On behalf of the 50 million people that call rural America home and the millions that rise every day to produce the food and fuel this country runs on, I want to express my concern that our farmers are not only becoming fewer, but are getting poorer and older.Today’s average farmer is 57 years old. There is a 20% decline in farmers under 25 and a 30% increase in farmers over 75. People living in rural America are less well-educated and have lower incomes than those in the cities. It’s time for this department to focus on a strategy that will take rural America and farming to the next level.

Six basic steps to rural upliftment:
1. Enhance productivity and products
This department must focus its research and development on ensuring that we do the best job we can. Not only should we increase productivity, but also up the quality of what farmers produce.

2. Prioritise food-safety
We should protect our market from a food-safety perspective.

3. Expanding local markets
We must expand our domestic market of locally grown and consumed goods. We already have this wonderful programme called ‘Know your farmer, know your food’. Yet, in far too many rural communities in this country, there are no grocery stores, no way to buy fruit, vegetables and quality meat.

4. Expanding global markets
We should expand overseas markets, by enforcing existing agreements and finding new opportunities, both bilateral and multilateral. This is why we support free-trade agreements that are fair to all concerned.
This strategy must not follow a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather allow for differences between countries. It used to be about tariffs, but now it is about the sanitary and technical issues countries are raising, which make it either easier or more difficult to trade.

So, we at the US agriculture department (USDA) have to provide technical assistance to countries to better understand and appreciate our sophisticated approaches. Our trade strategy also has to focus on biotechnology and creating a better understanding of its environmental benefits, such as less damage to the environment, and greater productivity at a time when the world’s population continues to expand and the available land for productivity shrinks.
5. Exploring secondary businesses We need to focus on value-added opportunities. Energy presents an enormous opportunity for this country. We can become far less dependent on foreign energy sources if we pool agriculture’s power, either in terms of crop production, crop residue, forests or biomass.
This is part of the USDA’s mission to create opportunities for farmers to be competitive on the market, and to create a market for crop residue.
Other secondary avenues should also be explored. Say a farmer wants to lease his land to someone for the use of the windmill on the land, remember that someone has to manufacture that windmill. There are 8 800 parts to a windmill – parts that could have been manufactured locally, within the rural community, rather than shipped in from overseas.
Even if we do all the above, we still have to take care of farming families who rely on off-farm income to enable them to keep farming. The Recovery and Reinvestment Act will invest over US billion (R68 billion) in grants and loans to expand broadband in rural America. This will bring 21st century technology to the remotest areas of this country, to enable small businesses to expand their markets globally.

6. Adding value through natural resources. Lastly, for too long we’ve ignored the opportunities our national resources present. They are great economic drivers, not just the conservation programmes, but the opportunities they create for hunting, fishing and recreation. A strong rural economy creates off-farm income for everyone. – Roelof Bezuidenhout     |fw