Study Shows How Farming Feeds Alabama’s Economy

Mar 26, 2024

By Marlee Jackson

Food and agriculture directly account for 334,548 jobs in Alabama, according to a Feeding the Economy report released on National Ag Day March 19.

The annual study gives credence to the Alabama Farmers Federation’s Farming Feeds Alabama message, said Federation President Jimmy Parnell.

“Farming and farm products provide security for so many American families, not just in the food they eat but in the jobs they’re able to keep,” said Parnell, a Chilton County farmer whose family runs a timber and cattle operation. “We need to remember that and support the folks who keep this country going.”

The Federation is a member of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which helps sponsor the economic impact report.

Nationally, food and agriculture directly support nearly 24 million jobs, which is 15% of U.S. employment. Those industries are responsible for more than $9.6 trillion of the country’s economic activity. That’s 20% of total U.S. output.

Feeding the Economy’s report accounts for work from nearly 2 million American farmers, plus millions of food scientists, production workers, logistics experts, truck drivers and engineers who work in more than 200,000 manufacturing, processing and storage facilities.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators