Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

KATHRYN HERZOG: Del Fox's farmland near Kimball, Minnesota, has been in his family for more than 100 years. He remembers, as a child, seeing fields checkered with a constant rotation of grains and vegetables and a virtual zoo of farm animals.

DEL FOX: Chickens, hogs-- you name it, we raised it. Ducks, geese-- we used to raise grape. And also, we had small grains in there for them, alfalfas, anything like that. Old alfalfa fields that we could fence off, that we didn't like to plow up too quickly because of the rocks or something, that's what the hogs went grazing on.

KATHRYN HERZOG: Fox's, like many farmers across Minnesota, his farm has doubled in size. But now he relies on only two crops-- corn and soybeans. The recent drop in crop prices has hit Fox hard. Nearly all of his corn crop is still in storage while he waits for prices to go up. He had to sell his soybean crop to pay the bills. Fox says there's always a risk in farming. But with more crops, the risk was not as high.

DEL FOX: Usually, of all them entities that you had, whether it be chickens or eggs or whatever, one of them usually was within, reasonably, a good market. So you made some money on one of them. Now you're sticking your neck out on two entities.

And usually, they both go side by side. If one is poor, the other one is poor. And the only thing you got going for you is if you have a good crop. And well, this year we had a good crop and a poor price.

KATHRYN HERZOG: Minnesota's farm fields are now a patchwork with less color. And the dominance of a few profitable cash crops are showing environmental and economic effects. In the Red River Valley, short rotations of wheat and barley have led to an epidemic of scab disease, costing farmers $4.2 billion since 1992.

In southern Minnesota, about 70% of the land is now planted in corn and soybeans. Standard farming practice for both crops requires chemical fertilizers and pesticides to boost the yield per acre. The runoff from those fields can pollute surrounding lakes and rivers.

Margot Rudstrom is an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota in Morris. She says it's exactly those agricultural and environmental consequences that will affect farm towns as well.

MARGOT RUDSTROM: If you look around the state, the counties that seem to be buffered a little bit more from the low commodity prices, the rural counties, are the ones who tend to have diversified economies. They rely on more than just agriculture. So there's more of a diversification not only within agriculture. You get different types of farms, crops, livestock, different types of livestock within a county. But you also-- counties that also have non-agricultural industry in them tend to be buffered a bit more than counties that rely solely on crops or solely on a particular type of livestock.

KATHRYN HERZOG: Rudstrom says the recent farm crisis is a perfect example of how dependence on only a few crops affects rural economies. Today, farmers export half their crops. The recent softening in world markets drops the demand for those goods, leaving Minnesota farmers with no financial safety net when prices plummet. Rudstrom says the effects of the farm crisis are evident on main streets across the state.

MARGOT RUDSTROM: If you look in some of the counties up in the Red River Valley that are very dependent on the small grains, they tended not to fare as well. And I think if you go and check out areas like that, what you find are a lot more of the rural community businesses closing. And if you look at the population demographics, you see a decline in the population base in some of those very ag-dependent or small grain-dependent communities.

KATHRYN HERZOG: Those communities saw their biggest change ever 50 years ago, when the call came to plant fence post to fence post and feed the world. At the same time, the world's demand for meat increased. The call for corn and soybeans came not to feed the world's human population, but rather, the animals. Livestock consumes 60% of the corn and 48% of the soybeans grown in the US.

Most human food today is based on corn and soybean products as well, such as high-fructose corn syrup. The syrup is cheap, abundant, and now in everything from sodas to meats to pastas. Don Wyse directs the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture.

DON WYSE: So there's this continual demand for those products by the processors and not much demand for anything else. In other words, there isn't a place for many other crops in the system because most of the food products that we're consuming, including meat, are based off of corn and soybeans.

KATHRYN HERZOG: Wyse has joined farmers and agronomists from across the state to form a diversity task force. The group works to find new markets for farm products. One idea already at work in west central Minnesota involves new uses for alfalfa. Farmers are adding alfalfa into their corn and soybean rotations.

Alfalfa will also power a new electrical plant. Alfalfa is considered an environmentally friendly crop because it doesn't require intensive chemicals, and it helps prevent soil erosion. But Wyse says, ultimately, consumers will cast the deciding vote on crop diversity, based on what they buy and eat.

DON WYSE: The farmers can't make the change. They have very little or no power in the system. Everything is basically dictated to them, including the markets and the market price. It has to be more of-- the other 98% of the folks that are not on the farm need to be engaged and understand the dilemma and decide whether or not they want to participate in helping to deal with some of these issues.

KATHRYN HERZOG: According to Wyse, sustainable agriculture focusing on a range of crops will improve farming. With crop prices now the lowest in decades, farmers like Del Fox say they're willing to give it a try. In Collegeville, I'm Kathryn Herzog, Minnesota Public Radio.