Crop Acreage Responses?

Most people in America have never thought about where their food comes from or even talked to a farmer or rancher. Of that handful who have, even fewer have ever stepped foot onto a farm or ranch.The film “Farmland” takes an interestingly angled look into the lives of six farmers and ranchers in their twenties who are all entirely responsible for their operations. This paper takes a more in-depth look at three; Ryan Veldhuizen, Sutton Morgan, and Margaret Schlass.

There used to be a lot more farmers, each one with a smaller farm, but growing quite a few different products like corn, wheat, hay, barley, oats, etc. Today there are a lot less farmers, but about the same amount of land is being farmed. Each farmer has a much bigger acreage to cultivate. Now each farmer specializes in one product. This way each farmer is more efficient in what they grow.. The most produced commodities are grains, oil seeds, dried beans and peas at 42%, other crops and hay account for another 31%. Now, most products are enhanced of fertilizers and pesticides, although there is an increasing demand for organic products which are overall more

This article written in the Texas Agriculture, a magazine published by the Texas Farm Bureau, is about all the factors impacting farmers that effect their income. Over the past couple years, a combination of things has caused the average Texas farmers income to drop. The primary audience for this article is the farmers in Texas as they are experiencing these issues first hand. The secondary audience would be consumers who have noticed price fluctuations in products at the store and are wondering the reason.

There is a market trend of supply and demand in an economy and this is measured through the equilibrium process and the actors that affect supply and demand. The farmers are the market suppliers and hence they determine their produce by measuring the equilibrium market prices and quantities. The suppliers are aware that when the prices of commodity increases the demand of the same commodity decrease and when demand increases supply decreases until the market reaches an equilibrium point. There are various factors that affect

The rising costs of land and the simultaneous costs of water make it so 30% of farm households have negative income. The cost of sustainability, such a new tilling methods and access to water, also strains farms. This often leads to farmers self-exploiting themselves to try to generate the most crops possible and cultivate their land to the fullest extent.

Mayan civilization underwent massive developments in agriculture and within their society. According to historian Sylvanus Griswold Morley, Maya Maize agricultural practices have remained the same as they were over three thousand years ago. (Morley 128) A uncomplicated process of felling the forest, burning dried trees and bushes, planting, and switching up the spots of the cornfields every few years. This system is known as the milpa agriculture, pulled from the Aztec word for cornfield. Agricultural tools were fire-hardened, the Maya xul, a pointed planting stick, the baat, a stone axe, chim, a fiber bag for carrying the seed corn. At first, they used sticks to punch holes into the ground, but progressively obtained more advanced farming techniques. Their main crops they grew were maize (corn), beans, squash, avocados, chili peppers, pineapples, papayas, and cocoa, which was used for

Understanding the different agricultural sectors practice in Wisconsin is crucial in understanding how the drought affected the ebonies of scale. Farming practiced can be broadly placed under two categories; Livestock farming and Crop farming. The relationship between the two levels of farming, can affect one sector in terms of productivity. To illustrate this, the production of short corn dropped by 17%, this translates to 90 million bushels. Short corn is fed on milk producing livestock such as cows and so the overall implication is that milk production would be lower than the previous years (Boyes and Micheal 45).

In this research essay the article “Farmers Get Biggest Subsidy Check in Decade as Prices drop,” written by Alan Bjerga. The article brings forward the pressing issues of the agriculture downturn of prices in the United States of America. The article reviews crop surplus and reduced income in terms of the drop of agriculture prices. The article also touches on the fact that the united sates of America agriculture system needs more aid to provide safety for net farmers.

(167). Heavy taxes on agriculture leads to low productivity and low output (Dennis). New technology is not as efficient: “The heavy harvesting equipment that now does the work of the harvesting has left larger amounts of grain in the field…” (Holthaus 135). Holthaus describes the loss of access to the markets as a result of more contacting and the “growing influence of transnational megacorporations.” Farmers are no longer in control of agriculture; they have little say in what crops to grow and have to listen to the contracted company. Farmers no longer farm for the market, they farm to be able to pay the bank or to meet a contract with a company (167). When farmers decide to contract, they become another worker in the industrial system of agriculture. Farmers lose their markets, which are taken over by large corporations; and lose a percentage of their profit (Holthaus 150). According to “American Farms Keep Growing: Size, Productivity, and Policy,” about 30% of American farms have any significant farm production. 6 percent of all farms account for three-fourths of US farm output.The loss of political power and influence is due to less farmers and their families living on the land, aswell as, less people living in rural communities, which means that they have less authority and voting powers (167). The health of

Human societies since the beginning of time have probably committed more land to Agricultural production than for any other purpose. Demand for land especially for Agricultural production in many parts of the globe is on the increase. Studies have revealed that the rise in demand for food to feed the world’s teaming population, the increased demand for agricultural output to produce alternative energy, high agricultural product prices are amount other factors that have caused a surge in the demand for agricultural land globally.

The agriculture industry in the United States is full of uncertainty. John F. Kennedy gave an unique perspective of the farmer when he spoke in 1960 while running for the presidency, “For the farmer, is the only man in our economy who has to buy everything he buys at retail - sell everything he sells at wholesale - and pay the freight both ways” (Peters & Woolley, n.d., para. 33). In agriculture, commodity prices are affected by external forces such as weather patterns, national and international economic conditions, national and international demand, and the value of the dollar. The impact of the value of the dollar on the agricultural industry is wide spread and potentially detrimental. In the 1980s, the United States was devastated by a farm crisis that rocked the Midwest. The strong U.S. dollar was a key player in the crisis that bankrupted many farmers (Fite, 1992). Alternatively, a weak dollar positively impacts the agricultural industry by increasing exports and improving the competitive advantage of the farmers.

Breamer, J. (2009). Demand for corn and soybeans continue in 2010. High Plains Journal, (53), Retrieved from http://www.hpj.com/archives/2009/dec09/dec28/1228CropOutlookwspeakerpicj.cfm

When I began reading “Lehigh Acres” by Spencer Fleury I immediately noticed a dark, ominous tone that carried through to the end. This bleakness can be seen through the connotations of the words that Fleury uses such as; “ruins”, “empty”, and “indifferent”. The use of negatively associated words gives the reader an idea of what Lehigh Acres feels like. Going hand in hand with this tone was a strong theme of the emptiness and loneliness of human civilization. Throughout the work Fleury does an excellent job of using the juxtaposition of common suburban characteristics with the qualities of an abandoned or ghostly town to emphasize this theme. Although the overall work demonstrates this theme one line specifically stuck with me, “it was easy

Coxe has studied the sector for more than 35 years as a strategist for BMO Financial Group. He says it didn’t have to come to this. “We’ve got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output.”

Political factors impact the agricultural sector in factors relating to regulation, distribution, and consumption of foods in a given country. Government policies and imposed regulations have a direct effect on nutritional choices that a consumer makes, and this, in turn, affects the agriculture market (KPMG, 2012). For example, policies governing food prices or the amount of information that a consumer will receive affects the choice of the consumer. Food regulation and safety measures implemented influence the supply of food products, and ultimately determines the market choice for consumers (KPMG, 2012). Economic factors have a direct effect on the agricultural industry. On one hand, the input cost such as the price of seeds, fertilizers, and cost of labor affect the productivity of the industry. The economic status of a country also affects the industry’s productivity. For example, in developing countries, the agricultural sector is less developed owing to limited resource input and poor infrastructure (KPMG, 2012).