Structural Change

     I was hanging around some beef guys last week and I have to say, it was a great time.  The people involved in animal production in this country (and around the world that I have traveled) are some of the most genuine, thoughtful, fun-loving and creative human beings I have ever met.  A lot of them are suffering now of course both financially and psychically as they face the daunting uncertainty of low prices and record input costs.

     One of the guys I was talking to reacted genuinely surprised and intrigued when I shared with him the inevitability of his business shrinking over the next 10 years.  I told him he had to read a little bit wider than his trade magazines if he wanted to see the future more clearly. 

I had the opportunity to meet Earl Butz way back in my early university days and have a more or less informal, if not brief chat with him about the future of agriculture. With his passing I am reminded how structural change brings about big adjustments for those in Agriculture. He seemed to believe that production and more production was the way out of any problem (export whatever we couldn't consume) regardless of the current market signals. We could not figure him out since prices had been saying "enough already" for quite some time.  I suspect now he had a much longer view in mind.