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Farmer's Greatest Enemy?

T

Tom OConnor

Member
What do you fella's think is the greatest enemy to todays farmers?
After attending the largest farm show that I have ever been to in Ireland last September I am convinced that our biggest threat is not terrorist or other people with guns but the knife and fork on our table. Watching people in their late nineties walk all day long over a 700 acre farm show and never seeing a wheel chair, ATV, motorized scooter or golf cart and comparing it with shows in this country I think that we really need to be careful of that knife and fork. We are loosing many long before their time. I say this because in my lifetime I have never had a problem chasing ladies of sporting morality, alcohol, tobacco, gambling or a lot of other things but I sure have never stopped the fight with my appetite. I do know farmers with several million dollars of equipment but the one thing that they do not have is a treadmill and if they do have one, you can tell from the road that they are not using it.
 
The same as everyone else: Ourselves
I'm on the go a lot getting up and down off tractors,handling firewood,and probably walk close to a mile a day doing various things.Why would I need a treadmill? BTW I'm in my 60's the doctor said my heart sounds better than most of the 30 year olds that he checks.
 
Their banker. Not many farms are on solid ground . Most are in debt above their eyes. What happens when the interest rates start to climb? I remember the early 80s. Was a blood bath around here. Banks pulled the rug out from under a lot of guys. Hope some guys paid down debt when corn and beans were high. Might be a tough road for awhile.
 
Misinformation and fads.

"Orgainc is better" "GMO will kill you" "Farmers abuse all of their animals" "Eating meat will kill you" and the list goes on.
 
Just an observation: Farmers themselves are also getting older. Forty years ago the average age of a farmer was maybe around 40 or younger. Most older farmers were retired by 65.

Today the average farmer is closer to 60 and the younger people are employees.
 
There's one guy here must weigh 300+ lbs. Everything he does is done with a machine. If something needs to be lifted or moved, the skid loader with an attachment, the forklift, or the tractor loader does it. Hay is baled and left in blocks by the accumulator and picked up and placed on the trailer by a grapple and put in and taken out of the barn the same way. All grain handling is done automatically from the dump pit to the dryer to the bin to back out on the truck. Drives the UTV to the mailbox. Might I add all this machinery plus the new buildings he put up so that the machinery could do everything has him in debt up to his eyeballs in his early 60s. Oh, and he hires all his repairs done, too.
 
Not just farmers. I like to eat, and my wife likes to cook. A bad combination. While in the Philippines, and Japan serving uncle sam I didn't see many fat people. If you saw what they eat you can guess why. During the winter I put on a few pounds, but burn them off when I do my discing and mowing jobs. My Grandpa was a large man, who I never net. Mom told me he had a hart attack and died rather young. He was a farmer in ND. This country does have a problem over eating. Just take a look at kids in school. I hardly ever see kids out anymore playing, or riding bikes. Growing up, about the only time I went in the house was lunch or dinner, or if I hurt myself. The electronic stuff is nice, but it keeps this country on our butts. If I didn't have this computer I would be outside now. Stan
 
Too much rain, not enough rain. In our case it's usually too much. The rest is a gravy train compared to that.
 

Roger I agree with you 100%. The mechanical issues involved with farming work themselves out. Someone will always farm the land. It's misinformation being fed to city people that will take us independent farmers down if we aren't diligent about defending ourselves.

A good example affecting my area is a lawsuit being filed by the city of Des Moines against three northwest Iowa counties, my county included concerning excessive nitrates in the river they draw their water from. I haven't read the details of this lawsuit yet so I don't know what the intentions are or who they are suing within the counties. It made a big splash in the Des Moines Register and broadcast media so now every city person in the area is thinking we farmers in this area are evil people who are dumping nitrates willy nilly into the watershed. Farmers in this area are very responsible about erosion control and proper manure and fertilizer application. We can't convince the citiods of that because the news media is always right!
 
Like fertilizer is so cheap you can afford to let half of it run off into the watershed, right? People need to think about what they are saying before they start making accusations. Of more concern to me would be the far more numerous applications of fertilizer and pesticides to lawns.
 
