Fabulous Factory Farms Feed Families
By Julie Murphree, Arizona Farm Bureau
If you Google “factory farms” 1.4 million search results come up. Nearly every link leads you to information condemning large-scale agriculture. And, every link decrying factory farming has it plain wrong.
Arizona agriculture is diverse, robust and comes in all shapes and sizes. This is the case for American agriculture in general. Focusing on just Arizona agriculture, we have15, 600 farms and ranches in this desert state, according to the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The majority are small.
This Arizona farm and ranch number sounds pretty significant. But closely examine the USDA definition of a farm and you’ll quickly discover some hidden insights into Arizona’s more than 15,000 farms and ranches.
First, the USDA definition of a farm: at least $1,000 in real or potential livestock or crop sales annually. Asset-wise, it doesn’t appear to take much to possess the capital to establish a farm or ranch (despite the fact that it’s harder and harder for young people to get into farming).
In Arizona, our prior farm and ranch count was around 7,500. This 114% increase in the number of Arizona farms and ranch come mainly from a different method of counting farms operated by American Indians on tribal lands here in Arizona. It’s a significant step that USDA made a more concerted effort to count all farms on tribal lands. This procedural change, however, means that these farms have most likely been there for some time but now they’re finally being counted.
The large farms on the tribal lands have always been counted; just not the small farms and ranches. Native Americans within the boundaries of the tribal lands that met the $1,000 threshold were aggressively sought out during this latest agriculture census (2007) count. The majority fell into the $1,000 to $5,000 in real or potential sales and shows up mainly on the Navajo tribal lands.
Most of these small-scale tribal lands farms and ranches are subsistent farms, serving mainly the families managing the land and livestock. According to NASS, these tribal lands farms and ranches are not going to market with their agriculture product beyond their families.
Continuing to review the small-scale farm, direct market farmers (agriculture that sales directly to consumers) in Arizona generated a 34% increase in agriculture production, bringing their total revenue contribution to Arizona agriculture to $5.3 million. This is a good thing -- especially for Arizona consumers wanting to buy local. This niche appears to continue to be well served and could provide much more supply for the ongoing demand.
Still, total sales of all Arizona agricultural commodities was more than $3.2 billion in 2007 making Arizona’s direct market agriculture approximately 1.7% of that share.
This points to the reality that the lion’s share of Arizona agriculture production is still coming from traditional agriculture produced on large-scale farms and ranches. This is consistent with American agriculture in general. Interesting that a small number of very large farms in Arizona pull in the majority of the production revenue for this state.
And large-scale agriculture -- otherwise known as factory farming -- is needed to feed you and me and the world.
To feed our country, large production agriculture must remain a significant contributor to not only our economic numbers in Arizona but to national and global food production. Citing agriculture census numbers again, Arizona’s best example is the fact that we’re ranked second in the United States in lettuce production and as we’re so often known to mention that during the winter months, Yuma is the lettuce capitol of the nation.
With 98% of our farms and ranches run by families, it’s important to remind our non-agriculture constituencies that large-production farms, ranches and dairies are the only production structure that will keep pace with a growing population and a global economy that thrives on growth.
Why so critical? According to the United Nations, we must increase agriculture production 70% by 2050. Small, urban farming, along with out-of-the-way subsistent farms cannot do this. Experts continue to crunch the numbers on behalf of the urban farm scenario and the math just doesn’t add up.
Today’s most productive and progressive family farms and ranches are not typically small and they naturally scale becoming larger if they want to be profitable to support their own growing family-owned corporation with multiple generations to take care of. This occurs whether their production methods utilize organic or traditional agriculture methods.
Fabulous factory farms feed families and will continue to do so. Based on science, research, nutrition, market forces and the need to support a growing population, the world will always need large-scale agriculture.
Perhaps the time is ripe for re-examining the phrase factory farm. If not, America’s understanding of large-scale agriculture will be warped and the globe’s demand for food could be put at risk.
