Despite challenges, agriculture has a lot to celebrate

Minnesota farmers are good at what they do, regardless of what commodity they are producing.

The state ranks in the top 10 in more than 20 ag products, with four coming on top in the country: sugar beets, turkeys raised, green peas and sweet corn for processing.

Minnesota ranks No. 2 in hogs, wild rice, dry edible beans and spring wheat. The state’s farmers raise enough soybeans, sunflowers, canola, dry beans and oats to come in third in the nation in each of those commodities.

You get the idea. The state’s farmers are very good at producing to feed ourselves, to feed our livestock and to fuel our vehicles, as Minnesota’s ethanol production ranks fifth in the country.

All things agriculture took center stage March 18, as National Ag Day was celebrated across the country. Closer to home, although a John Deere 6155M seemed out of place in front of the state Capitol in St. Paul, it was the centerpiece of an Ag Day celebration.

Commissioner of Agriculture Thom Petersen read a proclamation by Gov. Tim Walz declaring the day Agriculture Day in the state.

Republican Rep. Paul Anderson, co-chair of the House Agriculture Finance and Policy Committee as well as a farmer from the Starbuck area, echoes the pride in being a Minnesota farmer, but he also acknowledges current challenges.

“We’re facing some challenging times right now,” he says. “We deal with commodities, and commodities go up and down. But I think what’s really impacted us more than ever this time around, with this downturn, is what inflation has done to the cost of what we produce.”

Anderson’s co-chair of the Agriculture Finance and Policy Committee, Rep. Rick Hansen from South St. Paul, took an opportunity at the microphone to remind those gathered in support of agriculture not to lose sight that all Minnesotans “are not your adversaries in a budget.”

“We’re all Minnesotans, and we’re all going to be looking for limited money,” he says. “They’re your consumers. They’re your partners, and I ask you to think about them and work with them and all the other groups that come here not just on Ag Day, but every day, because how are we going to get through things? We’re going to have to get through things together.”

Meanwhile, across the city on the University of Minnesota-St. Paul campus, GreenSeam celebrated Ag Day by releasing its sixth State of Agriculture Report, which offers a snapshot in time of Minnesotans’ attitudes about the state’s agriculture and agribusiness environment.

GreenSeam is an economic development organization for food and agriculture in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, and it is part of Greater Mankato Growth, but the annual survey had respondents from 69 of Minnesota’s 87 counties.

Sam Zielger, president and executive director of GreenSeam and GreenSeam Futures, says the impetus for the State of Ag Report is to fill in the informational gaps that other reports do not provide.

GreenSeam’s Business Expansion and Retention Committee “said we’re missing information when it comes to the entire food and ag supply chain, the ecosystem that doesn’t quite tell us all the story,” Ziegler says. “We have great data and reports from USDA in their survey that they do with agriculture and farmers. We have good data and information that’s available for our Department of Employment and Economic Development that looks at many ways of looking at different things, but we’re really missing when you look at food and ag in rural Minnesota. What does that total supply chain look like? And how do you take a snapshot in time to really understand what’s happening out there, for you as a business or an organization to reflect on, but also for our government elected officials to go, ‘What opportunities are we seeing out there? What are challenges out there?’”

View the full article from FarmProgress here.