Seminar Teaches Optimism Tempered By Realism
In 30 years, farmers who have
raised crops in the area have
never known a weather disaster.
Brazilians are adapting to the
latest technology and are learn
ing to maximize the free irriga
tion by double cropping
soybeans followed by corn in the
same season.
■ Brazil holds about 225 mil
lion arable acres, with only 10-
20 percent of that being farmed
today, but a frenzy of expansion
continues to increase. Compare
their acreage with the U.S.,
which plants 60 to 72 million
acres of soybeans in the U.S. an
nually.
■ The U.S. is not the lowest
cost producer. Brazilians are
cost effective in everything.
The smallest Brazilian farm
ers farm 6,000 acres and large
farmers 30,000 acres. Using
modern equipment, Brazil can
produce crops much more eco
nomically. Former transporta
tion problems are being solved.
Rivers are the roads that need
no asphalt or steel. Water routes
have cut costs on imported ferti
lizer and on shipping out soy-
LOU ANN GOOD
Lancaster Farming Staff
LANCASTER (Lancaster
Co.) Don’t underestimate the
competition.
Threatening words, but real
ity for farmers who are jockey
ing for position in a global
economy.
Marcia Zarley Taylor, editor
of “Top Producer,” a business
magazine for executive farmers,
said at the agri-educational sem
inar sponsored by First Union
Bank last week, that the Brazi
lian frontier is impacting U.S.
agriculture more than any other
influence in the past 20 years.
Two years ago, Taylor took
her first trip to the Brazilian in
terior. What she saw opened her
Marcia Taylor’s insight dispelled the common myths
that have clouded American agriculture and given the
U.S. soybean industry such a sudden and cruel across
the-board price jolt since 1997.
David Orr explains complicated financial
man’s language.
eyes to many myths that the
U.S. agriculture community ac
cepts as truth.
Brazil, the size of 48 continen
tal U.S. states, is not a wasteland
as previously viewed. Treat the
soil with phosphate and lime
and they produce 40 bushels of
soybeans per acre. Land is being
cleared for planting at amazing
speed. Two men can clear an av
erage of 100 acres daily.
A second trip Taylor took to
Brazil confirmed the following
realities:
■ It’s not soil quality but
water that counts.
Brazil has 80 percent of the
world’s fresh water supplies
with 50-80-inches falling during
the growing season, which is like
free irr ition.
charts in lay-
beans.
“Transportation improve
ments are geared for exports. All
expansion will go to global mar
kets,” Taylor said.
■ Brazil has displaced France
as the world’s largest poultry ex
porter in recent years.
“There is no reason why pork
can’t be next,” Taylor said. De
spite textbook theories that hogs
couldn’t be raised in the tropics
because confinement would
cause respiratory infections,
Brazilians are raising hogs and
chickens without problems with
respiratory diseases.
Of the hog facility Taylor vis
ited, she said, “It was the
cleanest, best smelling one I’ve
ever visited.”
Taylor challenged the audi
ence to be cost effective in every
thing and to guard the
homegrown market with care.
Despite the opposition, Taylor
believes, the U.S. has the poten
tial to exploit value-added pro
duce.
The economic outlook, mar
keting, and federal policy
changes were addressed by G.
David Orr, vice president and
chief economist for First Union;
Participants at Agriculture 2000, from left, are John Blanchfield, G. David Orr,
Sarah Boyd, David Kohl, Marcia Taylor, Jennifer Zimmerman, Darvin Boyd,
Ronald Hanson, and H. Louis Moore.
“Food represents national security. Do we want our
food imported?” asks Dr. David Kohl.
H. Louis Moore, ag economics
professor; and David Kohl, ag
economics professor.
Orr revealed how economic
predictions can be misleading
when they are based on wrong
statistics. Orr explained the rea
sons he believes that the econ
omy will continue to thrive but
slow down.
Moore said that while the
overall economy has experi
enced the largest economic
growth ever, agriculture has
faced obstacles of drought, fickle
export markets, and flunctuat
ing grain and livestock supplies.
Any improvement in ag prices
since the beginning of the
decade is due to drough.
Moore injected humor by tell
ing farmers who want better
prices to “pray for drought else
where.”
Although Pennsylvanian
farmers receive only one percent
of government payments, what
happens nationwide affects
them.
For example, last year farm
income nationwide was the
second best in income during the
19905. However 39 percent of
that income was from govern
ment and emergency payments.
Take away those payments and
the income would be the worse
year instead of one of the best.
An election year shows
promise of helping farmers be
cause farmers are in bad shape
and politicians will want to ap
pease them.
European trade barriers re
flect the European Union’s in
ability to compete economically
with the rest of the world. Moore
sees this as a delay tactic that
will disappear with time.
Kohl challenged, “Food rep
resents national security. Do we
want our food imported?”
A new mindset of agri
entreupreneurers are needed to
offset farm prices. Kohl said
that too much electronic clutter
causes people to focus on what’s