient,” he said.

Farmers markets are another way to bring fresh produce to underserved communities; USDA provides incentives for both farmers and shoppers. More than 7,000 farmers and markets now participate in SNAP — nine times the number that participated in 2008.

In Philadelphia, for example, The Food Trust, a local nonprofit focused on healthy food access, received $500,000 from the USDA Food Insecurity Nutrition program Incentive to expand its farmers market coupon program.

The Philly Food Bucks initiative encourages SNAP users to shop at one of 25 farmers markets by awarding consumers $2 in fresh produce coupons for every $5 they spend.

Sales at the farmers markets have soared as a result, increasing by more than 375 percent, according to The Food a Trust.

T Back in Flint, Flynn needs to raise $7 million from private and public sources for his community co-op grocery store, which will feature an onsite health clinic and pharmacy. He plans to apply for a grant through the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), a $400 million plan launched in 2010 through the departments of Agriculture, Treasury and Health and Human Services.

USDA programs like SNAP and the HFFI have been “an incredible success,” helping to shrink food deserts, said John Weidman, deputy executive director of The Food Trust. “We think they’re really critical to getting at this difficult problem of having areas where it’s just hard to get healthy food on the table for your family.”

So far, it’s unclear whether funding for these programs will continue at current levels or how they’ll be viewed by the Trump administration, Weidman said.

But Jessica Shahin, acting administrator at the Food and Nutrition Service, reiterated her agency’s commitment to reduce hunger and address the problem of food deserts.

“The Food and Nutrition Service will continue working tirelessly to fight hunger and bring healthier options to food deserts around the country,” Shahin said in an email. “Whether for infants and mothers, schoolchildren or the elderly, FNS’ programs will continue to serve as America’s nutritional safety net, promoting nutrition among all those in need.”

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Farming is safer, but remains a deadly livelihood

By James Fisher

B

While farmers take care to work safely in a profession that is one of the most dangerous in the U.S., the size and complexity of their equipment can still put them at risk.

LANCE CHEUNG/USDA

ILL BROWN, A FULL-TIME extension agent for the University of Delaware who also ran a chicken farm in Maryland, knew his way around a chicken house. He’d done maintenance work on feed motors — lightly powered motors that ration out feed — countless times.

But in April 2016, Brown went to touch a feed motor on his farm, not knowing a wire had come loose and energized the motor housing.

The shock was enough to kill him.

Brown’s death rattled farmers and growers in Delaware and Maryland. Brown wasn’t just any farmer; his full-time job involved coaching and training poultry growers on how to raise healthy birds while keeping themselves out of harm’s way. For 21 years before coming to the University of Delaware (UD), he’d worked for Perdue Farms as a flock supervisor, ventilation specialist and hatchery manager.

Brown’s fatal accident was a reminder of a truth local farmers and his colleagues already knew: Farming is dangerous work, more dangerous than most people realize.

As a profession, it has stubbornly resisted some of the progress toward ever-increasing degrees of safety that other occupations have enjoyed.

Data on workplace injuries and deaths show farming remains riskier than police work or construction, and only a few other professions, such as logging and longdistance trucking, are more prone to fatal accidents.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2012 Census of Agriculture, released in 2014, counts 3.2 million farmers (2.1 million of them principal operators) working 2.1 million farms. The average age of a U.S. farmer has been rising, from 53 in 1992 to 58 in 2012.

“You get kind of used to living there. You get very relaxed. And sometimes you might take a chance if you’re not careful,” said Stephen Collier, a research manager at UD’s Carvel Research & Education Center. His office is across from the room where Brown worked.

“You get a little pressed for time, and you get used to taking risks ... I thought the world of that man (Brown). I really did.

Him passing was a tragic accident.” Collier paused, then said: “It could have been prevented.”

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The incident illustrates what many especially during critical windows for farmers say they think about every day: The planting and harvesting. bucolic American farm is not an especially “Making a cognizant choice to improve safe place to earn a living. safety — if (farmers) see that as a means “We see it as one of our last frontiers, to see them safe and allow them to be where people are still independent and more efficient, they’re willing to make can still make their own choices,” said that investment,” said Isaacs. “The biggest William Field, a professor of agricultural and challenge is trying to couple that with the biological engineering at Purdue University long hours. Fatigue is probably the biggest who has studied farm safety. “If you choose contributor to what’s going on. ... You can lay to drive a tractor without rollover protective out the best-laid plan for what you want to structures, you don’t need to wear a hard accomplish for the week, but then Mother hat. Or you can smoke or ride a horse, and Nature throws a wrench in it, and then you do all kinds of things that, in the general have 16-hour or 20-hour days, sometimes day-to-day life of most of us, are perceived running through the night. Reaction as being risky. We accept that. That has time suffers. Because you’re dealing with made it difficult to do any kind of legislative mechanical equipment, it increases the risk change which would incorporate a more of an injury.” restrictive workplace.”

There’s no question that farming is safer Farms are littered with machinery and today than it was even in the recent past. equipment that, by virtue of the tasks they In 1980, before data analysis, computers have to do, are much less shielded by guards and GPS technology made some farm tasks or barriers than most of the tools you’d buy guided by silicon chips, 56 in every 100,000 at Home Depot: pulleys and gears on tracfarmers suffered a fatal injury in the field. tors that farmers maintain Today, that rate has been themselves; the ladders more than halved. they climb to the top of “Safety has dramatically “You get a 90-foot-tall grain bins; the improved,” said Charles motors on irrigation rigs, Schuster, an extension little pressed which run on 480 volts of agent at the University for time, and power; and the churning of Maryland’s College of ends of combines.

Agriculture and Natural you get used to A common piece of Resources. “But there’s taking risks.” farming equipment killed a lot of inherent danger Brown. A grounding wire in agriculture just by the — Stephen Collier, had come loose inside the nature of what it is. To University of Delaware housing of a feed motor, make a chainsaw totally Carvel Research & which drives a shaft that safe, it couldn’t do its job of Education Center assists in slowly and evenly cutting the wood.” distributing chicken feed.

The industry also has According to Mark Isaacs, seen some regulatory shifts director of the Carvel Center where Brown designed expressly for safety. New tractor worked, when Brown touched the feed standards mandate that larger models have motor, he unwittingly became the ground rollover protection systems designed to for its electric current. protect operators when tractors are driven “You know how many times I do what on inclines. But not every new tractor must Bill Brown did?” asked Jay Baxter, a farmer have the systems; models with less than 20 in the Georgetown, Del., area. “All the time. horsepower and low-profile tractors used in That’s what’s sad. It takes a freak thing like orchards are exempt. that to make you think.”

Of the 4.2 million tractors on U.S. farms, The rate of fatal injuries per 100,000 about half are equipped with the devices; full-time workers is the government’s but rollovers still account for at least half of standard yardstick for determining how the tractor-related deaths. risky an occupation is. There were 457 Farmers say their profession will never be fatal work injuries on U.S. farms in 2015, as low-risk as an office job, both because of according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. the nature of the work — outdoors, around For all workers, there were 3.4 fatal injuries machines at all hours — and because they for every 100,000 workers in 2015; but for will never have an unlimited budget and every 100,000 farm workers in the country unlimited time with which to methodically that year (including forestry and fishing remove risk. workers), there were 22.8 fatal accidents.

“Agriculture just tends to be slower in In terms of fatality rate, farming is the most adopting new practices, new technology,” dangerous profession there is, even though said Field. Still, he added, “to suggest we construction has more actual deaths. need an overwhelming national program to What makes it so dangerous? Farmers address this issue that would cost millions of chalk it up to the frequency with which bucks — most of that money never trickles they rely on heavy machinery; their need down to the farm.” to work in all kinds of weather; and fatigue, Isaacs said farmers can significantly which they say is a constant in their lives, reduce risk by not only learning how to

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MICHELE WALFRED/UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE

Bill Brown, right, an extension agent for the University of Delaware, explains safety rules during a ventilation test of a chicken house in 2011. Despite his expertise, Brown died in April at his farm after being electrocuted by a piece of equipment.

JASON MINTO/THE (WILMINGTON, DEL.) NEWS JOURNAL

Delaware farmer Jay Baxter, inside a silo used to store and dry corn, said the sweep auger at his feet is one of the most dangerous implements on any farm. The tool circles through the silo to push the corn out through a drain. carefully maintain and repair their own equipment, but by being willing to call in specialists when they decide a repair job is beyond their abilities. Poultry houses, for example, are tough environments in which to keep equipment running problem-free.

They’re inherently dusty, high-humidity areas, which can be tough on engines and moving parts. “(Farmers are) trying to do everything they can themselves to save money through

the production of their product. If I have to hire an electrician, if I have to hire a plumber, if I have to get somebody to run a feed line or something, that’s a cost of production. If they can do it themselves, that’s gonna save them money in their pocket,” Isaacs noted. “Associated with that, though, is knowing how to do it safely.

It’s a real fine line, recognizing what you’re qualified and knowledgeable to do and when you need to hire.”

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

PLANTING FUTURE FOR THE

Sustainable agriculture improves land, bottom lines and the planet

By Adam Hadhazy

T

IMES HAVE CHANGED AT Sano Farms.

A decade ago, in preparation for planting, as many as 28 heavy-duty tractors would plough the fields on the 4,000-acre farm in California’s

San Joaquin Valley.

Nowadays, farm manager Jesse Sanchez said, he needs just three medium-size tractors at most. Fuel use has dropped from 13 gallons per acre to just 3 gallons, saving money as well as labor costs, not to mention reducing atmospheric pollution.

Those examples are but a taste of the benefits seen at Sano Farms because it has adopted sustainable agriculture practices that offer gentler, more targeted means of nurturing the land’s fertility.

CO N T I N U E D

Two Virginia farmers check on their no-till crops. This practice disturbs the land as little as possible, keeping more nutrients in the soil.

BOB NICHOLS/USDA

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officer for the USDA’s Natural Drip irrigation has replaced Resources Conservation Service widespread and potentially (NRCS), which offers technical wasteful watering. Instead and financial assistance to of tilling, or overturning the farmers to improve their soil, Sanchez now goes with operations’ conservation and minimum-tillage practices, sustainability. disturbing the ground as little as possible. So-called cover crops STEPS FORWARD, are grown, too — not for harvest but to retain underground STEPS BACK nutrients. This reduces fertilizer Humans have practiced use, and helps keep weeds and agriculture for more than 10,000 pests at bay. years, facing the same challenges Meanwhile, the yields of Sano with each new millennium.

Farms’ tomatoes are up by more “You’ve got to take care than 10 percent, and the red of the bugs, take care of the fruits’ consistent quality now weeds, feed the plants, and routinely fetches higher prices. you’ve got to pay for it,” said “It’s a complete change,” said Bob Young, chief economist and Sanchez. “What we were doing deputy executive director of before was working everything public policy at the American conventional.

Farm Bureau (Now) we Federation, use less to the largest produce general farm more.” organization in “More with the U.S. less” must be Modern, the goal of conventional agriculturalists agriculture all over, has ably dealt according to with these researchers, challenges. It if humanity has produced is to continue bountiful food feeding itself through RON NICHOLS/USDA without mechanized Farmer Jesse Sanchez converting the tilling and shows off the healthy soil whole planet irrigation; the he uses to grow his tomainto farmland. inventions toes in California.

Already, an of artificial area the size pesticides, of South America is covered by herbicides and potent crop fields. And by midcentury, fertilizers; and genetically demand for food worldwide modified crops that resist could be up to twice the current drought and pest attacks. demand.

Yet some of these practices Helping farmers like have caused environmental Sanchez boost their yields damage along the way. From in economically viable and soil degradation and erosion environmentally friendly ways to waterway and groundwater is a key objective of the U.S. pollution, the toll exacted by Department of Agriculture, farming threatens its own along with its many partners continued success. in government, industry and Sustainable farming looks broader society. to counter that narrative, To these ends, the concept of with its practitioners availing sustainable agriculture has taken themselves of the latest knowroot in the last few decades. how in agriculture science.

While the practices are not one“The goal of these farmers size-fits-all and vary from farm is to leave the land in better shape for their kids than to farm, sustainable techniques it came to them and take can generally aid producers advantage of all this constant with crop cultivation in both the scientific and technological short and long terms. innovation,” said Miriam “Our mission is to help people help the land,” said Jimmy Bramblett, scientific integrity CO N T I N U E D

RON NICHOLS/NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICES

“The goal of these farmers is to leave the land in better shape for their kids than it came to them and take advantage of all this constant scientific and technological innovation.”

