Biggest Issue Facing Animal Agriculture

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MOTigergirl13

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Aug 5, 2010
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One of my assignments in a class has me writing a paper over "the biggest issue facing the animal industry" and its got me thinking. What do you all think the biggest issue is? Just wanted to hear others opinions :)
 

hamburgman

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Feb 9, 2010
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Honestly to me it is the immigration issue.  We can't raise an ethical product if the workers do unethical things to get here and/or are treated unethically.  The point of many of the animal activists to to produce a more humane product, but if a Latino worker is treated unethically i don't care how much turn around room your sows have.  JMO
 

Till-Hill

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Sep 14, 2010
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Waterville, Iowa
I'd say it is how does a young person who's family doesn't have a farm/ranch to give them get started? It is almost impossible to cash flow buying a farm, equipment and the cattle and still show a profit. You have to have off farm income to make it work. Average age of U.S. farmers and land owners is growing everyday and who is going to take over to continue to feed our country? If we can't make money at it I can only see  fewer  farmers that will just have to  get bigger.

In my opinion our future in farming in the country is our biggest problem.
 

knabe

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too much land ownership west of the continental divide by the federal government as well as subsidies to for directing development to lower the cost of land ownership to developers.

if land is zoned in the pathway of development, the owner needs to pay higher taxes rather than being subsidized for keeping it "farmed" until it is developed. it should cost a lot more to change zoning.  basically, this is how some fortunes are made.

for instance, if one has 5 acre zoning, one should not be able to get a subsidy to tax it at .1% rather than 1% and get subsidized by the taxpayer.  yes, some people will complain that it will get developed, but that has proven to not be the case if the taxes have to be paid.  the land will go back to a lower value, but since the government wants to increase the property tax to generate revenue, they will do ALL they can to keep taxes going up so they can pay police chiefs 543,000/year like in san jose

http://www.ktvu.com/news/26854805/detail.html

http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/map-owns_the_west.jpg

http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/contdiv.htm
 

mlazyj

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Jan 4, 2011
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N.C, Montana
Agriculture is the only industry that is told to produce more from less and not use technology .

the government ,development and land presevationist have been tying up land that could be productive , but on the other hand we are asked to feed the world.

Ther is a very loud minority that is trying to make the case for all organic and natural . Meaning no fertaliser , sprays , implants , antibiotics . Think about it that was agriculture pre 1930 , there was world wide hunger and only a life expectency of 50 years old .

Getting 20 and 30 year old into ownership in agriculture

expose to the public the fraud that the HSUS is . They want to do away with all animal agriculture . They collect millions from unknowing people who think they are helping the local animal shelter . Less then 1% of their budget goes to animal shelters.

Agriculture needs to market how they are careing for the earth and animals ,were the black eyes come from is after the product has left the farm or ranch .

Those that complain about subsidised agriculture  ,shouldn't do it with their mouth full of cheap food.

 

knabe

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mlazyj said:
Those that complain about subsidised agriculture  ,shouldn't do it with their mouth full of cheap food.

subsidies make food more expensive and reward monoculture.
 

ZNT

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Apr 25, 2007
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Rhome, TX
Public Opinion is the #1 issue.  Without customers, who will we sell our product to?  They need to know they are safe eating it, why they need it, and they must be able to afford it.  Or maybe I should say the biggest issue is our lack of "Salesmanship."  Public opinion is based on perception, not fact.  But facts can change perception.
 

ZNT

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Rhome, TX
ZNT said:
Public Opinion is the #1 issue.  Without customers, who will we sell our product to?  They need to know they are safe eating it, why they need it, and they must be able to afford it.  Or maybe I should say the biggest issue is our lack of "Salesmanship."  Public opinion is based on perception, not fact.  But facts can change perception.

crystalcattle backed my statement up with one of her recent blogs.

This is why we need to keep the conversation going between consumers and farmers http://bit.ly/fY0CLp
 

creativecattle

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Mar 9, 2009
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I'll agree with ZNT. If we can not only do business effectively because we have become regulated to death, that will certainly be our number one problem. We need to ensure that the doors are open so that conversations can continue to occur between the producer and consumer.

Nothing irks me more than at a show when families are walking around and the mom tells her son that that cow is a bull because of it's horns or they might not even know the difference between a cow or a horse, and we as exhibitors scoff or laugh. You better walk over there and talk to those people and answer some questions. If we want to keep on doing the things we love, which includes showing cattle, we have to be willing to talk to people (don't educate them) talk to them.

MOTigergirl13 if you are interested in this angle I have lots of posts on my blog on how to tell agriculture's story and the issues we face - www.crystalcattle.com
 

mlazyj

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Jan 4, 2011
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Location
N.C, Montana
The way subsidies are set up they prop up greed . The trade off is the cheap food . If we could drop back 40 years and have locally supplied agriculture we could drop subsidies .
 
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