As I sit in my office at 2 a.m. and ponder the future of the agriculture industry and especially the future of our family’s farming operation, I can’t help but turn around and look down the hall and wonder the future holds for both of my young children. Am I making the right decisions for them? Will they even want to continue the same business that my family has been involved with for over 100 years? I do know that each generation must plan for the next generation with as much thought and detail as possible.

I can say that I am very proud of what my ancestors have accomplished, and what they have allowed me to accomplish. I can say that animal agriculture has been very good to our family, as I can count 15+ members of our extended family that are making a living from agriculture and the pig business.

Several million dollars worth of land and buildings have been acquired and built over the years by these families and several hundred thousand dollars of property taxes have been paid to support our ever growing county. Not to mention numerous employees and their families that are supported by these family farms.

The time comes every so often a family businesses must expand to allow for the current generation and those little ones safely snug in their beds tonight. Animal agriculture has always been an important part of our family and it appears it will be for some time to come. Unfortunately our business has come under fire in recent times, partly because there are a few “bad eggs”, but a bigger part is because I don’t think the public understands that agriculture has had to undergo the same type of changes as the local hardware store.

You may remember Pickett’s hardware or Smith’s hardware store’s. As the world changes the family owned stores have gone the way of Home Depot and Wal-mart. I will not deny that family farms have had to some degree grow and change similar to the way Wal-mart has. World wide influences have changed the way everyone does business today, I am sure you have witnessed many changes like this at your place of employment.

Farming has not been immune to change. An average size grain farm will grow about 2500 acres of crops and the average pig farm will market 20,000 pigs per year. With these changes have come many concerns. Since the family owners can’t perform all the work by themselves anymore we must have an extremely good workforce.

Instead of heading out in the morning to plow the “back 40” like my grandpa did, we now find ourselves making sure we have trained our employees how to best care for the animals, are we doing everything we possibly can do to make sure the animals are healthy, comfortable, have constant fresh air, a good supply of water and feed. And what about the crops, we are analyzing soil samples, GPS maps, tissue samples, working with spreadsheets trying to figure out how to grow enough food for the world while using just just the exact amount of fertilizer and herbicide, are we doing a good job controlling soil erosion?

You see no matter what people say, farmers are environmentalists and we’re getting pretty good at it. No-till crops and use of biotechnology have GREATLY reduced the amount of fertilizer and herbicide we now use. From our pigs we have learned the best way to use manure, which is an organic fertilizer, instead of relying so heavily on commercial fertilizer to grow the corn that feeds our pigs that in turn produce the manure that we use to grow another corn crop to feed our pigs with.

If that’s not the definition of the circle of life, I guess don’t know what it is. Pretty neat if you ask me.