Hope Jahren Quotes
Corn occupies a really special role in what I've been calling American agro-economics.
Jahren, Hope. Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR, 19 Apr. 2016.
This quotation is historically important because it documents the radical change in agriculture that technology brought on. In this period it was steam power. There were steam powered tractors in addition to what he enumerated. The production cost and hence the prices of agricultural products became much lower increasing the standard of living for all consumers. However, the small farmer, without capitol and the scale of a large enough farm, was put in a position in that he could not compete with the major products of agriculture without huge investment in capital equipment and large enough farms. While many went out of business, many others shifted to specialized crops and raising animals where the automation was not as necessary. This process has been on going in American agriculture since the invention of mechanized farm implements, and the small farmer has gradually become more rare. But the process has been ongoing throughout American history.
Actually, Kerry was incorrect, but he had a point, There are about 110,000 employees of the U. S. Department of Agriculture and every state has their own department of Agriculture with employees. There are about 2 million farms in America. So there is a government agriculture employee for about every 15 farms—a ratio that no other occupation shares.
Both Mrs. Roosevelt and the President, wealthy sophisticated “city” people, went out of their way to learn about rural life in the country, and they both were always champions and defenders of agriculture and rural America—much more so than many politicians who came from rural states.
His mission was to assist the small farmers. However he wrote them off with this flip remark.
At the time the vast majority of Americans were farmers. That is the tradition and reality which caused the Department of Agriculture to become one of the most important cabinet departments. However, by the 21st century the Department of Agriculture had over 100,000 employees plus many more consultants and contractors. They had done their job so well that productivity eliminated the need for most of the farms. And the number of people earning the majority of their living as farmers is less than 1 million. So there are only 10 farmers for each employee of the Agriculture Department.
There were not many large companies in the agribusiness selling chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides and seeds to the farmers of America. When there was an attempted merger, the regulators were supposed to make sure that the merger press would not be responsible for higher prices as with the merger, there would be less competition. As Holcomb said in this quotation, the companies would typically tell the regulators how they merger would produce synergistic cost savings for the farm products. And in theory that wold be true in most cases. However once the company receives approval, the tend to claim the products are losing money and they must raise prices. And often that is true but the main reason for the loss is the cost of the money that they usually borrowed to pay for the acquisition.
Anne Hope Jahren is an American geochemist and geobiologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, known for her work using stable isotope analysis to analyze fossil forests dating to the Eocene. She has won many prestigious awards in the field, including the James B. Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union.