— Miriam Horn, Environmental Defense Fund

NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICES

Nebraska farmers Mike and Janet McDonald, top, use soil health management systems to improve the production capacity of their farm. At Front Field Farm in Georgia, above, flowers serve as both a product to sell and a lure for pollinators.

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Horn, who works for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and is the author of the 2016 book Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland.

FARMING AS CONSERVATION

JACK DYKINGA/USDA

Severe soil erosion, such as this seen in a wheat field near Washington State University, can be prevented or minimized with sustainable agricultural practices.

Young describes some of the innovations that have led to agriculture becoming more sustainable in recent decades.

For example, in the 1980s, many farmers, especially in the Midwest, began practicing contour farming with advice and funding from the USDA. The process involves building up or leaving in place natural, gently sloping terraces in fields to trap water, preventing it from leaching away soil and vital plant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

Low-tillage methods then came into vogue in the 1990s, followed by interest in cover crops. Besides locking in more water and nutrients, undisturbed soils sown with selected cover crops can reduce weed, insect and disease infestations.

These techniques stand in contrast to the “traditional way” of agriculture, “where you strip away all of the native fertility and then add it back through chemicals,” said Horn. The idea with sustainable agriculture “is that you can get nature to do the work for you in providing your fertilizer and pest control.”

In these ways, sustainable farmers act like conservationists, going with the grain — as it were — rather than against it and overhauling a landscape’s form and contents.

“It doesn’t pay me as a farmer to have the soil or the nutrients leave the field. That’s money lost,” said Young. “So there are lots of incentives for farmers to engage in conservation practices.”

Mike McDonald has chosen a path of conservation, even “regeneration” as he puts it, for the couple hundred acres he farms along with his wife in Palmyra, in southeastern Nebraska.

“I know it’s cliché,” he told the NRCS in a video, “but I’m trying to go back to the way it used to be in terms of Mother

300%

INCREASE IN U.S ORGANIC OPERATIONS SINCE 2002

Nature.”

McDonald has experimented with growing a variety of crops, including soybeans, corn, wheat and barley, as well as maintaining an orchard and bees. The diverse crop rotation, along with cover crops, cuts down on his herbicide use. A no-till approach is boosting his soil’s health.

In this agricultural endeavor, McDonald said in an interview, the “NRCS is critical.” Over the last seven years, grants from the NRCS’ Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Stewardship Program, plus a Conservation Innovation Grant from the NRCS Nebraska state office, have helped him establish a working farm as well as meet with dozens of other farmers, pooling their knowledge on sustainability best practices.

Motivated farmers like McDonald are exactly whom NRCS wants to reach about sustainability.

“We are a voluntary agency, meaning we work with the people who want to work with us,” said Bramblett. “We have field offices that have responsibilities for basically every county, which allows us to have those sort of one-on-one relationships with landowners all across the country.”

SUSTAINABILITY FROM THE GROUND UP

NRCS has worked with landowners since its creation within the USDA in 1935, originally as the Soil Conservation Service (Congress changed the name in 1994). The new agency’s initial role was CO N T I N U E D

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over 3 percent.

“We saw a big response,” said Sanchez. “Irrigation is more efficient and the crops look better.”

WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

8,600+

FARMERS MARKETS ARE NOW IN OPERATION ACROSS THE COUNTRY to combat the infamous Dust Bowl afflicting the heartland U.S. from Canada down to Texas.

Poor farming techniques, such as heavy tilling, set the stage for drought conditions and heavy winds to kick up blinding, vast dust storms. The soil erosion devastated regional agriculture and forced 3 million people to leave the Great Plains states.

Soil remains today at the core of NRCS-advocated approaches to sustainable farming. While past efforts have focused on the physical properties of soil, such as compaction, and chemistry, such as nutrients, the new focus is on soil biology.

A “smorgasbord of critters,” Bramblett said, inhabit the earth underfoot, including familiar earthworms and invisible microbes numbering in the billions in a single teaspoonful of soil. “We like to say the soil is alive,” he added.

Healthy soils chock-full of organic matter, including the life forms and decaying plant matter that accumulate courtesy of notillage, bind water and nutrients and slowly release them like a sponge, Bramblett said.

Increasing the amount of organic matter in the top 6 inches of soil across a single acre of land can increase its water storage potential by 27,000 gallons, according to the USDA, and offset $670 worth of fertilizer costs.

At Sano Farms, increasing organic matter content has been a key goal. “I used to have only like zero to half a percent of organic matter,” said Sanchez.

Going with cover crops and minimal tillage for several years has gotten the percentage well

Bramblett is pleased to hear these stories of how the agency is helping farmers. He hopes more will take heed: “On the timescale of getting everything to sustainable, it’s a work in progress.”

“These are practices that need to be mainstream,” said Suzy Friedman, senior director of agricultural sustainability at EDF. Friedman noted that sustainable farming “is still picking up the pace enormously” and can “work across small farms and big farms.”

In some ways, the rise of organic farming has paralleled the increased interest in sustainable farming. The former is now a $39 billion domestic industry, and the number of certified organic operations in the U.S. has skyrocketed 300 percent since 2002.

While organic farming has an emphasis on only using non-synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, in line with sustainable farming, its main method of weed-fighting, as Bramblett and Young pointed out, is conventional soil tillage. There is a lot of overlap between the two methodologies, “but there are some distinct differences,” said Bramblett.

One of the major overlaps between sustainable and organic farming is at the consumer end.

Demand for responsibly grown food that is safe, healthy, nutritious — and, of course, tasty — has propelled sales of locally grown food at farmers markets.

According to the USDA, more than 8,600 are now in operation in the country, representing a fourfold increase since the mid-1990s.

Ultimately, in working to feed the wider world, farmers realize that sustainability often translates to what they wish to put inside their own bodies.

“People want to know what we’re doing to our soil, what we put on it, what’s in our seeds,” said McDonald. “People want to know where our food is coming from. I do.”

Organic farmer John Vars puts gray plastic mulch on his strawberry fields to kill weeds without using pesticides and to use water more efficiently.

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AUTONOMOUS High-tech solutions help farmers bridge the growing labor gap

AGRICULTURE

By Matt Alderton

C

ALIFORNIA’S CENTRAL VALLEY IS full of life.

Because of its expansive footprint, fertile soil and Mediterranean climate, it’s so prolific that it grows more than half of all of the nation’s produce.

Alongside plenty, however, there is paucity, seen in the vast expanses of rotting crops that litter the fields — a salad of shriveled blackberries, withering grapes and expired peaches.

Although California has spent the last five years in the throes of epic drought, the cause for the waste isn’t only the scarcity of water — it’s the scarcity of labor.

“It’s not just a few cases here and there; it’s a significant amount of crops that are not harvested because there aren’t enough workers to pick them,” said Manoj Karkee, associate professor in Washington State University’s Center for Precision & Automated Agricultural Systems.

The problem isn’t limited to California. The Natural CO N T I N U E D

An automated robot called LettuceBot thinned the weeds from this lettuce field in Salinas, Calif.

BLUE RIVER TECHNOLOGY INC.

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Energid Technologies’ citrus harvester uses a grid of cameras to find oranges; the same arm holding the cameras has pickers to harvest fruit.

ENERGID TECHNOLOGIES

Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates that approximately 40 percent of the U.S. food supply goes uneaten, a growing cause of which it says is insufficient labor.

“For agriculture to remain competitive and sustainable, there’s a desire and a need to develop long-term solutions to the farm-labor problem,” Karkee said.

Which is why Karkee and other experts are betting on a promising, if unorthodox, solution: robots.

MECHANICAL WORKERS

Although they sound like characters in an Isaac Asimov story, robots that till fields, sow seeds and harvest crops are reality — and have been since 1959, when two scientists at the University of CaliforniaDavis introduced the UC-Blackwelder tomato harvester. The machine automated picking tomatoes for use in ketchup, tomato sauce and juice, and spawned the mechanized-agriculture movement. Today, mechanized tomato harvesters pick nearly all the tomatoes grown in the United States for use in processed foods.

Today, crops as diverse as almonds, sweet

cherries and wine grapes are mechanically harvested, to say nothing of commodity crops like wheat, corn, cotton and soy, the harvesting of which has been mechanized since the mid-20th century.

“A real success story is the shake-andcatch technology that’s used for tree nuts,” said J. Edward Taylor, professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC-Davis. “Nuts are no longer harvested by hand. Instead, farmers use machines that shake the dickens out of a tree to remove the nuts.”

Another success story is that of selfdriving tractors, which leverage GPS to till and plant without much human assistance.

“Self-driving tractors have been on fields for a decade or so now,” Karkee said. “They still have an operator sitting in the cab for safety and other reasons, but they can very precisely follow a certain path that you give them to follow.”

Such machines aren’t robots of the android sort, but they’re robotic just the same, leveraging computer programming, artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate complex tasks.

ENERGID TECHNOLOGIES

The automated citrus harvester, being tested in Florida, features a hydraulic arm that holds cameras for detecting fruit as well as a picking system that literally strikes the oranges from the trees. It takes just two or three seconds to harvest an orange using this equipment.

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AGROBOT

The harvesting of delicate berries such as strawberries and raspberries, generally picked one by one, has been the most difficult to convert to automated harvesting. Currently being tested, the Agrobot analyzes individual strawberries to see whether the fruit is ready to pick, then uses its robotic arm to harvest the berry with little damage.

As technology advances, so do the tasks — and crops — that can be automated. Take lettuce, for example. Blue River Technology of Sunnyvale, Calif., is developing LettuceBot, a “see-and-spray” robot that uses on-board cameras, high-speed processors, computer vision and precision sprayers to see young lettuce starts as well as weeds; as it traverses lettuce fields, it distinguishes between the two and selectively applies herbicides to only the weeds.

“There are a few reasons that’s really appealing,” noted Laura Lee, a research associate at Lux Research, which studies agricultural robotics. “It replaces labor, in the long run it will be cost-competitive and it also reduces significantly the amount of herbicide you need. So, it’s a win-win from an environmental as well as a cost-input perspective.”

In 2014, an interest in robotic solutions inspired lettuce grower Tanimura & Antle of Salinas, Calif., to acquire Plant Tape, an automated transplanting system that sows seeds for crops like romaine, broccoli, cauliflower, celery and onion into strips of biodegradable “tape” that are packed in plastic trays, germinated and nursed into seedlings. They are then transplanted from the greenhouse to the field using a tractor-pulled device that pulls the strips of seedling-spotted tape from their trays and cuts them into individual plants that it deposits in the soil.

During trials, the system — which the company plans to commercialize this year — proved to be six times faster than traditional transplanting, reducing labor by 80 percent.

“It allows us … to plant more crops

moving remarkably fast toward automation, per acre, which makes us more efficient according to berry giant Driscoll’s and Reiter and more sustainable,” said Brian Antle, Affiliated Companies (RAC), companies that president of Plant Tape USA. work together to grow and market berries.

In Florida, Cambridge, Mass.-based Together, they have Energid Technologies invested in the Spanish is developing a robotic maker of Agrobot, citrus harvesting system “A significant which accomplishes that uses cameras and with strawberries what computer vision to amount of crops ...

Energid accomplishes detect ripe Valencia are not harvested with citrus: It uses an oranges, and a robotic infrared camera to detect projectile to reach out because there the red of a fully ripened and knock them off strawberry, then extends the tree. Supported by aren’t enough a robotic arm that picks grants from the National workers.” the fruit and places it on a Science Foundation and conveyor belt, where it’s the U.S. Department of — Manoj Karkee, transported to workers Agriculture’s National Washington State who package it.

Institute of Food and University Although they would Agriculture, it’s too rough require chemical instead for fresh citrus — which of visual sensors to detect must maintain a perfect ripe berries by analyzing their sugar conpeel — but perfectly suited for fruit destined tent, similar machines may one day harvest to be processed. delicate raspberries and blackberries.

“Virtually all citrus today is picked by “Because berries are so fragile, there’s not hand, but the day is close at hand that we’ll much technology out there now that can be able to do it automatically,” explained help us,” said Soren Bjorn, executive vice James English, Energid president and chief president of Driscoll’s of the Americas. “But technology officer, who added that about that’s about to change.”

50,000 people are needed to pick citrus in Florida, and 500,000 people to pick it around the world.

