This past September, entertainers Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young hosted their 41st Farm Aid concert. As I thought about the first Farm Aid in 1985, I recalled what it was like being an ag journalist during the 1980s economic depression, and what a struggle it was for me to try to objectively tell the story of what was happening.
At harvest time, I find myself thinking about all the harvest-related radio and television stories I did over the years. There were stories about bumper harvests and poor harvests, about wet, difficult harvests, profitable harvests and unprofitable harvests. There were stories, too, about getting the harvested crop to market. In 1974, one of the stories I did was titled “Boxcar Shortage.” There would be others in succeeding years with the same title.
“You have such a pretty place and you always keep it looking so good, but I suppose you have to when you live right by the highway,” the lady said to us.
I told her the place looks pretty good – from the road. What does the view from the road say about the people who live there? I suppose it says something about their priorities.
In October 1959, U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy spoke at a Midwest Farm Conference in Illinois. Kennedy, who already had presidential aspirations, made this oft-quoted remark: “The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale and pays the freight both ways.”
In the 1950 Broadway musical, “Guys and Dolls,” Vivian Blaine sang, “I love you a bushel and a peck! A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck!” I read the phrase was used to indicate an extraordinary amount. But to me, a bushel and a peck was my father’s seeding rate for wheat – 1¼ bushes of seed per acre. That would equate to a plant population of roughly 1.25 million seeds per acre.
When I heard of former Gov. Allen Olson’s passing last December, one of the first things that came to mind was the sight of him jogging in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. It was in the summer of 1982. Gov. Olson had led a dozen North Dakota businessmen and political leaders on a trade mission to China. I was one of the journalists covering the mission. President Richard Nixon had been to China just 10 years earlier, essentially opening that country to the rest of the world after three decades of isolation.
The U.S. administration has announced what it calls its Farmer Bridge Assistance Program. The goal is to provide financial support to producers of certain crops negatively affected by tariffs. Farmers will have to certify how many acres of each of the eligible crops were planted in 2025. For farmers, certifying planted acres is nothing new.
