PFF - Pennock's Fiero Forum, PDA Edition

Future Farmers of America (Page 2/6)

GuyFiero

OCT 15, 11:19 AM

Future Farmers of America is an excellent program to help continue the culture of individual family farming.

[This message has been edited by GuyFiero (edited 10-15-2023).]

williegoat

OCT 15, 11:24 AM

quote

Originally posted by GuyFiero:

Most "farmers" today are corporations. I am sure the large scale ownership and production model is more efficient at producing food, but it has radically changed the "culture" of farming communities.

He's back

maryjane

OCT 15, 12:48 PM

quote

That, is a myth, at least concerning livestock production and overall, still mostly incorrect. There are STOs and BTOs but farming/ranching in both instances is a BUSINESS! It's expensive, regardless of which category you're in and full of risks, at the mercy of weather, demand and prices.

2017 was the most recent COMPLETE USDA agriculture census. It's much longer and move complex than the US population census. I hated filling them out.
But the 2021 USDA census (includes part of 2020) has been tabulated enough to tell us that the average US farm size has not changed much.

The average farm size for 2021 is 445 acres, up from 444 acres the previous year. Average farm size increased in the
$1,000,000 or more sales class and decreased or remained unchanged in all other sales classes.

Acreage is another way to assess farm size. According to the USDA, small family farms average 231 acres; large family farms average 1,421 acres and the very large farm average acreage is 2,086. It may be surprising to note that small family farms make up 88 percent of the farms in America.

People own most farmland. Some 2.6 million owners are individuals or families, and they own more than two thirds of all farm acreage. Fewer than 32,500 non family held corpor ations own farmland, and they own less than 5 percent of all U.S. farmland. Farmland owners hold an aver age of about 280 acres each.

Statistical Brief: Who Owns America's Farmland? - Census.gov

Census.gov

Even STOs tho, form a business for themselves. This is mostly for tax purposes to keep farm income separate from off farm income, because a great number of STOs worked at least part time to help finance part of the farm operation. My little incorporated farm business was D&J Farms. (Don & Jane) . The CPO that did my taxes highly recommended it.

Now, the processing areas is where big corporations have made big strides in recent decades. Gone, are many of the small packing houses and meat processors. Tyson, National Beef, JBS, ADM and Cargill are huge in both lbs of meat and $$ made. Gone, are most of the small local or regional processors.
Who do those 4 buy from?
Indirectly, from the STOs mostly, beginning at the local sale barn each week. Feedyard owners have order buyers at each local sale barn. Their orders come from people that feed local grown cattle out (finishing) and those feedyards then sell to the processors. (some of the feedyards are owned by a processor but not nearly all.)

(A feedyard is NOT a farm or ranch!)

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 10-15-2023).]

82-T/A [At Work]

OCT 15, 04:39 PM

quote

Originally posted by maryjane:

I wore the blue gold jacket for the last 3 years in high school. Inversely, there were NO girls in our ag class. I was required to have an elective class and since I already knew a great deal about aoutmotives from working in my dad's autoshop for several years, and already knew my way around livestock some, ag was the next step. Ag class for juniors and sophmores was 1 hour, but 2 hours as a senior--last 2 hours of the school day. We had no livestock at the school but spent many of those 2 hour classes out on farms and ranches in the area, or at the large animal vet clinic.

Hah, that's awesome... I had thought the organization was recent, and I didn't realize it was so wide-spread until I went to the website.

quote

Originally posted by maryjane:

As far as your daughter's high school ag dept, I suspect the cows are Jersey, Guernsey or maybe Brown Swiss. Ag, like any other endeavor, is a science and those wanting to pursue a college degree in it, need to have an ag foundation before entering university. That's what Vocational Ag classes/FFA provides. I believe nowadays, FFA and 4H are often combined.

Yeah, I looked up some charts of cows, and definitely looks like Jersey (though a bit more shaggy) and Brown Swiss. It seems like every time I drive by there, there's always a new pair of animals, and I honestly don't know where they keep them. There's a barn, and then a garage for the tractor and farm equipment, and then a big concrete building that may have those animals in it, not sure. I haven't seem the alpacas recently. Next time I pick up my daughter this week, I'll try to get a couple of pictures as I drive by.