IMMIGRATION VS. INNOVATION “Not only is it hard to find workers, but Because they’re still being fine-tuned, the work can be unpleasant and dangerous. robots like LettuceBot, Agrobot and If citrus harvesting could be automated, Energid’s citrus harvester won’t be available imagine what a big difference it would for another few years, their makers concede. make,” he added.

Full commercialization could take another Among the most difficult crops to five to 10 years beyond that, predicted Lee. mechanize are berries. And even those are In the meantime, the labor crunch

persists.

The American Farm Bureau Federation cites deficient immigration policies, including the H-2A program that allows foreign nationals into the U.S. for temporary or seasonal agricultural work.

“The H-2A program is overly cumbersome and bureaucratic, and it’s not working efficiently,” said Kristi Boswell, the Farm Bureau’s director of congressional relations, who has observed administrative delays of more than five weeks — long enough to cause crop loss on farms that lack labor when they need it. “Our priority issue is trying to ensure agriculture has access to a stable and legal workforce through responsible immigration reform.”

Immigration reform might reduce agriculture’s labor shortage, but it won’t solve it, UC-Davis’ Taylor insisted: “That only works if people are growing up to be farmworkers on the other side of the border.

They aren’t.”

He’s been studying the issue for the last 15 years, during which time he’s assembled migration histories for members of nearly 2,000 rural Mexican households dating back to 1980. His conclusion: The number of migrant farmworkers from rural Mexico is decreasing at a rate of 1 percent, or about 150,000 people, per year.

He attributes the decline to a confluence of trends. One, women in Mexico are having fewer children, which means there are fewer kids who can grow up to become farmworkers. Two, Mexico has built more rural schools, creating a more educated workforce that is not interested in farm labor. Finally, Mexico’s non-farm economy is growing, which means workers who would otherwise turn to agriculture are now entering manufacturing and service professions, which offer higher wages, better work conditions and year-round, instead of seasonal, employment.

Offering those same benefits in the U.S. can help farmers compete. Driscoll’s and RAC, for example, are gradually moving toward substrate farming, whereby strawberry plants are grown in bags on raised tables instead of in the ground. This allows workers to pick berries standing up instead of hunched over, making the job more comfortable while also expanding the labor pool to include older workers whose bodies otherwise couldn’t do the job. Also, the easier they are to access, the more berries workers can pick, which increases their earning potential on farms where they receive piece-rate wages.

“Our No. 1 priority in the short term is to make it easier for human beings to pick the berries,” said Bjorn.

In the long term, however, it’s clear: Robots will reign.

“It’s a fact: We’ve entered a new era of farm labor scarcity after many years of farm labor abundance,” noted Taylor. “So, the incentive for farmers to invest in robotic solutions is great, and it’s only going to increase.”

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NURTURING

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY TRACTOR SUPPLY CO.

A RURAL LIFESTYLE Nearing its 80th anniversary, Tractor Supply is stronger than ever

By Hollie Deese

C

HARLES E. SCHMIDT OF Chicago began it all with a mail-order tractor parts business back in 1938, expanding into a retail store that opened

one year later in Minot, N.D. Today, his Tractor Supply Co. is the largest rural lifestyle store chain in the country.

Tractor Supply has more than 1,600 stores in 49 states, and in 2017, is expected to open another 100 locations, positioning the company to reach its

long-term target of 2,500 domestic stores.

It’s a retail strategy for the purveyor of home, land, pet and animal supplies that has grown steadily by staying CO N T I N U E D

Tractor Supply Co. prides itself on the relationships that develop between customers and employees.

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pricing remains competitive.

“We believe we are investing in the correct strategic initiatives that will give us a competitive advantage within our industry and that will have the greatest impact on our business,” he said.

COMMUNITY FOR CUSTOMERS

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY TWIST & SPROUT FARMS

“I am new to pigs in the market, and it is nice for someone like me ... to have the ability to talk to someone who raises pigs.”

— Cameron Pauli, Tractor Supply Co. customer

Part-time farmer Cameron Pauli and his wife, Brielle, rely on the advice they get from employees at their local Tractor Supply Co.

focused on its customers, putting them first and offering products they need.

Steve Barbarick, the company’s president and chief merchandising officer, joined Tractor Supply in 1998 as a buyer and has moved through the ranks; his responsibilities now include merchandising, marketing, inventory management, distribution and logistics.

When he started, there were just more than 200 stores.

“We recognized in the early 2000s that our customer base was evolving,” Barbarick said. “Tractor Supply was not only a destination for farmers, but for people who lived in small-town communities across the country. We expanded our assortments and have worked hard to continue to evolve our

assortments as our customers’ needs change.”

Anticipating what the customer needs can be just as important as how they satisfy those needs in the smalltown stores opened to meet customers where they live. In the past few years, Tractor Supply has increasingly used data to track changing demands and make business decisions. Barbarick noted that this process will let the company better respond to customers, maintain competitive pricing and protect margins.

The company plans to improve the data so it can communicate more directly with customers in a more personalized and relevant manner, as well as ensure its online and in-store

Many of Tractor Supply’s customers are not big production farmers. Rather, they run smaller operations and also work another full-time job, usually in the nearest large city. It’s a timeconsuming grind that the company tries to ease by stocking what their regional customers need in the stores and hiring experienced employees.

Cameron Pauli is one of those customers working a full-time job as he grows his fledgling farming business.

After success with a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, he and his wife, Brielle, purchased a small plot of land near Watertown, Wis., in 2015 and moved in just four days before their wedding.

Now the parents of two young children, they raise hogs as they converted a milk house into a kitchen that can be used for their egg packing, honey extraction and maple syrup bottling business.

Neither had a strong farming background, so they relied on their nearby Tractor Supply as they got started. In fact, Pauli connected there with a local pig expert — who also happened to be an employee — who helped guide him.

“Everyone has their specialty, and one of the store associates told me that John was the pig guy,” Pauli said.

“I am new to pigs in the market, and it is nice for someone like me — no one in my family growing up had pigs — to have the ability to talk to someone who raises pigs.

“You get all kinds of information online, but to have someone come out and troubleshoot is way more valuable to me.”

Even more than the information, Pauli said, Tractor Supply has provided him a community of people in his small area he can connect with.

“That is something they seem to do really well, being that resource center, that hub, that community of people who maybe don’t have a community to gravitate to,” he added.

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CONNECTING TO A NEW GENERATION February is an exciting time at Tractor Supply, as incubators full of fluffy chicks arrive across the country for the annual Chick Days, when live chicks and ducklings are sold. It is also a prime time for the company to connect with its social-media-savvy customers.

“Our poultry customers are a very active and passionate community,” said Brettan Hawkins, Tractor Supply social media manager. Through posted photos and shared videos, Chick Days connects

and the ambassador program.

“It is almost like (Tractor Supply is) trying to keep a connection to their customers,” May said. “They are not just a big corporation. They actually care. And I think this is a way to bridge the customers with the corporate end. ... It is not just dollars and cents for them.”

The nine ambassadors get a VIP behind-the-scenes experience that includes visiting the Brentwood, Tenn.-based headquarters just outside Nashville. They also get the opportunity to occasionally speak in their local stores as experts in their fields and give input from the local level about what products work and which don’t.

Ambassadors stay with the expanding program as long as it’s mutually beneficial to them and Tractor Supply; potential ambassadors must apply for the position.

“They help get the word out about new and exciting endeavors and events, and we just support them every way we can,” Hawkins said. “People don’t want to hear your brand tell you what you need to do. They want to hear real people.”

Another benefit of the ambassador program is that Tractor Supply is able

PROVIDED BY HAPPY DAYS FARMS

Penny Ausley, left, and Brittany May of Burlington, N.C., are among the Tractor Supply customers who have become ambassadors for the brand.

“We always say, ‘Hire our customer.’ I think we do a good job of that. When you go into our stores, you’ll see a lot of interaction.”

— Tony Crudele, retired Tractor Supply Co. CFO

users. “That is a group of people who we see asking each other questions, asking us questions and really wanting to engage with each other.”

In 2015, Hawkins launched Tractor Supply’s Out Here Ambassador Program as a way to nurture and deepen relationships with key customers who epitomize the rural lifestyle; these are generally people who are already engaged with Tractor Supply on social media. During the year, these ambassadors advocate for Tractor Supply, which supports their ideas and projects.

Ambassadors Brittany May and Penny Ausley of Happy Days Farm in Burlington, N.C., grow herbs and raise chickens and rabbits on their small farm, and it was their interactive social media posts that put them on the radar of Hawkins

to have people like Jason Kramer of Yonder Way Farm in Fayetteville, Texas, extolling the virtues of the company and acting as an expert on its behalf.

With his wife, Lynsey, Kramer began a small farm in 2006 that has grown from a few chickens and five calves to hundreds of hogs, cattle and chickens that supply food to restaurants in Houston, Austin and College Station.

Kramer had already been sharing photos of his daughters wearing Tractor Supply hats on social media, but grew more committed to being an ambassador for the company after visiting the headquarters and seeing the commitment to its managers.

“I was blown away by how they do try and take care of their management,” Kramer said. “(Managers) are the basis

of your companies. At the end of the day, when I walk into a Tractor Supply, I am going to look to that manager to how that store is ran. Tractor Supply tries their best to take care of those people and that keeps them around.

That is big for me from a business standpoint. There is nothing worse than having to start over all the time.”

WALKING THE TALK

The company has a set of 10 core values that include ethics, respect, accountability and initiative. And Tony Crudele, who retired in March as executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer of Tractor Supply after 11 years, said it isn’t just lip service. At the company’s annual meeting in February, he heard firsthand from managers across the country about how they have improved customer experience through those values.

“They have some really touching stories,” Crudele said. “One store manager had passed a car that was off to the side (of the road) and the hood was up. It was a grandmother. Her husband had (just) passed away, she had her grandson in the back seat and the car wouldn’t start. She was crying.”

Crudele said the manager took them to Tractor Supply, bought them a battery, installed it himself, told the boy to pick out whatever toy he wanted, and bought that too.

“He did it out of his own pocket,” Crudele said. “That really goes back to the type of people that we hire and the type of people that live that lifestyle — just good, solid people. We always say, ‘Hire our customer.’ I think we do a good job of that. When you go into our stores, you’ll see a lot of interaction.

They are on a first-name basis with the customers and even wind up learning their animals’ first names.”

Dustin Beck, manager of the Hendersonville, Tenn., location, can attest to just how familial it is, knowing which customers like to be left alone and which ones want to talk about their animals or family life. The success comes in being able to cater to them all.

“It is not just about the products we sell,” Beck said. “We become a part of people’s lives. It is part of their family.

The mission and values — you have a lot of places that say that, but they mean it here. They don’t just talk it, they walk it, people from the home office to the 17-year-old kid I have working the register. And it matters.”

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FIELD CROPS

ALL EARS Corn growers wait to see how they’ll benefit under a new president

SETH PERLMAN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By Patricia Kime

F

RESH OFF THE COUNTRY’S largest-ever corn yield , U.S. farmers are closely watching the market — and Washington — to see whether opportunities exist to expand demand for the crop and its products at home and abroad.

Corn growers are of mixed mind about expansion opportunities under a Trump administration, which immediately scrapped one trade treaty widely seen as favorable to agriculture — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — and has promised to renegotiate or cancel another, the farm-friendly NAFTA. But President Donald Trump also has promised to abolish regulations considered onerous by farmers, pledged to uphold the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and nominated Terry Branstad — the governor of Iowa, the nation’s top corn-producing state — as ambassador to China, moves considered positive by farmers.

“On one hand, we have concerns, but on the other hand, we will have some ability to make changes that will be

GETTY IMAGES

THE VALUE OF U.S. AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS GREW AFTER NAFTA

+391% MEXICO

+332% CANADA

beneficial to farmers,” said Jon Doggett, executive vice president for public policy for the National Corn Growers Association. “What we really need is some concrete details on what’s being promised.”

He’s not alone in that sentiment.

“Uncertainty — that is what farmers are facing. We are pretty sure the Trump administration is anti-trade, and we are pretty sure they are anti-regulation, but the details are what really matters, and they matter a lot,” said Philip Abbott, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University.

U.S. farmers produced 15.1 billion bushels of corn in 2016, up 11 percent from the previous year. Corn yield was a whopping 174.6 bushels per acre, up 6.2 bushels from 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But as in any bumper year, the surplus in the U.S. and elsewhere has pushed the price downward — below the break-even point, experts say — prompting growers to step up efforts to find new markets.

