A2B-Uncaster Fanning, Saturday, August 2,1986
BY EVERETT NEWSWANGER
Managing Editor portunity to buy land. Un-
HARRISBURG - According to fortunately a lot of farmers
John Nikoloff, executive assistant leveraged according to the high
to Pennsylvania’s secretary of rolling land values. Then about
agriculture, we have a situtation 1975 the federal government
where especially in the last 15 decided to bring the economy back
years the greatest influences in into the speed limit so they
agriculture have not originated in slammed on the brakes. And a lot
the ag sector of the economy, of farmers hit the windshield.
Speaking last week at the Penn- 1 Some of them still haven’t
sylvania Seedmen’s Association recovered. And a lot of them have
summer meeting in the state ag gone out of business.”
building, Nikoloff likened the ag “Five years later we started
economy to a roller coaster going changing the system again. In
-90 miles an hour—over the speed terest rates went up. Deficits
limit. started growing. And farm in-
“In 1969 to’7o fed. policy decided vestors took advantage of this
we were going to double our money situation. But soon the value of the
supply,” he said. “And of course dollar increased abroad. And
farm prices more than doubled at subsequently farm products
that time. Things were looking became harder to export. We had
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Nikoloff Tells Seedmen Outside Influences
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good and farmers took the op-
Rt. 897 North - Gap, PA 17527
increased farm production costs.
Decreased selling prices. And land
prices started dropping while
surpluses started piling up. The
results of this new situation can be
seen on the news every night,”
Nikoloff said.
“I can’t think of another
business that is getting as much
coverage from the national press
as agriculture. Of course, we
should understand that while
Pennsylvania has many of the
same farm problems as the
midwest, we also have many
advantages. We are very diver
sified on smaller farms. Our farm
prices didn’t take quite the roller
coaster rides on milk, meet and
vegetables as the grain prices. In
addition, the urban sprawl has
kept land prices from taking the
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huge drop as in many other areas.
And of course our farmers are just
naturally more financially con
servative. Our farmers have not
extended themselves as much as
midwest farmers have done. The
farm credit situation that you hear
so much about in the western
states is not really evident in
Pennsylvania. Farm credit is not
all that bad a situation. The major
farm credit lenders don’t have a
crisis in Pennsylvania. We don’t
have a serious forclosure problem.
We are going to lose some farms
but that’s not new.”
“Over the last 50 years we’ve
been losirtg 50 percent of otir dairy
farms in Pennsylvania every 20
years. So we expect to lose farms.
Twenty-five years ago we had
106,000 farms. Today we have
about 53,000. So we’ve lost half our
farms in the last 25 years. But our
production has more than doubled.
And our farm cash income has
gone up more than four times,”
Nikoloff said. “So something is still
going right. We are the largest non
irrigated ag state in production
and food processing. We have
more than a dozen food categories
where Pennsylvania ranks as the
leading state. And while we see the
number of farms decreasing yet
the amount of cropland being
farmed is increasing. In addition,
we are increasing our share of the
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markets in the northeast. And to
show our growing self-sufficiency
we became a grain surplus state in
1984 and 1985 for the first time in
our history.”
“Agriculture supports 1,900
related farm business and supply
companies with 12,000 employees.
In addition, 3,000 manufacturing
firms with 300,000 employees
support agriculture. Two thousand
five hundred wholesale businesses
and 30,000 retail establishments
make up the ag-related economy.
So you can see how important ag
is. And we can’t increase or
maintain our position in production
agriculture without these support
business,” Nikoloff said.
One of the very interesting points
that Nikoloff made was to show
that in Pennsylvania where the
most urban pressure exists we
have had the most growth in
agriculture. This is especially true
in the southeastern part of the
state. It’s also the area where we
have the strongest support
businesses and the strongest
financial institutions that take an
interest in ag lending.
Nikoloff concluded that over one
million people have jobs in ag and
related industries. That’s 21
percent of the state work force. So
obviously maintaining a healthy
agriculture is a top priority of the
state.