There was a "Letter to the editor" one time,some woman complaining about irrigation. How the farmers around here were running it 24/7,even in the rain,even after harvest. Well,yea,in the rain if a crop needs two inches and the forecast is for a quarter inch,but all the time,even after harvest? Those pumps don't run off glitter and unicorns.
You knew full well what she wrote was just regurgitating some extremist environmental garbage she had read.
 
Yup, around here they fertilize lawns every months, the petllets get all over the drive way and road next to the lawn, then it rains and washes the fertilizer into the storm drains?
 
To those of you who are referencing the citiots, environmentalists and such, you are so right.

I'm on the board of directors' of the Minnesota Agricultural Interpretive Center (commonly called Farmamerica) near Waseca. Website is www.farmamerica.org.

We are a non-profit trying to do multiple tasks to inform the public about many aspects of agriculture and what it means to them. In other words farmers aren't inherently bad, don't abuse animals, don't haphazardly use fertilizer, and weed killer, etc. Of course as a non-profit we are not able to do all we talk about, but I believe we are making progress.

Please check out the website and spread the word and if you're in the area, stop in and get first hand info on our mission.

I don't know if this is totally true, but based on who mentioned it I have no reason to doubt it. The story goes that an area Farm Broadcaster had a friend who knew a farmer who sold beef directly to consumers. A consumer came to get beef and asked the farmer to see the animal she would get beef from. The farmer showed her and she asked, "How long does it take the animal to grow back the beef you will be selling me?" Seems hard to believe, but points out that the true aspects of everything connected to agriculture needs to be continually told.
 
What I am talking about here is your overall health and not your livelihood. We will all live through the weather, government regulations, bankers, poor prices, urban sprawl and what others think about us. What I am trying to fight off is diabetes, massive coronaries, cardio vascular disease, strokes and a multitude of other things that can take you out permanently before your time.
 
Is a need to always blame someone else for our problems a cause or a symptom of our problems? LOL.
 
In that case,I'd say it's as much genetic and hereditary as anything else. Everything you bring up health wise seems to be applicable in every part of society. It used to be that poor folks were skinny. Just look at pictures of people during the depression. I get a kick out of the part in the movie Sargent York,where they're all wanting to dance with the fat girl because they just didn't have any around in the hills where everybody was so poor. Now with food stamps and inactivity,it's hard to find a low income person who isn't fat,unless they're sick. At least up here in the north country.
If you're genetically predisposed to diabetes,cancer,what have you,I think you're probably more likely than average to be afflicted with it no matter what you do for a living.
 
Sensible living, using common sense in regards to your health can go a long way, no guarantee with anything in life, but why err on the side of stupidity, laziness and lack of discipline ?
 
Health? Yes you should eat responsibly, but what does that mean?

My maternal grandfather was the picture of health. Never smoked,drank, ate, carried on anything to excess. Eating lots of grains low fat low sugar diet long before it was known to be the "right" way to live. He dropped dead of a massive heart attack Christmas eve 1980 at age of 64. His wife, my Grandmother is still doing well at 96.

My paternal Grandparents lived into there early 80's. Morbidly obese,by todays standards, drank to excess, smoked and in general raised cain i.e. had a great time. Grandma died as a result of falling on the ice and breaking a hip. Grandpa developed pneumonia after a bout with the flu. Both in general where in good health and active until they died.

I think genetics has as much to do with it as lifestyle.
 
(quoted from post at 13:22:11 01/14/15) What do you fella's think is the greatest enemy to todays farmers?
Click to expand...

Taxes, over regulation and ridiculous laws. Might not apply everywhere but it sure does here.
 
+1

I know 2 people who died of food bourne illness'. Both ate ONLY "organic".

And;

Healthiest people I know eat a BALANCED DIET, practice MODERATION with everything they eat or do. But they eat essentially whatever they want.

Ewell Gibbons ate ONLY healthy natural foods. He died of a massive heart attack.