CO N T I N U E D

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FIELD CROPS Chinese farmers inspect shelled corn during a DuPont Pioneer field demo day in the Shandong province. The current governor of Iowa, the nation’s largest corn producing state, has been nominated to be the new ambassador to China.

“It’s all about demand, demand,” Doggett said.

“We have an immediate need to open markets and move into new territories.”

The TPP would have influenced opportunities for U.S. corn growers in China and expanded them in 11 other Pacific Rim nations, reducing tariffs in countries with existing trade agreements and opening up markets in nations that did not have preferential trade agreements with the U.S. One USDA study estimated that agricultural output of cereal grains in the U.S. could increase by 1 percent as a result of TPP market access.

Yet even as the TPP was heralded by farmers as a chance to increase grain and corn-related product exports including meat and ethanol, it was not universally embraced because of concerns about its effects on U.S. manufacturing and potential job losses: Despite pressure from the Obama White House to approve the treaty, the Senate deferred a vote on it in August 2016.

And former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who had supported TPP when she was President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, said the final version didn’t meet her standards for creating jobs and advancing national security.

Trump, with his protectionist view on trade, called TPP a “death blow for American manufacturing” that would funnel even more of it offshore.

He officially killed U.S. participation in the deal Jan. 23, signing an executive order withdrawing from the agreement. Now, farmers are pinning their hopes on the possible

RODNEY WHITE/PULITZER CENTER/THE DES MOINES REGISTER

negotiation or renegotiation of agricultural exports from the U.S. to individual deals with the TPP those countries grew between 300 countries to ensure market access. percent and 400 percent; Mexico was “(TPP) would have the largest destination been a great thing for for exported U.S. corn in 2016; Canada was agriculture,” said Kurt 11th.

Hora, president of the But the current Iowa Corn Growers White House claims Association. “We are that NAFTA — which hoping some of the allows companies to countries that were send goods, including going to be involved corn and corn in TPP will continue GETTY IMAGES products like highto buy from us. ... We MORE THAN fructose corn syrup, deliver a good quality largely tariff-free crop; we deliver on across the borders — time; and we are a has also encouraged reliable source.”

U.S. companies to Reeling from this move manufacturing lost opportunity, OF U.S. CORN facilities out of the corn farmers are CROP IS USED TO country, eliminating casting a wary eye MAKE ETHANOL thousands of jobs. toward Trump and Trump has pledged to his stand on the renegotiate the deal North American or withdraw from it if an agreement Free Trade Agreement, a 23-year-old isn’t reached, a move that has treaty with Mexico and Canada agribusiness fearing a trade war. that American farmers — especially “The agriculture community, corn growers — depend on for sales. particularly the leadership, has been Between 1993 and 2015, the value of

40%

very concerned by the anti-trade rhetoric. If we take actions against Mexico, they will retaliate,” Abbott said.

A trade war, he added, would be costly and disruptive. “(Market) adjustments could mitigate costs to an extent, but they would take time. Our exports of products could be limited.

And while some of that would be shipped elsewhere, it would probably be at a lower price.”

Corn growers and renewable fuels industry leadership also were alarmed by the nominations of fossil-fuelfriendly Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is a former CEO of Exxon, and Energy Secretary and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, both critics of renewable energy and government biofuel mandates. Scott Pruitt, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, also fought against the RFS as attorney general in oil- and gas-rich Oklahoma, calling it “unworkable.”

With more than 40 percent of the CO N T I N U E D

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FIELD CROPS

TOP U.S. CORN EXPORT PARTNERS COUNTRY Mexico* Japan** South Korea

AMOUNT $2.6 billion $2.1 billion $864.9 million

Colombia Taiwan Peru** Saudi Arabia Venezuela Guatemala Egypt

$766.5 million $462.2 million $452.2 million $343 million $202 million $168 million $161.9 million

*NAFTA/TPP partner

Fieldworkers in California harvest corn, the secondlargest U.S. farm export after soybeans.

| **TPP partner SOURCE: USDA

U.S. corn crop used to make ethanol, corn growers are keen on ensuring the renewable fuels mandate stays in place. And despite the rhetoric from Trump’s Cabinet members prior to their confirmations, farmers and ethanol backers are counting on Trump to protect the mandate, given that he pledged to do so at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit in January 2016. The president repeated his support for renewable fuels in a letter to the National Ethanol Conference this February.

“I’m quite confident that President Trump’s vision for American energy independence includes American biofuels,” said Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association.

“It’s the Donald Trump administration.

It’s not the Scott Pruitt administration or the Rick Perry administration.”

In February, the Renewable Fuels Association, along with the U.S. Grains Council and Growth Energy, sent a letter to Trump urging him to address trade issues with China that have kept U.S. ethanol and dried grain distillers from tapping into the vast market. China, Dinneen said, has been imposing protectionist trade barriers that must be addressed.

“It’s no secret that China is building more cars today than anyplace else in the world. It’s where the growth is,” he said. “We are hopeful the administration approaches China on restoring fairness and openness to the market.”

A reason for cautious optimism in expanding agricultural exports, particularly corn, to China is Trump’s

BOB NICHOLS/USDA

nomination of Branstad as U.S. ambassador to the country. A friend of Chinese President Xi Jinping since 1985, when the two met during a Chinese goodwill visit to Iowa, Branstad is seen by farmers as a man who not only has a personal relationship with Chinese leaders, but also has public policy experience and a deep understanding of trade and agriculture issues.

“We think he’s going to be a great asset in bringing United States corn to China. We’ve had some issues with tariffs and trade (with China) and we are hoping he’s going to help us out with that,” Hora said.

Doggett added, “We are absolutely ecstatic to see Branstad become ambassador to China. He understands agriculture, and this is a market with an expanding middle class, and they want more protein in their diets and

“Uncertainty — that is what farmers are facing. ... The details are what really matters, and they matter a lot.”

— Philip Abbott, professor of agricultural economics, Purdue University

are going to import more protein, like pork, which consumes corn, and they are looking to us to develop their expertise on farming and dairy operations. We need to make sure we have access to these markets.”

But the ability to expand demand isn’t going to happen overnight and farmers may look this year to planting less corn as they try to project what will happen with trade, the RFS, and other markets, such as the high-fructose corn syrup industry,

which has lost market share as food producers have switched to other ingredients and health-conscious consumers are decreasing their intake of sugar, according to experts.

Doggett expressed hope that the administration will work on issues such as deregulation and trade with China as quickly as it acted on TPP. “At this point, any opportunity to expand demand will come in the form of a big elephant that’s going to have (to) be eaten in small bites,” he said.

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FIELD CROPS

BY THE NUMBERS 2016

$51.7

Annual production

BILLION

15.1

Annual yield*

BILLION BUSHELS

174.6

Annual yield per acre*

BUSHELS

$9.9 Exports

REGIS LEFEBURE

CORN

THE FOUR TYPES OF CORN

*ESTIMATES

DID YOU KNOW? uYields for 2016 were up from 2015, and nine states had record yields: Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin.

TOP 10 CORN-PRODUCING STATES

BY BUSHEL, 2016

1. Iowa: 2.7 billion 2. Illinois: 2.3 billion 3. Nebraska: 1.7 billion 4. Minnesota: 1.5 billion 5. Indiana: 946.3 million

6. South Dakota: 825.9 million 7. Kansas: 698.6 million 8. Wisconsin: 573.2 million 9. Missouri: 570.5 million 10. Ohio: 524.7 million

BILLION

DENT CORN Named for the dent that forms in the top of the kernel as it dries out, this variety is used for feed, to make corn syrup, for biofuels and for other industrial uses. It accounts for the majority of the corn grown in the U.S.

FLINT CORN Once known as “Indian corn,” the colorful cobs are primarily used in the United States as seasonal decoration. It is mostly grown outside the U.S.

POPCORN When heated, the steam that forms inside the hard outer shell of these corn kernels pops, and a tasty snack is born.

SWEET CORN The kind you eat.

It’s picked before the cob is fully grown so that the kernels are soft, tender and sweet. Popcorn and sweet corn account for less than 1 percent of corn grown in the U.S.

LANCE CHEUNG/USDA; GETTY IMAGES SOURCES: USDA; THE DES MOINES REGISTER; THE POPCORN BOARD, IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

uA USDA report issued in January found that cornbased ethanol creates a lower greenhouse-gas footprint than previous studies had found; overall emissions are 43 percent lower than those created by gasoline. uFarmers in many cornproducing states are battling invasive Palmer amaranth, a fast-growing, 6- to 8-foottall weed that can cause up to a 91 percent loss in crop yield. It is resistant to many common herbicides.

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FIELD CROPS

BY THE NUMBERS 2016

$40.9 Annual production

BILLION

4.31 Annual yield

BILLION BUSHELS*

52.1

Annual yield per acre

BUSHELS*

$22.9 Exports

BILLION *ESTIMATED

SCOTT BAUER/USDA

SOY

TOP 10 SOYBEAN-PRODUCING STATES, 2016

DID YOU KNOW? uU.S. soybean yield was at record levels in 2016, up more than 10 percent from 2015’s 3.9 billion bushels. uApproximately 85 percent of the annual soybean harvest is turned into soy meal; 98 percent

of that is used as livestock feed. uAbout 94 percent of soybean acreage in the U.S. was planted with special herbicideresistant crops between 2014 and 2016, up from 68 percent in 2001.

1. Illinois: 593 million bushels 2. Iowa: 571.7 million 3. minnesota: 393.8 million 4. Indiana: 324.3 million 5. Nebraska: 314.2 million

6. Missouri: 271.5 million 7. Ohio: 263.8 million 8. South Dakota: 255.9 million 9. North Dakota: 249 million 10. Kansas: 192.5 million

HOW THE SOYBEAN IS USED OF THE 20% OIL: 68 percent is used in cooking (vegetable oils, ingredient in foods, including salad dressing and margarine); 25 percent is used as biofuel for heating and transportation; 7 percent is used in industry to make products such as plastic, paint and crayons.

20% OIL

The entire soybean

80% MEAL

OF THE 80% MEAL: 97 percent becomes animal feed; 3 percent is used in food products, including soy milk and protein alternatives.

SOURCES: USDA; WISCONSIN SOYBEAN ASSOCIATION; SOYATECH; UNITED SOYBEAN BOARD

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FIELD CROPS

WHEAT

BY THE NUMBERS 2016 Annual production, 2016-17*

Annual yield per acre

$8.8 BILLION

52.6

2.3

$5.3

BUSHELS

Annual yield

Exports

BILLION BUSHELS

BILLION

*MARKET YEAR JUNE 2016-MAY 2017; 2017 FIGURES ESTIMATED

DID YOU KNOW?

uThe amount of land harvested for wheat has dropped by one-third since its peak of 81 million acres in 1981; wheat farmers don’t make as much money as they used to, and new laws give them more flexibility in what they can plant. uAfrica, the Middle East and Southeast Asia are the largest growth markets for wheat. Africa is buying more wheat for its growing population; Asian diets are beginning to substitute wheat products for traditional rice.

TOP WHEAT-PRODUCING STATES IN 2016 1. Kansas: 467.4 million bushels 2. North Dakota: 333.2 million 3. Montana: 212.7 million 4. Washington: 157.3 million 5. Oklahoma: 136.5 million 6. South Dakota: 111.3 million 7. Colorado: 106 million 8. Idaho: 101.9 million

9. Texas: 89.6 million 10. Minnesota: 74.8 million

WHEAT PRODUCTION BY CLASS IN BUSHELS, 2016 WINTER Hard red Soft red Hard white Soft white

1.1 billion 345.2 million 25.5 million 219.1 million

SPRING Hard red Hard white 7.5 million 33.4 million Soft white 104.1 million Durum GETTY IMAGES

493.1 million

SOURCE: USDA

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FIELD CROPS

BY THE NUMBERS Annual production, 2015* Fruit and tree nuts

$27.1 $14.1 BILLION

Fresh-market vegetables

BILLION

Annual yield, 2015* Fruit and tree nuts

53.7 34.8

BILLION POUNDS Fresh-market vegetables

BILLION POUNDS LANCE CHEUNG/USDA

DID YOU KNOW? uThe drought in California, which produces 70 percent of the nation’s fruit and tree nuts and 44 percent of vegetables, has eased in the last year. In February 2017, just 21 percent of the state was experiencing drought, down from 95 percent. uArctic Golden apple slices — from genetically modified apples

designed to not brown after being cut — are expected to go on sale in U.S. test markets this year. uThe amount of kale grown in the U.S. has increased by 59 percent since 1997; the average American appears to eat very little of it — 0.6 pounds per capita in 2015 — but that is a 50 percent increase from 1997.

