A veteran North Dakota commodity group leader has reminded me several times how important my morning farm broadcasts were to him. He says he would turn to my broadcast to find out if there had been developments in Washington, D.C., that affected his commodity. He wanted to know what would be waiting for him at the office – brushfires to put out, or what phone calls to expect.
It was suggested to me that National Co-op Month in October would be a good time to think about “the lasting good the farmer has done using the cooperative model.” Specifically mentioned were the co-ops that brought electricity, phone service and, more recently, broadband to rural North Dakota, all because of those farmers.
The debate had already been going for at least a decade, when I produced a half-hour television show, titled “The Spring Wheat Debate,” in November 1981.
The debate was over spring wheat yield versus quality.
For decades, public plant breeders (land-grant universities) had developed spring wheat varieties that emphasized quality. That was, they argued, our selling point. It was what set spring wheat apart from other classes of wheat. In selecting for high-quality varieties, the plant breeders rejected those that were higher yielding, but of lower quality.
If it’s Saturday morning and I’m raking hay, I’m probably listening to the public radio show, “A Way With Words.” It’s described as a program about new words, old sayings, slang, family expressions, word histories and regional dialects. Callers ask the origin of phrases like “a monkey’s uncle” or “doesn’t that take the cake.”
As difficult as this past winter has been, many would argue the winter of 1996-97 was worse. On Jan. 31, 1997, some of the state’s political leaders brought an undersecretary of agriculture to a North Dakota ranch, so he could see firsthand the severity of the situation and offer whatever assistance he could.
The 1950 World Book Encyclopedia, the one my folks bought for us to learn from, includes a 16-page entry on North Dakota. There are pictures, charts and drawings and two maps. One is a “land use” map with little symbols depicting the principal products produced in different parts of the state.
The map has two ears of corn in the southeast corner. Heads of wheat and dairy cows are located in quite a few counties. Beef cows are found in much of western North Dakota, hogs in the southeastern part of the state and symbols for potatoes and sugar beets in the Red River Valley.
The headline was impressive. Agriculture’s contribution to North Dakota’s economy totaled $30.8 billion, according to a study done by North Dakota State University, which looked at the years 2018 through 2020. What the headline didn’t say was livestock income accounted for just $2.6 billion, a figure many would consider disappointingly small.
