Last week we celebrated National Agriculture Day. As we do every spring, we dusted off all the old clichés about how affordable our food supply is, how little of the food dollar goes back to the farm, and how important agriculture is to our community and our economy.

We reprinted those informative placements for the countless ag day breakfasts that attracted those who already support agriculture and those others looking for a cheap breakfast. While agriculture has undergone some substantial changes in the past decade, the Ag Day message has not. While any day is a good day to talk about agriculture, the venerable message of Ag Day is outdated and, in some cases, may be doing more harm than good.
Let me give you an example. I have been hearing the phrase “rich farmer” a lot recently. This is a phrase used very seldom within farming circles. 

First of all because there are not that many rich farmers, and second when someone does make a lot of money in farming we call him “successful” or a “good operator.” The people who I have heard use this phrase are people outside of agriculture. My cab driver, my computer guy, and others have used the phrase as they talk about the high prices farmers are getting for their crops and how farmers are getting rich off of ethanol.

When I ask where they get this idea, they point to the media that has played up the record high prices for commodities and the booming demand for ethanol.  Time magazine recently ran a story called “Poor Rich Farmer,” The Boston Globe ran a story on the farm bill titled “Old McDonald Had A Scam,” and the Indianapolis Star recently published a story called “Grain Boom May Spark Rural Revival.”

This latter had a comment section online where readers could write comments about the story. Some of the comments were: “This ‘boom’ will go bust when everybody finally figures out that ethanol is a joke! If it wasn’t being propped up by the feds;”  “Farmers get a break on property taxes, fuel taxes, labor (by using illegal aliens for picking), plus they get subsidies out the wazoo;” “With all these record numbers in farm income ... Washington better get rid of the subsidies or we should get rid of them!”   There were over 100 such comments, most negative, with only a few supporting agriculture.
Our own U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) also contributes to this general misunderstanding about the financial situation of farmers. Top USDA officials are always boasting about net farm income. They trumpet the fact that net farm income will total $89 billion in 2008. This led the Baltimore Sun to write, “Farmers are in for a pay raise this year.” While my reaction to this is “It’s about time,” the average American sees things differently. Most Americans are facing economic uncertainty and rising prices. So when they here about farmers getting rich, they get the wrong idea.
While some producers are making more money than they have in a long while, not all farmers are getting rich. This may be one of the worst economic years for pork producers in history. There are other sectors of the farm economy that are also not doing well. even the corn, soybean, and wheat growers, while enjoying high prices, are facing unprecedented increases in their land and production costs.

This spring they will take a financial risk that even the boldest Wall Street speculator would shy away from. While the recent changes in agriculture have generated some well-deserved income, they have also produced some bad misimpressions.

Perhaps our next ag day our slogan should be “We are not all living high on the hog,” or “Not every cow is a cash cow.”

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.