PER CAPITA USE, 2015

Tomatoes

Lettuce

113.7 76.8 24.5

Sweet corn

21.6

Onions

20

TOP 5 FRUITS

Grapes

Oranges

Apples

52.8 50.3 46.1

TOP 10 FRUIT/TREE NUT- AND VEGETABLE-PRODUCING STATES

Bananas

28

Melons

23.7

SOURCE: USDA

4.3 1.4

MILLION ACRES Fresh-market vegetables

MILLION ACRES

According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California grows one-third of U.S. vegetables and two-thirds of its fruit and tree nuts, more than most states. Four of its five top food exports are related to fruit (wine) or nuts.

IN POUNDS MOST RECENT AVAILABLE

TOP 5 VEGETABLES

Potatoes

PRODUCE

Acreage, 2015* Fruit and tree nuts

FRUIT/TREE NUT-PRODUCING STATES, IN DOLLARS, 2014*

FRESH-MARKET VEGETABLE-PRODUCING STATES, IN DOLLARS, 2015*

1. California: $21.3 billion

1. California: $8.3 billion

2. Washington: $3.2 billion

2. Florida: $1.2 billion

3. Florida: $1.9 billion

3. Arizona: $1.01 billion

4. Oregon: $702.8 million

4. Georgia: $476.9 million

5. Michigan: $476.8 million

5. Washington: $466.4 million

6. New York: $341.2 million

6. New York: $311.8 million

7. Georgia: $336.6 million

7. Michigan: $279.3 million

8. Texas: $201.1 million

8. Oregon: $218.3 million

9. Wisconsin: $180.7 million

9. Wisconsin: $198.6 million

10. New Jersey: $158.8 million

10. Texas: $175.1 million

Exports, 2016 Fruits

$7.2 $7.97 $7.2 BILLION Tree nuts

BILLION

Vegetables

BILLION

*MOST RECENT AVAILABLE *MOST RECENT AVAILABLE

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LIVESTOCK A Pilgrim’s Pride contract farmer walks amid his chicks in 2008.

Pending new rules could dramatically change the relationship between poultry producers and companies.

FREEING FARMERS Poultry growers see hope in battles over restrictive contracts

By Diana Lambdin Meyer

J

OHN OLIVER MAY NOT be a household name among the 25,000 U.S. farmers who contract with poultry companies to raise broiler chickens. However, the bespectacled, British-born comedian did more in 18 minutes to alter the economic viability of these family farms than any politician or regulator has done in decades.

The host of HBO’s satirical news show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and his team are renowned for their detailed investigation and research into a current event or issue before they go on the air to lambast it with razor-sharp wit, often in defense of the underdog.

In a segment called “Chickens” that first aired May 17, 2015,

Oliver took aim at the poultry industry’s practice of contract farming. The show highlighted what many say is the subservient role chicken farmers play to the four biggest poultry companies and the absence of government efforts to address the conditions under which most of these farmers work — and in doing so, may have finally paved the way to change how things are done.

“The John Oliver exposé on abuses in the poultry industry is widely credited with getting the votes needed to prevent another appropriations rider on the farm bill,” said Trudy Wastweet, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Wastweet was talking about what is commonly known as the GIPSA rule (pronounced jip-sa,

it stands for the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration), a section of the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act that is supposed to guarantee fair trade practices and competitive markets for those who raise livestock, poultry and related products in the U.S. But over the years, as the industry has migrated toward a contract production model and demand has grown to more than 160 million chicks per week, the number of major companies that buy broiler chickens from farmers is down to just four — Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s, Sanderson Farms and Perdue Farms.

Contract production requires the farmer to provide the labor and the buildings while the company provides the chicks and the feed. In an act that John

Oliver called “chicken day care,” the farmer cares for the birds for a month or so until they gain adequate weight for the broiler market. Oliver’s report claimed that 97 percent of chickens are raised in this manner; the National Chicken Council puts the number lower, at 95 percent.

The farmer’s success in raising healthy, fat chickens in a timely manner is based, in large part, on factors out of his or her control, including the quality of the chicks and the quality of feed supplied by the contractor.

To further complicate the model, farmers in many parts of the U.S. do not have access to all four major buyers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 52 percent of CO N T I N U E D

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Comedian John Oliver, via his satirical show on HBO, brought the issue of contract chicken farming to national attention, alerting people outside the poultry industry to the controversial practice. chicken growers have only one or two regional options for selling their product. So if farmers complain or are unhappy with the conditions, they have few — and potentially no — other places to sell their broilers.

Farmers who wanted more flexibility, and who were complaining about the sometimes expensive requirements from the poultry companies, began to voice concern to elected officials, including by public comment in the Federal Register.

One example, from commenter Michael Tobin: “These growers are saddled with debt from having to provide the capital investment ... Growers have no control over the inputs involved, which ultimately determine the profits that they will receive.”

Or, in Oliver’s blunter words, farmers “own everything that costs money, (and the company) owns everything that makes money.”

Reid Phifer has been raising poultry near Marshville, N.C., for more than 30 years; for 18 of those years he’s raised heavy broilers (chickens weighing about 9 pounds) for Pilgrim’s.

Only once in those years has he received a raise or increase in the amount he has been paid per pound of chicken, he said, and that raise was revoked after the majority of the company’s stock was purchased by a Brazilian

corporation in 2009.

“They call us contractors, but we are mere employees who don’t reap the benefits of employment and don’t even get paid minimum wage,” said Phifer.

The 2008 Farm Bill was amended to give poultry growers, among others, greater control over their product, including the right to cancel contracts and negotiate additional protections. This was called the Farmer Fair Practices Rules, an updated version of the GIPSA rule. But the amendment, and its implementation, became controversial. Proponents said the rules make the contractor/ farmer relationship more equitable, while opponents said that poultry companies might be forced into frivolous lawsuits and unnecessary expenses.

“These rules ... could lead to rigid, one-size-fits-all requirements on chicken-growing contracts that would stifle innovation, lead to higher costs for consumers and cost jobs by forcing the best farmers out of the chicken business,” National Chicken Council President Mike Brown said in a statement in December. Chicken producers did not comment for this story.

Congress has amended the annual agriculture appropriations bill since 2011 to prevent the rules from taking effect.

But then came Oliver. In his flamboyant, take-no-prisoners

In an act that John Oliver called “chicken day care,” the farmer cares for the birds for a month or more until they gain adequate weight for the broiler market. approach, he explained the chicken farmers’ crisis to an audience that is predominantly urban. The 18-minute segment (available on YouTube) ended by giving viewers the names of each of the 51 members of the House Appropriations Committee who had the power to make a difference for the individual farmer. Oliver ignited outrage from consumers, which had been missing in the debate.

Within six weeks, the committee, for the first time in seven years, approved a funding bill that did not prevent the USDA from enforcing the GIPSA rule.

“I think a lot of consumers care very much about the people who produce their food and they want those people to be

treated fairly,” said Lynn Hayes, an attorney with the Farmers’ Legal Action Group. “Now, from the farmers’ perspective, this is one of the few times they feel they have some support from the government and consumers.”

Among the changes that give farmers hope is the rule that no longer requires farmers to prove “competitive injury” in any lawsuit. Previously, in order for a farmer to prove damages from a poultry company, the farmer had to prove economic harm to other farmers in the region.

Oliver was not the first to highlight the inequities in the poultry-growing business.

Documentaries — including The Sharecroppers (2010; on YouTube), Cock Fight (2015; at interactive.fusion.net/cock-fight), and Under Contract (2017; for rent or purchase on Vimeo) — have also dug into the issue.

Author Christopher Leonard, in his 2014 book The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business, describes poultry farmers as “living like modernday sharecroppers on the ragged edge of bankruptcy.”

That’s a quote from a federal lawsuit filed in Muskogee, Okla., on Jan. 27 on behalf of farmers in five states who seek class action status against poultry companies for violation of the Packers and Stockyards Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act. “The reality is that, until these rules changes, the USDA and the courts had made it virtually impossible for growers to succeed in court,” said Hayes.

Currently, the pending GIPSA rule has the greatest impact on the broiler industry, but those engaged in pork and beef production are alert to the potential impact on their industries as contract farming becomes more prevalent.

However, a new administration and new agriculture secretary (nominee Sonny Perdue had not been confirmed by press time) leaves many aspects of the rules changes and the farm bill in limbo. The earliest any part of the rules can be implemented is mid-April.

“All we want is a level playing field for poultry growers,” said Phifer. “But I don’t have any hopes that things will change for the better under the Trump administration.”

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CHICKEN & EGGS TOP FIVE EGG-PRODUCING STATES* Iowa Ohio Indiana Pennsylvania Texas

TOP FIVE BROILER-PRODUCING STATES*

14.1 billion eggs 9.2 billion 8.8 billion 8.2 billion 5.5 billion

Georgia North Carolina Alabama Arkansas Mississippi

*2016

7.9 billion pounds 6.4 billion 6.17 billion 6.16 billion 4.6 billion *2015; MOST RECENT AVAILABLE

DID YOU KNOW?

uThe USDA expects that American farmers will export about 30 million dozen more eggs in 2017 as a result of avian flu in other countries.

infected chickens.

Testing of birds within 10 miles of the farm, which contracts with Tyson Foods, was to continue for a few weeks.

uAfter more than a year without a U.S. outbreak of avian flu, 73,500 chickens in Lincoln County, Tenn., had to be destroyed in March because they were infected with the flu or had come into contact with

uAs a result of the outbreak, 28 countries and groups of countries (including the European Union, Japan, Canada and Mexico) banned imports of chicken from Lincoln County.

USDA

BY THE NUMBERS BROILERS

EGGS

Broilers inventory, 2015*

Egg-layer inventory, Jan. 1, 2017

BILLION

MILLION

8.7

371.6

Broiler production, 2015*

Egg production, 2016

BILLION POUNDS

BILLION EGGS

Broilers, annual sales, 2015*

Annual egg sales, 2015*

BILLION

BILLION

53.4

HOW CHICKENS ARE SOLD

101.1

$28.7 $13.5

Americans have changed how they shop for chicken, focusing on parts, not the whole bird.

Whole bird Cut-up/parts Further processed*

ALL POULTRY PRODUCTS

233,770 $4.6 Number of farms

3% 19%

7%

18%

32% 78% 1965

61% 1975

10% 36%

1995

53%

43%

2005

Exports, 2016

1985

11% 46%

53%

29%

11% 49%

BILLION

40%

*MOST RECENT AVAILABLE

2015

*CHICKEN NUGGETS, ROTISSERIE, ETC. NUMBERS MAY NOT ADD TO 100% DUE TO ROUNDING

BOB NICHOLS/USDA

SOURCES: USDA; THE NATIONAL CHICKEN COUNCIL; KNOXVILLE (TENN.) NEWS-SENTINEL

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DAIRY

AMERICANS EAT MORE THAN

35 POUNDS

OF CHEESE PER PERSON ANNUALLY

BY THE NUMBERS 2016

9.3 Inventory

MILLION MILKING COWS Mozzarella 11.3 pounds

Annual milk production

212.5

BILLION POUNDS Cheddar 10.2 pounds

$35.7 Annual milk sales*

DID YOU KNOW? uThe dairy industry is battling makers of plant-based products such as soy or almond milk over the definition of the term “milk.”

Industry officials say that the plant-based products are not required to follow the same ingredient and nutritional guidelines; the plant-based-product makers say that consumers understand the difference.

BILLION

50,556 Number of farms

uWith the U.S. cheese supply at its highest level in 30 years, the USDA announced plans in August to buy about 11 million pounds of cheese for $20 million and donate it to food banks. The program was designed to help producers who were having trouble selling their products because of the glut.

