The Miracle of United

States Agriculture
Bob Young Chief Economist/Deputy Director Public Policy
American Farm Bureau Federation
National Press Foundation Des Moines, Iowa
May 14, 2017
I gotta do a commercial
American Farm Bureau Federation
largest general farm organization
in the country
All 50 states plus Puerto Rico
Apples to Zucchinis Maine to
Hawaii
Conventional, Organic, Row Crop,
Direct Farm Sales
 Improved Corn Footprint
Environmental
Performance

Photo by Lynne Betts, USDA Natural

Resources Conservation Service
 A Side Note
On Red vs.
Green Paint

Amazing
Technological
Advances
How do you
define a farm?

USDA Says: Producing, or

having the capability of
producing $1,000 worth of
ag products
 A Soccer
An Pitch
Acre
 Note:
These are
Over half of all
farms had family
sales less than
$10,000 in operations.
2012 Concentratio
n of
production
vs. farm
numbers
2017 Corn Harvest 86.7 million acres 2017 Soybean Harvest 82.7
million acres
2017 Wheat Harvested 43.9 2017 Cotton Harvested 9.5
million acres million acres
 Crude
attempt
at
updating

158
2013
171
2014
168
Bob Nielsen, Pur
2015
due University
http://www.kingc
175
orn.org/news/tim
2016
eless/YieldTrend
s.html
Sow will
typically
have two
litters per
year, so
over 16
years were
producing 3
more pigs
per sow per
year 15%
more pigs
Four musts for agriculture
Deal with the bugs
Deal with the weeds
Feed the plant
Pay for it
 Proportion of Cotton Crop Planted to GE
100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

BT Only Herb Only Stack

 Population Growth
3,000,000,000.0

2,500,000,000.0

2,000,000,000.0

1,500,000,000.0
Billion People

1,000,000,000.0

500,000,000.0

0.0

Year
 World Population
7,500,000,000.0

7,000,000,000.0

6,500,000,000.0

6,000,000,000.0

5,500,000,000.0

This is an increase of
5,000,000,000.0
2 billion people
4,500,000,000.0

4,000,000,000.0
So What
At the end of the day, if shes
not happy right or wrong -
agriculture is in trouble

Right or wrong, if the

company putting those
products on the shelves has a
view, agriculture has to
respond

Agriculture has performed a

miracle, critically important it
has the ability to be able to