SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Ag Week

by Larry Gabriel

Agriculture is the most important industry in South Dakota. This is the week we celebrate that fact. March 19 through 25 is National Ag Week.

South Dakota produces about $6 billion worth of crops and livestock each year, but the total economic impact of agriculture on the state's economy is almost $17 billion, according to an SDSU study in 2002.

These dollar amounts are significant. They impact every person living in this state. But they don't tell the whole story.

Not so long ago, some doubted that our industry would be able to feed the world. They reasoned that there is only so much arable land and fresh water, and since most of that is already in use, production will not be able to keep up with population growth.

Those people who doubted were mistaken. During the last 40 years, food production has grown faster than world population. There is no reason to believe it won't continue.

According to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization, world food production must double by 2025 to feed the world. We can do that. We have done it before.

Our farmers and ranchers are extremely productive when we allow them to be. Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food. No country in the world can match that.

United States taxpayers work three times longer to pay annual taxes than they work to pay for all the food they buy each year. Even then, about 27 percent (96 billion pounds) of that food is thrown away or wasted.

In addition to food, agriculture provides us with many other products, such as: alternative fuels, pharmaceuticals, surgical sutures, ointments, latex gloves, x-ray film, gelatin for capsules, heart valves, lumber, paints, brushes, tar paper, dry wall, tool handles, lubricants, antifreeze, tires, upholstery, adhesives, solvents, detergents, paper, ink, film, shampoo, cosmetics, lotions, fingernail polish, toothpaste, crayons, textbooks, chalk, desks, pencils, clothing, baseball bats, leather equipment, and shoes.

In addition to providing food security, cheap food, and thousands of other products, our farmers and ranchers contribute to the society in many other ways. They are the best stewards of the land. They provide food and habitat for 75 percent of the nation's wildlife. Ninety percent are still "family" farms and ranches that are producing the next generation of rural Americans.

Today's farmers and ranchers are better educated and more sophisticated than some traditional "business people". Today's ag is expanding into new products, developing specialty crops, and improving methods of producing and using traditional crops. Can they feed the future world? Absolutely! A farmer can harvest enough wheat for 70 loaves of bread in 9 seconds.

All that we need is for the international politicians to get out of the way, and let our farmers and ranchers do what they do better than anyone in the world.

Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture

If we have tomorrow

By Julie Carter

Most often in the lines of this column I laugh with you, laugh at myself or just tell you a story.

Today I'm not writing funny stories because I find a burden in my heart for so many. Sometimes it takes another's misfortune for us to recognize our own good fortune.

Never has it seemed more evident to me than in the past year of hurricanes and fires, that we live in a world where nothing is certain. Not for even for a moment.

As I watched in horror the photos and videos of hundreds of thousands of acres of charred Texas land, burned cattle and lost homes, I knew that there "but for the grace of God" go most of us.

By us, I mean just about everyone who is reading this that doesn't live on a boat or isn't slushing through mud and snow to do morning chores.

This part of the West is a tinderbox and we are only one fool away from the very the same flames that are devouring the Panhandle. One dropped cigarette, one careless "oh look we are camping" fire, or one illegal fire cracker will put us on the national news by nightfall.

Then there are the uncalculated dangers of downed sparking power lines, an errant strike of fire from a passing train, or a car pulled off the road onto a grassy shoulder -- its own heat sparking a fire before it even occurs to the driver it could happen.

How do we even grasp what it is like for those farmers and ranchers who are finding their livestock either burned alive or long gone through fences that burned to the ground?

If their homes are still intact, are they standing on the porch viewing blackened pastures and farm ground wondering where and how to deal with tomorrow?

Do they find within themselves the ability to say, "it could have been worse" and know that if they have their lives they have the only thing that is really important? Could I do that?

We live in a world long past understanding what is foundationally important in life. Gone are the days when people worked back-breaking hard to just survive and didn't have time to fuss over things that had no value in the survival scheme. They went to bed tired and woke in the morning thinking they were blessed.

We live in a world where we expect much and offer little. Disasters have a way of leveling the playing field. When the fires rolled over the Texas plains it didn't have an address list for the big shots so it could miss them.

This country and its people are being tested, one test at a time. We are being put in a place to choose between fluff and value with the ability to do that buried somewhere deep within us.

We are two generations away from any learned survival skills for the really tough stuff. Our hardest decisions usually revolve around satellite or cable, butter or margarine, and finding the gas station with the cheapest fuel.

God bless those people who got the test first. May we learn from them and seek our own response to disaster before we need it.

And let us not forget that tomorrow is never promised

© Julie Carter 2006