$4.7 Exports**

BILLION

PEGGY GREB

GETTY IMAGES

TOP MILK-PRODUCING STATES, IN POUNDS, 2016

*2015; MOST RECENT AVAILABLE **ALL DAIRY PRODUCTS

U.S. PER CAPITA DAIRY CONSUMPTION, IN POUNDS PER PERSON* All products, total: 627

Washington 6.7 billion

Minnesota 9.7 billion

Fluid milk

Wisconsin 30.1 billion Michigan 10.9 billion

Idaho 14.6 billion

155 pounds

Other cheeses

21

Ice cream

19.6

Yogurt New York 14.8 billion

California 40.5 billion

Pennsylvania 10.9 billion

New Mexico 7.7 billion

14

Evaporated/condensed milk

7.7

Dry dairy products

6.7

Butter

5.6

Other frozen products Texas 10.8 billion

14.7

American cheese

Cottage cheese *2015; MOST RECENT AVAILABLE

3.8 2.1

GETTY IMAGES SOURCES: USDA; THE WASHINGTON POST

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BY THE NUMBERS 2016

93.6

Inventory, Jan. 1, 2017

MILLION

25.2

Annual production

BILLION POUNDS

$67.6

Annual cash receipts

BILLION

1,365

Average live weight

POUNDS

LANCE CHEUNG/USDA

BEEF FAVORITE U.S. CUTS OF BEEF, 2016 1. Chuck center roast*

56.1 million pounds

2. Stew meat

42.5

3. Strip steak

33.4

4. Ribeye roast, bone in

27.9

5. Ribeye steak

27.1

6. Bottom round roast 7. Blade chuck roast, bone in

22.9 21.4

8. Ribeye steak, bone in

17.2

9. Brisket deckle-off

16.4

10. Top sirloin steak

16.1

*ALL CUTS BONELESS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

TOP 10 BEEF STATES

829

Average dressed weight

POUNDS

DID YOU KNOW?

uU.S. beef production continues to drop from its high of 88.8 pounds per person in 1976 to 51.5 pounds per person in 2014 (most recent figures available). uLivestock (beef and other animals) farms run by women accounted for $6.9 billion in yearly sales, about 26 percent of the total $182.2 billion.

Number of beef-producing farms

619,000 STATES WITH THE LARGEST CATTLE INVENTORY* 1. Texas: 12.3 million 2. Nebraska: 6.5 million 3. Kansas: 6.4 million 4. California: 5.2 million 5. Oklahoma: 5 million 6. Missouri: 4.4 million

7. Iowa/South Dakota (tie): 3.9 million 8. Wisconsin: 3.6 million 9. Colorado: 2.9 million 10. Montana: 2.7million *AS OF JAN. 1, 2017

$5.2 Exports

BILLION

SOURCES: USDA; BEEF CHECKOFF

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PORK TOP PORK-PRODUCING STATES, BY HEAD, 2016 Iowa 22.4 million North Carolina 9.3 million Minnesota 8.3 million Illinois 5.1 million Indiana 4.1 million Nebraska 3.4 million Missouri 3.1 million Ohio 2.7 million Oklahoma 2.2 million Kansas 1.9 million

DID YOU KNOW?

uPork producers are expected to make less money in 2017; the number of hogs available for market has begun to rise but this has caused the consumer price to fall. uWord that U.S. bacon reserves were at a 50-year low in February temporarily panicked a bacon-crazed nation into thinking there would be shortages, but the low supply merely means potentially higher prices.

TOP PORK-SELLING COUNTIES, 2016 Iowa, North Carolina and Minnesota account for more than half of pig sales and stocks in the U.S., and contain all but one of the top pork-selling counties (No. 5 is in Oklahoma). $614 MILLION 3 21

North Carolina 1. Duplin 2. Sampson

6 98 $22.4 MILLION

4

Iowa 3. Sioux 4. Washington 6. Lyon 8. Hardin 9. Hamilton

7

10

Minnesota 7. Martin 10. Blue Earth

BY THE NUMBERS

71.5

Inventory, Dec. 1, 2016*

MILLION ANIMALS

24.5

Annual production, 2015*

BILLION POUNDS

$19.7

Annual cash receipts

BILLION

283

Average live weight, 2015*

POUNDS

Average dressed weight, 2015*

211.3 POUNDS

Number of producers

55,582 $4.4 Exports

BILLION

*MOST RECENT AVAILABLE

LANCE CHEUNG/USDA

SOURCES: USDA; PORK CHECKOFF; THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER

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BUSINESS Texas-based scientists from Bayer AG will soon be working with others from Monsanto as the two agricultural giants merge.

MERGING CAREFULLY Agriculture industry awaits the impact of company consolidation

By Elizabeth Neus

G

ETTING A MEGAMERGER APPROVED is never a simple procedure under the best of circumstances. Throw in a new U.S. president and a little overseas political upheaval as the European Union regroups post-Brexit, and the process only grows more complex. In 2015 and 2016, the agriculture industry saw a wave of

enormous and influential companies move toward consolidation: ▶ Dow Chemical and DuPont announced in December 2015 that the companies would merge into a potential agricultural powerhouse; both companies already have large segments related to seed and farm chemicals. The merger could be worth $62.1 billion. ▶ State-owned China National Chemical Corp., also known as ChemChina, which

makes agricultural chemicals, is in the midst of a $44.2 billion takeover of Swiss seed giant Syngenta. ▶ Shareholders for St. Louis-based agricultural multinational Monsanto, a leader in genetically modified seeds, and German pharmaceutical/farm chemical maker Bayer approved the latter’s $56 billion takeover last December. (Monsanto had attempted to CO N T I N U E D

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acquire Syngenta earlier in the year, but the deal fell through.)

Canadian fertilizer companies PotashCorp. and Agrium also recently proposed their own union, as have The Mosaic Co., a Minnesota fertilizer company, and Brazil-based Vale S.A. The Dow/DuPont and Monsanto/Bayer mergers rank among the 30 largest mergers of all time worldwide; ChemChina/Syngenta is the 18th largest ever in Western Europe.

The three companies created through these mergers would own 80 percent of the market share of U.S. corn seed sales and 70 percent of the global pesticide market.

“With the need for more innovation, there’s a compelling rationale for consolidation,” Liam Condon, president of Bayer AG’s crop science division, told The Des Moines Register editorial board last October. “You do need a certain critical mass to take innovation to the next level. That’s what we’re aiming for.”

The Dow/DuPont deal was approved by both companies’

shareholders in 2016 and is now undergoing an antitrust regulatory review in the United States and Europe. Bayer and Monsanto also clinched a deal in 2016 after months of discussions, and ChemChina and Syngenta secured U.S. regulatory approval last summer.

The Financial Times reported March 3 that the ChemChina/ Syngenta deal was nearing approval in the European Union, with the Dow/DuPont merger also close to approval; the Bayer/Monsanto deal should start its European approval process later this year, the Times said.

All three mergers still need to make it through the U.S. antitrust process, a job potentially slowed by the fact that the new Trump administration must install its own appointees across all government agencies, and, as of early March, still had hundreds of positions to fill.

“We’re still waiting for a lot of people to get into place to make these decisions,” said Bob Young, chief economist at the American Farm Bureau

“Even with a friendlier administration, they’re going to be fairly complicated mergers.”

— Chad Hart, expert in grain markets and agribusiness at Iowa State University

Federation. “I just don’t think we know yet what reaction we’ll get out of this administration.”

There are some fears that President Donald Trump may have gotten a bit close to the process; presidents traditionally do not involve themselves in the business of mergers, to avoid the appearance of exerting political influence on a regulatory process.

But just before his inauguration, Trump met with the heads of Bayer and Monsanto, who

Top executives from DuPont, Dow and Syngenta, above, testified before a Senate committee last year on consolidation in the U.S. agriculture industry. Among Syngenta’s products: durable, high-yield tomatoes.

reportedly made their case for their giant merger. The deal would need to be approved

by Trump’s choices to lead antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department, and not all of them are in place yet.

Monsanto officials said that the merger came up during a discussion on the larger topic of innovation.

In a statement issued Jan. 17, Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute, said, “Attempts by the incoming administration to broker merger deals or directly negotiate merger concessions signal a fundamental disregard for the law and for due process. … The end runs that we are seeing in key mergers such as Monsanto-Bayer not only abuse the process, they imperil our markets, our economy and our society.”

Although Trump is a businessman familiar with the world of deals, mergers and negotiation, his administration may not automatically CO N T I N U E D

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Once the Dow/DuPont merger is complete, the company will compete with the combined Monsanto/Bayer duo.

Monsanto is known for genetically modified products, including peppers; Bayer makes products to protect seeds.

BAYER AG

favor megamergers. “I have no hesitation, if the finding justifies it, to say that certain mergers should not occur and there will not be political influence in that process,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during his confirmation hearings.

And during the campaign, Trump opposed the combination of the telecom company AT&T and Time Warner, the media conglomerate that owns HBO and CNN. “It’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few,” Trump said.

That’s the context in which the agricultural mergers are moving forward. “The current administration is probably more friendly towards allowing this to occur,” said Chad Hart, an associate professor of economics and an expert in grain markets and agribusiness at Iowa State University. “That said, even with a friendlier administration, they’re going to be fairly complicated mergers. … The companies are emerging to capture more of the agricultural supply chain. They’re not just concentrating on fertilizer

or seeds.”

Look at Dow/DuPont, he said.

Dow is stronger in agricultural chemicals; DuPont, through its DuPont Pioneer division, is stronger in seeds.

“The partner you’re merging with doesn’t do the same (kind of) business that you do,” he said. “That’s what’s different.”

The impact on farmers may not be immediate, Young said — it might be “four, five, six years” before the companies are blended enough to see any benefits of the mergers. “I don’t think it’s going to be … overnight.”

Farmers may see “a mixed bag,” said Hart. “There will be less choice — there will be fewer companies out there competing for your business.”

At the same time, he added, “there’s the potential for more integrated service — my (seed) dealer is also working with my chemical dealer and my fertilizer dealer for the best package to increase agricultural production.”

A study at Texas A&M University found that farmers

and consumers may see higher prices after the mergers; farmers would pay more for seeds and consumers would pay more for the resulting products.

“The DuPont/Dow merger has the greatest potential effects on corn and soybean prices, while the Monsanto/ Bayer merger has the greatest potential effects on seed for cotton,” said Henry Bryant, the study’s lead author and an associate professor in Texas A&M’s Agricultural & Food Policy Center. “The disadvantage (to farmers) would be the reduction in competition, and the increased risk of the merged firm exercising pricing power.”

But they could also see lower fixed costs and overhead, he said, “if the reduction in competition does not lead to exercise of pricing power that overwhelms the cost savings.”

Ironically, the mergers could result in a more diverse industry, the experts said. In order to make the mergers work in the first place, the companies have had to divest

some of their operations — and some of the mergers may lead to the creation of new firms.

After Dow and DuPont merge, for example, the new company plans to split into three: one focusing on agriculture and chemicals; a second working on material sciences such as plastics; and a third concentrating on automobiles and specialty products. This may happen 18 to 24 months after the merger is approved.

At the same time, DuPont offered in February to sell off part of its crop protection business along with its associated research and development in order to expedite European approval of the merger.

ChemChina has offered similar concessions.

“Firms have come up, split up, reorganized — it wouldn’t surprise me if four or five years down the road ... (parts of the merged companies) split off,” Young said.

Contributing: Jeff Mordock, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal; The Associated Press

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TIGHTER BELTS Farmers, financial institutions adjust to a new landscape after the commodity bubble bursts

By Brian Barth

D

AMONA DOYE, AN AGRICULTURAL economist at Oklahoma State University, has been the bearer of a lot of bad news of late. Just a few years ago, the farm economy was booming; 2014 marked the highest farm earnings ever recorded in the U.S., but it’s been downhill for many producers ever since, especially in the commodities and livestock sector.

In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast that 2017 net farm income will drop 8.7 percent from the previous year to the lowest levels seen since 2002, after adjusting for inflation. Additionally, the agency forecasts that farm asset

values will drop 1.1 percent and farm debt will rise 5.2 percent. The debt-to-asset ratio on farms, a basic measure of financial solvency, is at its highest point in 10 years.

When Doye speaks to farm groups about the market trends shaping the rural economy today, her message is essentially this: “Brace yourself — the good times are over.”

The bubble has officially burst.

“People ask me what I can tell them that is optimistic in the short run,” Doye said. “The only optimism I can give them is that at least the rate of decline in farm income and farm land value seems to be slowing down.”

A variety of factors conspired to create a price bubble in agriculture in the late 2000s. Most economists in

the field agree that the trouble trickled down from heavy speculation on the value of corn, which resulted from high demand (and government incentives) for ethanol. When the value of oil dropped precipitously in 2008, ethanol demand quickly shrunk as biofuel became more expensive than petroleum. In 2014, a second drop in the price of crude dashed any notions that the boost in farm income and land value from high corn prices would return in the near term.