I guess it makes sense... but I was just impressed. At first I assumed that some farmer owned the land and didn't want to give it up, haha... but it's right next to the large open lots where the marching band and the color guard practice. So the cows must be like WTF...

quote

Originally posted by maryjane:Back to my era. The 60s were a transition period for American Agriculture. The war years (both ww2 and Korea) meant few new developments took place in ag. Most farms were still using gasoline tractors, combines and balers as almost every diesel engine built was going into war use as was most diesel fuel itself. Research into agriculture virtually came to a standstill when ww2 broke out, the 50s were a catchup decade as industry switched from feeding troops to feeding a more wealthy America, and the world that was still reeling from war devastation. But the 60s is when innovation and real ag science began taking place. I knew (or thought I did) a lot about cattle and soil, until I started taking voc ag. I learned a lot in those classes, that helped me (and begrudgingly, my father) in the years afterward .

Makes sense... I see the kids mostly doing normal chores, feeding, cleaning, maintenance, etc... but I asked my daughter about it again this week, and she said there's a whole bunch of stuff they do, and apparently the large greenhouse is also part of FFA. They have two pastures, and I guess they let the cows switch between the two, but the kids working the plants are usually the same kids maintaining the trees and other plants that are within the pastures as well.

I'm just really impressed with all the stuff this school offers. I went to high school in Northern Virginia, which... being 30 minutes outside of D.C., it was certainly a bit more urban, or at least close to it. We had sports, and being the town that it was in... it was very "close knit," so a lot of the town's community things centered around the high school. We had an annual parade, and the high school would make floats and participate in it, etc. It was a GOOD school, and people moved there because the school was good.

But I am so impressed with this school. I'd never in all my years consider that a highs school would have their own farm. They've got a whole series of clubs and every sport you can imagine. They even do golf (but the kids have to travel since there's no golf course). My daughter has gone to all the football games because her boyfriend is in the marching band and holy s**t, the entire town shuts down every time the high school has a football game. Main street is completely packed, not unlike Carol City after a Dolphins Game with everyone trying to escape from Joe Robbie stadium. It's just a really cool experience

quote

Originally posted by Monkeyman:Easy for a Floridian to be clueless on the FFA. It's HUGE amongst Jr and Sr High schools in farming country. I went to school in Indiana. We had an FFA chapter in my school (I'm not a farmer so I wasn't part). It was HUGE. They even had a couple of days each year were the FFA members would/could drive their favorite tractor to school.

To be fair, I actually went to high school in Northern Virginia, middle school in Massachusetts, and Elementary school in Richmond, Virginia. I didn't move to Florida until I became an adult after graduating high school. But we definitely had nothing like that in my high school in Virginia. If they did, maybe I just didn't know about it. But I know that on our campus, there was certainly nothing of the sort. The Clintons seemed interested in visiting though... our mascot was the Warhawks, which makes it all that much more funny. Bill Clinton visited our high school twice, and Hillary last visited in 2018.

quote

Originally posted by Patrick:

If teenage boys had half a developed brain, they'd put that knowledge to good use.

Well, I have wonder if the girls are doing it because they like the animals, but as my daughter said, many of them are looking to become vets as well, so there's that. But I'm sure some of them want to be farmers as well. There is actually quite a bit of agriculture that's done here in Florida. Florida does a lot of sugarcane, oranges, peanuts (believe it or not) and a few other things. But the agriculture (as far as I know) isn't as organized as Texas.

Texas, particularly with H.E.B.... gets their food directly from farms that exist all around Texas. So, the food stays fresher, longer. In Florida, we primarily have Winn Dixie and Publix (which is like your run of the mill Food Lion, Giant, whatever... for you northerners). But the food doesn't last anywhere near as long, and it tends to come from all over the country. Matter of fact, the food that's served on the international space station actually comes from H.E.B., and is freeze-dried immediately, and then processed and put into space bags and sent up to the ISS.

quote

Originally posted by theogre:

FFA & 4H are separate but maybe have offices in same building in some places.
Often see both @ County & State Fairs in various spaces.

Hah, I had to look that up. I'd never heard of 4-H. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-H

I went to the Strawberry Festival here in Lakeland (which is about an hour north-east of me), and they had a cattle auction. It was hilarious the terms they were using...

"This is a fine lookin' heifer, nice square shoulders, etc..." I was like... man... this seems almost inappropriate... hahah. It was cool too because they had a bunch of kids that would walk into the rodeo grounds and show off the cow that they had been raising and taking care of.

quote

Fred, you were banned for wildly inappropriate comments. I'd recommend that, rather than creating a new account, you maybe ask Cliff if he's willing to unban you.

82-T/A [At Work]

OCT 15, 04:47 PM

quote

Originally posted by maryjane: That, is a myth, at least concerning livestock production and overall, still mostly incorrect. There are STOs and BTOs but farming/ranching in both instances is a BUSINESS! It's expensive, regardless of which category you're in and full of risks, at the mercy of weather, demand and prices.

2017 was the most recent COMPLETE USDA agriculture census. It's much longer and move complex than the US population census. I hated filling them out.
But the 2021 USDA census (includes part of 2020) has been tabulated enough to tell us that the average US farm size has not changed much.

(A feedyard is NOT a farm or ranch!)

I kind of wondered about that. I see small cow pastures all over the place here in Florida. Even when I lived in South Florida (Fort Lauderdale), there are small cow pastures that can't be any larger than say 10 acres tops... and they have a few cows there. There's even a larger lot that also grows King Palms (doubles as a nursery) and they have a dozen goats running around and cows all over it. It's like this huge king palm forest with a tall chain link fence next to a 3-lane street (each way) that's usually extremely busy during most hours of the day.

I just got this off Google, I guess they've cut most of them down, but you can see some cows off in the distance. This land is probably exceptionally valuable. Every other plot of land, everywhere... is packed with neighborhoods, strip malls, and at least 5 universities and colleges all within a few miles of each other. So I'm sure it won't last. But when you drive up RT-27... 30% of it is nothing but cow pastures, swamp, orange groves, and sugarcane fields... and then like 70% of it is untamed Florida wilderness.

Jake_Dragon

OCT 15, 05:51 PM

I went with welding instead of FFA as I didn't want to work on a farm.
But it was very much a thing growing up in northern Ohio.
Most of my family growing up in the 60s and 70s and some of the 80s were involved one way or the other.
Its not as popular as it was as it does not take as much labor due to advanced machinery.
But its still there.

https://www.ehove.net/

Patrick

OCT 15, 06:11 PM

quote

Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:

Anyway, another thing I noticed... I've never seen a boy out there. All of the teenagers doing chores on the school farm are girls... like every single one of them.

quote

Originally posted by Patrick:

If teenage boys had half a developed brain, they'd put that knowledge to good use.

quote

Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:

Well, I have wonder if the girls are doing it because they like the animals, but as my daughter said, many of them are looking to become vets as well, so there's that. But I'm sure some of them want to be farmers as well. There is actually quite a bit of agriculture that's done here in Florida. Florida does a lot of sugarcane, oranges, peanuts (believe it or not) and a few other things. But the agriculture (as far as I know) isn't as organized as Texas.

Texas, particularly with H.E.B.... gets their food directly from farms that exist all around Texas. So, the food stays fresher, longer. In Florida, we primarily have Winn Dixie and Publix (which is like your run of the mill Food Lion, Giant, whatever... for you northerners). But the food doesn't last anywhere near as long, and it tends to come from all over the country. Matter of fact, the food that's served on the international space station actually comes from H.E.B., and is freeze-dried immediately, and then processed and put into space bags and sent up to the ISS.

Todd... relax, I'm not criticizing your last post above. I'm just trying to figure it out. How does it have any connection with the post of mine that it was responding to? Perhaps you didn't understand what I was getting at with my response to your first post?

82-T/A [At Work]

OCT 15, 07:46 PM

quote

Originally posted by Patrick:Todd... relax, I'm not criticizing your last post above. I'm just trying to figure it out. How does it have any connection with the post of mine that it was responding to? Perhaps you didn't understand what I was getting at with my response to your first post?

Why does your post needs a "relax?" Did I give any indication that I was upset? I'm not...?

I did get it... if the boys were smart, they'd join the FFA so they could get with the girls. Anyway, I wasn't disregarding that, I was just keeping with the original thought, I wasn't trying to dismiss your joke.

Patrick

OCT 15, 07:52 PM

quote

Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:

Why does your post needs a "relax?" Did I give any indication that I was upset? I'm not...?

You've been a bit tense in our recent P&R exchanges.

But yes, my joke was that if teenage boys had any sense, they'd join the program simply to gain access to all the girls!

82-T/A [At Work]

OCT 15, 08:06 PM

quote

Originally posted by Patrick:

You've been a bit tense in our recent P&R exchanges.

But yes, my joke was that if teenage boys had any sense, they'd join the program simply to gain access to all the girls!

"Thorough" should not be taken as tense. I'm almost always, very calm. I also tend to type faster than anyone I've ever met (seriously), so my posts can (and sometimes do) become a stream of consciousness... which should not be viewed as me aggressively typing out an hour-long response to something. That's me just "bleah" from my brain. I have not been tense with any of my posts in the past several weeks.