My wife's mother and father drank like a pair of fish, both smoked (a LOT) They ate lots of pork and red meat, retired early and did little besides sit on the porch. They lived well into their 90's.

My brother ran marathons, spent 3 to 4 hours a day lifting weights and running. He ate a "prescription diet" following doctors and a dieticians instructions. He died at age 39 of a rapid moving cancer. 6 months before he died, he passed an FFA physical with "flying colors". Doctor told him he was as healthy as a teen ager.

We die when it's our time to go.
 
The banks are not the problem. If a farmer couldn't make it after the last several years with commodity prices where they were he is not much of a farmer and needs to find another line of work.
 
Divorce and kids. How many farms have been torn apart by divorce and the significant other getting half of the place. Or if you have 6 kids, dad dies and only one out of the 6 kids wants to farm. Can't afford to buy out all 5 of the others so they go off and sell to other farmers.
 
People just won't realize that everything and everybody,accept the first one or two, are now GMO,s whether done on purpose, for a purpose or just natures selection. It's the ignorant that left unchecked will end the world.
 
I don't worry too much about those of us on farms--if we can hold off the banker, we'll be OK. But we've created a whole class of people in this country over the last 80 years that have never worked, been responsible for themselves, won't work, expect the rest of us to take care of them through the government. Our county is not rich and we have 20% plus of the population on some form of public assistance, yet there are help wanted ads in the newspaper everyday. What will they do to the rest of us if that assistance is cut off?
 
(quoted from post at 12:22:11 01/14/15)...I have never had a problem chasing ladies of sporting morality, alcohol, tobacco, gambling or a lot of other things...
Click to expand...

It sounds like you never were alive to begin with!!

:lol:


I don't know if you can specifically say it's the #1 problem with farmers, or with America in general. I go to the Canfield fair, in Canfield, Ohio every year on the Saturday before labor day.

Within the past 10-12 years, I can tell you that I have seen the size of kids go up noticeably. I don't mean taller, either. It goes for the whole public in general. When I was a kid, if I was even a little bit overweight, other children's mother would refer to me as "huskie" or a good eater. Some parents would call you fat or tubby and tedse just as bad as kids. Of course, all the kids would call you a fatty fat fatty or whatever it was. It was such an anomaly. Now, I almost wish it was politically correct to do that, because more people need to hear it, and more need to go outside and play. too much tv and computers and all that.
 
I really don"t believe that about farmers aging, but can"t prove it. I do remember Sen. Humphrey stating the average farmer was well into his 50s...and this was when? 1960s? As usual, he wanted some govt money for a program to solve that.

When the nnalert were in power, he"d brag about all the loan money available to farmers, and when the nnalert were in power, he"d complain about farm debt.
 
Like the bug that was killing fish in the Chesapeake. Shut down all the hog farms and things weren't improving. Turns out it was coming from outdated, overloaded sewer systems and septic systems that ran out of the tank into the nearest stream.
 
Tom,
I will stick to your original topic, but take the opposing view.

I think obesity is a farmer greatest assest. Keep on overeating America, farmers will grow more crops and raise more livestock. This will also help the golf cart/UTV market, and in their later years, wheelchairs and long term care facilities.

BTW. I have a golf cart, and I work out 6 days a week just to maintain my weight. No Arnold here.

My two cents.
Rick
 
I met the enemy and he is us. We chase last years prices and wind up with low prices. We take out too many loans. We refuse to try to see that there may be another way to do things that MAY be in the long run is better. The grain guys gloat when grain is high yet the dairy and meat raisers are hurting. The grain growers don't care. When grain prices tank they look to the guys who feed that grain and cry. Then get offended when the dairy and meat raiser is saying "GREAT"! It goes the other way too. Instead of farmers of all types trying to work together they are at each others throats. Next time one of you meat raisers are sipping a glass of milk, or the meat grower is eating some veggies and pasta or a baked potato or the grain growers are eating a steak or pork chop think about it. We go round and round yet very few of us never buy groceries and eat only what we raise. A house divided will fall.

Rick
 
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