So God Made A Farmer

[Scott M]

So I catch this video during the Super Bowl, and it just strikes a nerve.

[flyfisher03]

Amen! My sentiments exactly.

[morepower02]

So if it's so easy to make huge money farming why are you not doing it with your family that is making huge profits and running new equipment? Sounds like a great life but then you cut it down in the same post.

My parents farm and are not rolling in money. If it was that easy I would be right there with them.

[SandPoint]

I also agree with every thing you posted da chise. My family were dairy farmers until it made more sense financially, to sell of the dairy cows and start cash cropping exclusively.

[smnduck]

Paul's Farmer thing is so far off now days it made me laugh. Draining every piece of ground, spraying chemicals of all kinds to kill weeds and insects, leaving the dirt to blow all in the name of profit. Cant blame a farmer for trying to make money but calling them gods caretakers of the land is a pretty good stretch.

[smnduck]

Not to many people can get into farming unless you inherit some acerage. In todays market if your not making huge money your doing wrong. At least in row cropping. The animal guys have it alot tougher due to the high cost of feed(due to ethanol) and the huge commercial animal farms that people dont even live at.

[Scott M]

Fair enough question morepower, again, it's not a cash grab for every operation, it takes the right circumstances, but for the average guy it's pretty darn good. I went to school in a natural resource conservation field, continued on for a graduate education, then took a job doing what I love. I wanted to milk cows when I was a kid, then I did a 4H project on natural resources management and reset my plan.

Every time I take dad in the boat, he asks me "why don't you come back and farm? There are people that would die to be in your position." And he's right. "When I was a kid, the girls wanted to marry doctors, lawyers...today, they want to marry farmers" he told me this past year. We've been at ideological differences on a number of issues for a long time. Making money was never my goal in life. Sure, everyone needs it. But beyond a certain point, how much more do you really need?

The other thing is, the average farmer these days, as it has been for some time, is land (and infrastructure) rich and cash poor. If my old man were to put the farm profits in his own pockets, he'd get taxed at a high clip. So what do all the farmers do? Upgrade. New tractors, new bins, more drain tile, new pickup. So your earning potential actually isn't all that great. Here's the thing that would eat at me. We've got a 125 year old family farm where every generation has sacrificed, worked to the bone, went to the grave working their lives away to pass it on to the next generation...all of them altruists so I can take all their sweat equity and cash it out in sale? That's what happens to everyone eventually. Look at the number of farms in this country and the size of operations. Eventually you get bought out. What a problem for me to personally have, right?

I could come back and do it, make more than I make now, but have to give up my weekends in the spring and fall. To me, that would be torture. And I'd have to be okay with row to row corn and beans, and the torn out grove I used to hunt rabbits in as a kid, and the old horse pasture that was torn up for more cropland.

I understand that I sound odd writing all of this. It's a conflicting situation no doubt. Farming isn't what it used to be and probably never will be again. That's why the audio of the speech was from 35 years ago; the farmer Paul Harvey described is long gone. Maybe I mourn that more than anything.

[morepower02]

No problem man. Your last paragraph speaks to me also. Things have changed so much its sometimes hard to call it progress.

[Dotch]

Well Scott, some of what you said rings true for me while some perhaps not so much based on a few more years and different life experience. I think looking back, the farmer of the 1800's and early 1900's before tractors would probably have said the some of the same things when it came to comparing his operation to one say in the 1950's or 1960's! As one local oldtimer so eloquently put it, "Things really started going to hell when they put lights on tractors". He had a point. I'm not going to make a lenghty dissertation as I could probably write a book on the subject, being involved in agriculture all my life and at many different levels. IMO, much of what we see in agriculture is a reflection on the society we live in. Ag in many circumstances has become but one cog in the corporate machine, bent on perpetuating itself by eliminating risk at all levels, not just in the portion involving production ag. Too many in today's society want something for nothing or at least for as little as they possibly can pay for it and enjoy beating people up to get it. Money is what motivates too many of them. Like you said yourself, that's not me either. I need enough to pay bills and make ends meet but after that? Is it really going to matter how much money I had when they stick me in the ground someday?

There are still some segments of agriculture that are still very much as they were in the 1970's, sheep and lamb production being one of them. Doesn't matter, minor segment, niche market, blah, blah, blah. I've been told that for over 50 years. Yet somehow I still manage to put my chore clothes on when it's midnight, -20, and trudge out to check on the progress of some distraught woolly soul trying to give birth, then marvel as another miracle takes place. It's at those times I could really give a rats rump what some Cargill executive says about quarterly profits, what some fatcat at Tyson thinks about the cattle on feed report or what some so called "agronomist" at the co-op told a customer to make a sale so he gets a free vacation. Much as they like to think they matter, in reality they don't. When they're dead and gone in another 100 years, no one will care about them any more than they will you or I.

[smnduck]

+1

[169Sportsman]

Well said da chise!

I found it funny how many farmers really liked the dodge ad. As if dodge really cares about them. Dodge just wisely figured out who has the money to spend on a new truck and a way to appeal to them.

[Whoaru99]

Of course they care. Dodge would like to sell you a truck. The odds of you buying a truck are better if you're doing well. So, no doubt they actually do care that you do well.

[CANOPY SAM]

As if dodge really cares about them. Dodge just wisely figured out who has the money to spend on a new truck and a way to appeal to them.

Very wisely timed as well!

I can see where it touched a nerve with you. I thought it was a really eloquent, beautiful statement...until I realized it was just another sales pitch from a giant auto manufacturer.

What's kind of humorous is how so many ads these days are aimed directly at the heart, and barely even hint at what product they're trying to sell. What was it, a minute long ad, that just gave you a quick glimpse of only the front end of the truck at the end? Does this really speak to people in a way that gets them to make a purchase? Not me.

My father, who grew up on a family farm, predicted 40 years ago that it was only a matter of time before all the ag land would be owned by giant corporate farms.

We edge closer to that prediction every day.

[169Sportsman]

You are correct they care if they are doing well. But as far as the sentimental stuff I don't believe they care too much.

This certainly didn't strike a nerve. I just found it amusing. Great marketing idea!

[gill man]

I haven't read through all of this but I'm going to attack this at a different angle and hopefully I don't ruffle too many feathers.

It's a truck ad - it's just marketing. I'm sure Dodge knew that most people that saw that commercial weren't farmers. They weren't targeting actual farmers, but using the image of a hard working American with good life and family values. Even if most people DON'T have those qualitites I think a lot of people like to think that they do.

It's just a commercial. What it's getting at is: Are you hard working, do you have solid morals and values? If so, then Dodge is the truck for you. Nothing more, nothing less.

Have commercials historically set the example of accuracy? Do Beer commercials show middle aged guys sitting around getting plastered in their ice shack wearing ripped up flannel or attractive young men and women at a rocking beach party? Reality doesn't always sell, the image does.

[leechlake]

there should be an ad of guys drinking beer in an ice house. I could be an actor in it. I have all the clothes for costumes. I'm going to start practicing.

(I spit coffee on my keyboard when I read the end of the previous post I was laughing so hard)

[morepower02]

there should be an ad of guys drinking beer in an ice house. I could be an actor in it. I have all the clothes for costumes. I'm going to start practicing.

(I spit coffee on my keyboard when I read the end of the previous post I was laughing so hard)

[gill man]

Glad you got a kick out of it! I don't drink much beer and am not middle aged yet but I could have "the look" without trying too hard. If anybody would like me to sign a big contract to be part of a fisherman beer commercial just let me know.