Fifteen years ago, I mentioned to my brilliant director at University of California, Davis, California Biomass Collaborative, that I thought we were heading to a future where we could produce milk and meat without animals, through cellular regeneration. We had … Continue reading →
Raised by depression-era parents, I have lived through the 1980s farm crisis, and spent 2 years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal using my first degree (BS agronomy) to help Nepali farmers grow more food. In the 80s and … Continue reading →
One of the follow-on surveys to the Census of Agriculture is the Census of Aquaculture. Since the 2022 Census of Agriculture has been conducted, a new USDA, Census of Aquaculture has been conducted for the production year 2023. Fish farmers … Continue reading →
US Farm size is difficult to label in a quantitative way. When a measure is easy to derive, it is not very relevant. While moving toward unpacking cellular agriculture in the next few posts, there are formative steps to cover … Continue reading →
Over the last few decades, financing the family farm has shifted. Farm policies and farm management begin with the idea of a farm as the central business unit of a farm household. This is an excellent place to begin. But … Continue reading →
US farms are very diverse but are easy to group into a common label. The 1.9 million farms counted by USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) for 2023, are all authentically US farms. The average number of farms per state … Continue reading →
The United States is losing farmland but productivity and output continue to increase. Last week, the loss of 11 million acres of pastureland to cropland was explored. That blog also examined the over emphasized claims on cattle as an environmental … Continue reading →
In the most recent post, the case was made that in their role as producers, farms transform inputs into outputs more than establish and maintain markets in the final goods and services, retail sector. The 2022 Census of Agriculture also … Continue reading →
Nearly 25 years ago, I was asked to evaluate the economic opportunity for growing industrial hemp in my role as economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. I wrote one rather concise report and distributed it to all the state … Continue reading →
The 2022 Census of Agriculture was released on February 13, 2024. This image is the top of the first table, Table 1, in the 750-page data document on summary data in the United States for the production year, 2022. In … Continue reading →