What do farmers do when the price of their crops drops? They ponder other possibilities. The problem, of course, is that switching from one mode of production to CO N T I N U E D

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THE DES MOINES REGISTER

In a 1984 photo, members of the Iowa Farm Unity Coalition display posters advertising farms for sale in the rotunda of the Iowa Capitol.

Thousands of farmers lost their land during that era of crisis; while finances are tight now, the situation is not as critical.

another often requires an investment in new equipment, supplies and perhaps land — not to mention the time it takes to get a new operation up and running. That’s when they head to the bank for a loan.

Unfortunately, said Doye, farmers in need of capital are faced with a quickly tightening agricultural credit market. “Loan applicants are challenged both from a cash flow perspective and from an equity perspective,” she said. “Declining land and asset values, which are needed for collateral, have made many farmers less creditworthy in the eyes of lenders.”

The most recent ag credit survey issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City shows just how far the bursting of the commodity bubble has rippled out into the financial industry: Interest rates and collateral requirements are up, while both repayment rates and funds available for loans are down.

Todd Van Hoose, president of the Farm Credit Council, said that during the farm economy boom, commercial banks throughout the country initiated or expanded loan programs geared for agriculture, but that these lenders are disappearing.

“Commercial banks are paring down their exposure to agriculture,”

“At least the rate of decline in farm income and farmland value seems to be slowing down.”

— Damona Doye, agricultural economist, Oklahoma State University

he said. “There is still a strong demand for capital out there, but it takes a pretty good amount of expertise right now to understand how to finance it, whereas in the last 10 years, maybe you didn’t have to know all that much to be successful lending in agriculture. Now you very much have to.”

The Farm Credit Council, a network of 76 local lenders serving half a million customers throughout the country, has focused on rural markets during its 101-year history, giving it expertise in navigating the farm economy. As some lenders got cold feet in recent years, Farm Credit organizations increased their lending to pick up the slack.

Because each one is a customerowned cooperative, their business model is quite different from a conventional bank. Extremely risk-averse, farm credit organizations take great pains to remain wellcapitalized at all times.

“Our mission is to be there in good

times and bad,” said Van Hoose. “As a result, we sit on a lot of capital.

That’s what helps us through these periods.”

Farm Credit’s approach is to work with farmers to help them develop a realistic financial strategy that will be sustainable in the long term.

“Each individual situation is incredibly unique,” said Van Hoose.

“We look several years out and try to understand where the producer’s marketing program is going to take them. For some, taking on a lot more debt right now is probably not a great answer. Instead, they may need to look at how they can reduce expenses. ... It depends on the situation, but there is no question that if you’re a young farmer starting out and trying to expand your operation, it is very, very tough on you right now.”

Beginning farmers who have trouble getting financing through commercial banks or the Farm Credit system have historically turned to

the USDA’s Farm Services Agency, which also has congressionally mandated loan reserves earmarked for female farmers and minorities.

The FSA provides direct loans only to applicants who are unable to qualify for credit elsewhere, but also provides loan guarantees through commercial banks, the Farm Credit system and other lenders.

Jim Radintz, FSA’s deputy administrator for farm loan programs, said he’s seen increased demand for both direct financing and guarantees.

“In fiscal year 2016 (Oct. 1, 2015, to Sept. 30, 2016), we had the highest volume ever in our loan guarantee programs,” he reported.

“Lenders come to us with customers who have had setbacks that prevent them from meeting their loan criteria and are concerned that (the lenders) may have to adversely classify the loan (as risky). The guarantee allows lenders to restructure their borrowers’ debt in a way that will free up some operating capital, increase their liquidity and put their operations on a sounder footing.”

Radintz began his career in the midst of the “Farm Crisis” of the 1980s — when farm-sector debt doubled over a six-year period and 1 in 3 farmers were considered at risk of foreclosure — but he said that while there are many parallels with the current downward trend, there are also promising signs that it will not progress into a similar death spiral. Farmland values have not declined to nearly the same degree, he said, and debt-to-asset ratios are not as high. Also, crop insurance is much more widely used now than in the 1980s, which helps buffer losses.

Doye agreed: Times are tough, but this is not quite another farm crisis.

Like any downturn, there is always a silver lining to be found.

Some farmers, said Doye, are being drawn out of commodities and into specialty crops, many of which are showing excellent returns.

“Where unemployment is low and wages are increasing, people are spending more for things like organic produce,” she said. “The financing needs are much smaller and you can generate much more income per acre with vegetable crops than you can with wheat or corn or livestock.”

Indeed, the Organic Trade Association reported that sales of organic foods have grown by double-digit increments over the past several years, yet organic acreage remains low. That could be a golden opportunity for an aspiring farmer looking to escape the commodities crash.

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BUSINESS Barbara and John Mosher expanded their Montana business, Thompson Falls Feed & Fuel, with a USDA loan.

PAYING FOR PROGRESS ATHENA LONSDALE

USDA funding boosts tough-to-do projects in rural America

By Adam Stone

B

ARBARA AND JOHN MOSHER knew that if they could build an automatic car wash, their Thompson Falls Feed & Fuel business would take off. People who stopped to wash their cars would probably also buy a gallon of milk, a pack of smokes or a sack of animal feed.

The Moshers wanted to be a onestop shop for their small Montana farm town (population 1,430), but they had already borrowed heavily to buy the gas-and-convenience store. Banks weren’t exactly lining up to lend them the $60,000 they needed for the car wash. Then the Montana & Idaho Community

Development Corporation stepped up in 2003, with money borrowed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We were very lucky to partner up with them,” said Barbara Mosher.

“We didn’t have a track record with this business. We had already gotten a loan to get started. So a conventional bank would have scrutinized this very closely and it would have been very, very hard — if we could have gotten a loan at all.”

That push got the Moshers moving in the right direction. Today, the couple owns four businesses and employs 48 people, including six at the Feed & Fuel.

Across rural America, USDA does more than just nurture crops:

It nurtures communities. It also supports electric cooperatives, helps innovators bring agriculture technology to market and builds critical infrastructure in places that utility companies can’t reach.

“It’s almost always more expensive to build infrastructure in rural America. Distance and density are the enemies of cost. Whether it is electricity, broadband service (or) water service, when you have fewer people stretched over a larger area, you have a challenge,” said Jay Fletcher, a spokesman for USDA Rural Development. “We bring costs down so that folks in rural America can enjoy a quality of life that is comparable to what their city cousins share.”

ARCTIC PIPES

It doesn’t get much more remote than Kotzebue, a village of about 4,000 in northwest Alaska. When Daniel Nichols first looked at the water main there, he knew things were bad.

“Their piping was all built back in the 1970s and early 1980s, at a time when people didn’t understand Arctic construction,” said Nichols, who helped direct the replacement of the aging infrastructure as director of facilities for architecture and engineering firm WHPacific. “They didn’t have the best materials, and now things were failing. They keep them pressurized and heated and CO N T I N U E D

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BUSINESS

WHERE THE USDA SPENDS ITS MONEY From a rural Alaskan water main to a Midwest power co-op, the USDA bolsters infrastructure in rural America.

Since 2009, USDA has:

▶ Helped 1.2 million rural Americans buy, refinance or repair their homes.

SUZANNE LONG/DAIRYLAND POWER COOPERATIVE

The Dairyland Power Cooperative in Wisconsin updated antiquated power lines with an $87 million loan from the USDA, improving service for more than 600,000 customers.

the water is constantly circulating, and yet they still were having several dozen freeze-ups a year. Pipes would rupture, they’d have to dig through frozen soil and every time you do a patch, it just weakens the system.”

In 2007, when the local coffers couldn’t support the project, USDA stepped in with almost $2 million in grant funding to close the gap and allow the village to replace its antiquated water infrastructure. During construction, Nichols said, the old main was found to have massive leaks, some 2 inches in diameter.

“These communities have a very, very small tax base and the cost per person to construct anything in Alaska is very, very high. If USDA had not been there, it would have been very difficult to get this project done,” Nichols said.

POWERING UP

USDA also works to ensure the power grid extends out to farms. Last fall, it announced $3.6 billion in loans to fund 82 electric projects in 31 states; in late February, it announced another $202 million in loans to upgrade rural service in nine states, including $14.7 million to pay for Smart Grid technology, which allows utilities to manage their systems more efficiently and reliably. Since 2009, the agency has helped to build more than 185,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines.

Wisconsin-based Dairyland Power Cooperative tapped into that funding, taking an $87 million loan to help pay for upgrades to a system that serves more than 600,000 consumers in four states.

“Our major north-south transmission line is 50 years old (and) it’s on wooden poles that degrade over time, so by upgrading the poles and upgrading the lines, it improves reliability,” said Brian Rude, vice president for external and member relations. “We also need to expand out our equipment, to build new substations to keep up with growth.”

The facts of rural life are such that financing the work through ordinary means was never really an option.

“Investors haven’t wanted to build electric systems in rural America, because they feel they can’t make money. You just have so few members for every mile of line,” added Rude, whose system supports five to seven members per line, compared with 20 in a typical suburb and 30 in the cities.

“It just costs a lot more to build the infrastructure in rural areas,” he said. “Without USDA’s Rural Utilities Service in place, the co-ops would have to go into the private marketplace for funding, which would be more time-consuming, more difficult and ultimately much more expensive.”

BROAD AND DEEP

For the Farmers Conservation Alliance (FCA) in Hood River, Ore., a $529,216 grant from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in 2007 helped turn a good idea into a commercially viable technology for the benefit of the agricultural community.

The problem: Fish get stuck in irrigation systems. That kills the fish — some of which may be protected species — and it fouls the water. Local government officials developed a sophisticated alternative to traditional screens but needed help bringing it to market.

“We needed to build the relationships and connections with state and federal agencies and with the farmers themselves. It takes a lot of work to reach out to all of them,” said FCA Executive Director Julie O’Shea.

USDA funding let them “literally (drive) all over the western United States, attending watershed council meetings, visiting with local officials, meeting with individual irrigators and working with nonprofits,” she said. “It is a very intensive process.”

That investment has paid off. FCA has 50 screens along waterways and is collaborating with more than 20 irrigation districts to develop modernization plans.

“We are working to change the course of irrigation in the United States, and we would not be here without the support of USDA and NRCS,” O’Shea said.

▶ Financed safe, affordable rental housing for hundreds of thousands of seniors, people with disabilities, farm workers and low-income rural families.

▶ Provided high-speed broadband access to 6 million people living in rural areas.

▶ Invested $12 billion in more than 10,500 essential community projects such as schools, hospitals, public safety facilities and community centers.

▶ Provided loans or grants to more than 122,000 rural businesses, supporting more than 791,000 jobs.

▶ Provided $13.9 billion for 5,825 water and wastewater projects, providing safe water to 19.5 million rural residents.

— Adam Stone GETTY IMAGES

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EDUCATION & CAREERS

FARM CREDITS

Supported by USDA funding, students at the University of California-Riverside study plant biology.

USDA provides universities cash, support for teachable moments

By Adam Stone

A

T THE UNIVERSITY OF Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, education around food and nutrition extends far beyond the classroom. Through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed), the school teams with 1,500 organizations in 89 of Illinois’ 102 counties, reaching more than 900,000 individuals.

“Our extension folks will hold cooking classes for kids and parents, showing them how to make nutritious meals, talking about the impact of nutrition on health and trying to get people excited so that they can do those things at home,” said Kim Kidwell, dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.

The program draws its primary funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In colleges and universities nationwide, USDA supports research into food and crops, but its influence runs broader and deeper than that. The agency funds hunger education programs, workforce development initiatives and even infrastructure such as classrooms, labs and other facilities.

The common theme? Helping rural America thrive.

“Many of these schools have fairly small endowments, and we can help by providing financing to build a laboratory or a dormitory or a library,” said Jay Fletcher, a spokesman for USDA Rural Development. “These colleges and universities are critical to ensuring that businesses in rural areas have a talented workforce from which to draw. Nurturing those talents is critical to their economic viability.”

COMMUNITY ASSET

At Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., a $14.3 million fixed-rate, low-interest (2.375 percent) loan in 2015 from USDA helped fund renovation of the J.M. Storzer Athletics, Health and Wellness Center. For an agency best known for its work with crops, building a college gym might seem like a reach, but the CO N T I N U E D

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-RIVERSIDE

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EDUCATION & CAREERS rehab of the 50-year-old facility was critical to the well-being of this rural town.

“If we can have summer camps and high school track meets here, all those people will stay in hotels in town and buy cheeseburgers and visit the local museum. This is economic development,” said Zach Messitte, Ripon College’s president. “There is no possible way we would have found this money without the USDA. No commercial lender would give us this much money for 40 years at such low interest.”

While a new gym may bolster the economy in Ripon, there’s something else farmers want to come out of local colleges and universities: more farmers.

its Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP). Since 2009, the program has invested $126 million in projects targeting new farmers and ranchers. The average farmer today is more than 58 years old, and USDA is eager to ensure a new generation is ready to climb on the tractor.

The agency approaches this goal from a number of directions.

In fall 2016, USDA announced broad efforts to bolster the agricultural workforce, while also supporting the research community. These include ongoing investments in graduate and post-graduate fellowships in food and agriculture research, as well as coordinated

USDA AID FOR COLLEGE AGRICULTURE PROGRAMS, 2016

17.8

FUNDED

MILLION DOLLARS

37

EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS GERMAN CUTZ/UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT EXTENSION

“If we are going to feed 9 billion (people) by 2050, you are going to need to educate individuals in what it takes to become a food producer,” said Cameron Faustman, interim dean of the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources at the University of Connecticut.

UConn has a farmers’ education initiative funded by a $600,000 USDA grant. It will help train new farmers in the basics of agricultural endeavors, including business planning, financial management, overcoming market uncertainties and small-scale production of vegetables and fruit.

In mid-2016, USDA set aside $17.8 million to fund 37 such projects, including UConn’s, through

efforts with the National Science Foundation to create opportunities for Ph.D. students through a new Graduate Research Internship Program.

Further, an investment of $382,650 in four universities will aim to increase the number of women and minority students entering the science, technology, engineering or mathematical side of food and agriculturerelated disciplines.

And in January, USDA announced $8.8 million in funding to support agricultural science education at historically underserved Hispanic Serving Institutions. The grants aim to “attract, retain and graduate outstanding students capable of

Students in the University of Connecticut Extension’s urban agriculture program participate in a local farmers market. Learning the business of farming is part of the program, which has received USDA funding designed to increase the number of farmers. enhancing the nation’s food, agricultural, natural resource and human sciences workforce.”

All these efforts are critical to the academic community — and ultimately to the health of the agricultural workforce.

“For somebody who has not been raised on a farm or ranch but who is interested in doing that, we want to help them to get there,” Faustman said. “They need to know how to get hold of land; they need to know how to get capital; they need to know how to produce food and how to produce things in an environmentally sustainable way.”

FRUIT RESILIENCE

While shoring up infrastructure and bolstering the workforce are critical points of engagement, USDA still is best known on campus for the money it provides for scientific research. At the University of CaliforniaRiverside, this takes several forms, most notably a $5.1 million grant to study disease in citrus trees.

“Florida citrus production is down more than 60

percent because of disease, and California is scared,” said Michael Pazzani, UC-Riverside’s vice chancellor for research and development.

The government’s money helps support the citrus research, as well as explorations into the quality of grapes and investigations into an emerging beetle infestation affecting avocado production.

“Last year, USDA provided 13 percent of the research funds this university received,” Pazzani said.

“In some ways we have a common mission. USDA doesn’t do research, but it is responsible for making sure there is an environment in which agriculture can thrive in this country. We work with USDA to provide the services that make that possible.”

Given the depth and breadth of USDA’s engagement, colleges and universities would seem to be on solid footing. But some worry the relationship could be strained if the Trump administration fills promises to de-emphasize the government’s investment in research of interest to farmers, such as climate change.

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EDUCATION & CAREERS

BEYOND THE BARN Agriculture careers don’t always mean a life in the fields

Erin Ehnle

Brown

By Gina Harkins

E

RIN EHNLE BROWN WAS just a kid when she got a taste for entrepreneurship.

Brown and her siblings ran her family’s vegetable stand, selling sweet corn every summer on their Illinois farm. Years later, she’s applying the knowledge she acquired there to her agriculture photography and graphic design business.

Jobs in agriculture often conjure up visions of livestock, cornfields and tractors. But Brown, Pamela Hess, who gets chefs and farmers to work together, and David Eby, who runs an agriculture aviation company, are proving that the industry offers diverse career paths.

“It feels good to help a farmer out — in some situations, saving his crop when he has no other alternative,” Eby said. “Being able to serve and help people has been my biggest satisfaction.”

Here’s how people like Brown, Eby and others are helping farmers succeed.

Erin Ehnle Brown started a Facebook page when she was 19 to help educate the public about family-run farms. She now visits cattle, dairy and agriculture farms across the country to photograph farmers at work.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY ERIN EHNLE BROWN

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EDUCATION & CAREERS David Eby, shown here with his family, has worked in agriculture aviation since the early 1970s. His family’s company services fields across the Midwest from their headquarters in Indiana.

David Eby

PROVIDED BY DAVID EBY

‘THE LENS OF A FARM GIRL’

Brown was a 19-year-old community college student when she became fed up with the negative portrayal of farmers in the media. Growing up on Grand Vale Farm in Edelstein, Ill., Brown was surrounded by families she saw pour their hearts and souls into farming.

“I hope they see “To be portrayed as this big industrial giant the love we have with no feelings, only for our work, the out to make a buck, just broke my heart,” she said. land, our animals “Our land is everything.

It gets passed down from and each other.” generation to generation.”

— Erin Ehnle Brown Determined to show others what she saw, Brown, her Canon 20D camera in tow, captured beautiful images of her family’s farm fields in 2012. She uploaded the photos to a Facebook page she created titled “Keeping it Real: Through the Lens of a Farm Girl.”

Within days, Brown had thousands of followers and was giving radio interviews.

Once she finished college, she launched her own company called Grand Vale Creative (grandvaleco.com). Her work has appeared on Agweek TV and has been displayed

at the John Deere world headquarters in Illinois, she said.

Brown travels the country to show off the beauty of other farms. She hopes her images — from strawberry fields in Florida to dairy farms in Texas — remind the public of the existence of the hardworking families who run many of the nation’s farms.

“I hope they see the love we have for our work, the land, our animals and each other,” she said.

LIFE ABOVE THE CROPS

Eby always wanted to be a pilot, but when the 1970s energy crisis hit, there weren’t a lot of jobs in commercial aviation.

After buying his own Cessna 188 AG Pickup, Eby and his wife, Denise, launched AgriFlite Services Inc. (agriflite.com) in Indiana in 1973. For decades, they’ve serviced corn, soybean, wheat and blueberry crops across states including Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

It’s an exciting — and sometimes dangerous — mission. Agriculture aviators fly low when spraying fields and must carefully scout out any difficult-to-see obstacles that could get in their way. Pilots typically circle the field before they get to work in order to assess the hazards, but Eby said occasionally a wire or pole in a farmer’s field can be

tough to spot on the first pass.

“It has its risks, but if you do your proper training and your preliminary evaluation of the field before you go into it, that helps a lot,” he said.

And companies like AgriFlite must treat fields with the correct products. If an organic field is mistakenly sprayed with pesticide, a farmer could lose his organic rating for years, Eby said. He said that he has not made such a mistake, but he knows others who have.

“It is a serious concern because of the financial ramifications to the grower and applicator,” Eby said. “If the field is mistakenly sprayed, it will start a five- to seven-year reset. As one can imagine, it would create a number of legal and monitory issues.”

For most of his career, Eby, 68, said he relied on county plat books, which outline rural properties, to locate or verify the property lines of farmers’ fields. With AgriFlite’s mission to ensure every application is done safely and effectively, he said, pilots needed a better mapping system. So he created another company, called AgSync.

Instead of relying on potentially outdated and human-drawn property lines, Eby and his AgSync team can leverage more-detailed maps and the corresponding information entered about specific fields when planning their flights. For example, a farmer might have five different crops on his or her property, and AgSync helps the farmer see the boundaries of each field so the appropriate treatment is applied. AgSync also helps them see their flight paths, determine the number of acres they need to treat, and track the pilot’s progress in real time.

“We were one of the first ones to ever use Google Maps,” Eby said.

Now, when farmers request that a field be sprayed, Edy uses AgSync to create safe routes for the pilots. That flight plan can be CO N T I N U E D

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EDUCATION & CAREERS Chefs and farmers gather at a matchmaking event in Washington, D.C. Pamela Hess helped organize the event to build relationships between local chefs and farmers.

PROVIDED BY MOLLY M. PETERSON

transmitted to an aircraft within seconds so pilots know exactly where they’re headed.

Farmers can then track the pilot’s progress via computer or smartphones so they know when the work is complete.

“Our biggest goal is to make sure the pilot gets to the right fields, make sure things are done correctly and everyone has documentation,” Eby said.

THE MATCHMAKER

Pamela Hess

Chefs and farmers don’t always run in the same circles. That’s why Pamela Hess, the executive director of the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture in Alexandria, Va., organizes matchmaking events for the two groups. The most recent meetup took place at a nearby Washington, D.C., brewery earlier this year.

Hess knew a lot of farmers and chefs from her previous work as a writer for a food magazine. When she started working at Arcadia in 2013, she wanted to connect the groups so chefs could put fresh ingredients from local farmers on restaurant menus.

“Everybody talks a good game about

important factor in business relationships. wanting to locally source, but it’s hard,” “If farmers and chefs meet and like each she said. “I wanted to help both sides other, they’ll move mountains to make it understand the pressures on the other.” work,” she said.

Chefs, for example, need to be able And it does. Red Apron Executive Chef to control their costs and turn away Nathan Anda of Washington, D.C., bought an deliveries that don’t meet their standards, entire lamb from Heritage Hess said. But farmers Hollow Farms, based in facing already low profit Sperryville, Va.; Centrolina margins could take a real “Everybody talks a chef Amy Brandwein, also hit if their food is turned in Washington, bought 46 away. good game about dozen eggs from Rainbow The key to breaking wanting to locally Hill Farm in Charles Town, through those chalW.Va. lenges, Hess said, was source, but it’s The annual event has relationship-building. At hard.” been going on since the events, participants 2013, and this year’s was wear color-coded name — Pamela Hess Arcadia’s largest yet. The tags indicating whether nonprofit produces free they’re farmers or chefs. toolkits (arcadiafood.org/ Arcadia also provides farmer-chef) so groups in communities participants with a list of suggested matches across the U.S. can hold similar events, Hess based on what they grow, what they’re said. looking to buy and where they’re located.

“It’s easy to do,” she said. “Anything that Because Hess knows many of the farmers can unite chefs and farmers around the and chefs personally, she also takes into foods that they grow is good.” account participants’ personalities — an

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FROM FARMS TO FORESTS USDA covers more types of ground than you’d think

By Elizabeth Neus

C

ONSERVATIONISTS WORRIED ABOUT THE U.S. national forests in the early 1870s, fearing that thieves were stripping away timber and hunters were killing too many animals.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture began monitoring the state of the

forests until the job was given to the Department of the Interior in 1891. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, an avid outdoorsman, gave those duties back to the USDA and its forestry experts, creating the Forest Service.

Today, the Forest Service manages hundreds of millions of acres of land, ensuring it is maintained in a sustainable manner, kept safe for

human visitors and resident fauna and remains a reliable source of drinking water and wood without draining resources.

The Forest Service’s fire specialists also take care of the dangerous work of preventing and battling forest fires, a duty that now uses more than half of the agency’s budget — up from 16 percent just 22 years ago.

HERE’S A LOOK AT THE AGENCY The Forest Service manages 193 million acres, including 154 national forests and 20 grasslands in 43 states and Puerto Rico. It also supports 1.3 billion acres of non-federal land — public, private and tribal.

BUDGET $4.9 billion proposed for fiscal year 2017

PEOPLE ▶ More than 35,000 employees ▶ More than 109,000 volunteers ▶ 192 million people visit Forest Service properties annually

MOST FAMOUS EMPLOYEE Smokey Bear

TIMBER In fiscal year 2016, the Forest Service sold $186.5 million worth of timber and similar products.

TOP FIVE MOST VALUABLE WOODS 1. Douglas fir, $42 million 2. Southern yellow pine, $27.7 million 3. White fir, $7.7 million 4. Ponderosa pine, $7.5 million 5. Black cherry, $7 million

LARGEST NATIONAL FOREST Tongass National Forest Alaska, 16.7 million acres

SMALLEST NATIONAL FOREST Tuskegee National Forest Alabama, 11,349 acres

OLDEST NATIONAL FOREST Shoshone National Forest Wyoming, 1891

NEWEST NATIONAL FOREST Finger Lakes National Forest New York, 1983 U.S. FOREST SERVICE; ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

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