Jeri Geren
Diversified Agriculture
Natural Resources
s the holiday season approaches, meetings and agent updates have been major elements of my schedule. I attended annual conference earlier this month and also attended an agriculture economics and agronomy agent update. These meetings all provide beneficial information, but the networking aspect proves to be the most valuable component.
I was also honored to once again serve as the assistant superintendent of the collegiate crops contest in Kansas City. This was a great opportunity to provide to nearly 50 students from 9 schools across the country. Schools competed from Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Virginia Tech, Minnesota-Crookston, South Dakota State, Murry State and Wisconsin Platteville. As assistant superintendent, I helped to set out 200 plant, disease and seed samples for identification and provided assistance for the seed analysis and grain grading portions of the contest. This was a great opportunity for the collegiate youth and I was glad to help provide this contest for them.
In addition, this month I provided the Coyote Management program in Fredonia. With nearly 40 people in attendance, the meeting was well attended and proved to be an excellent informational meeting. The topics that were discussed included the behavior and biology of coyotes as well as how to call and trap the clever animal. The results from the surveys indicated that the meeting attendees were very pleased with the meeting and our informational speaker, Charlee Lee.
This month, the agricultural and horticulture agents also had our PDC meeting. We provided a survey that pertained to many of our past programs as well as questions to help us focus our future programs. The attendance was light, but we received valuable feedback and plan to use the information and suggestions received for our continued programming efforts.
Although this month has been scattered with meetings and programs, it has been rewarding to see the efforts of our educational outreach.
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Ag Trends
Hunting Leases
Winterizing Equipment
Meetings and agent updates highlight this month
collegiate crops contest, coyote management and pdc
Wild Turkeys
Trends in Agriculture
It’s hard to believe 100 years ago, few farms had electricity or running water and the average value of land in Kansas was $35.45, according to the 1910 Census of Agriculture (which, by the way, was a 177 percent increase from the $12.77 value in 1900). Agriculture has certainly changed in a century, but we can even see changes from one census to another. Every five years, the Census of Agriculture sends out surveys to get a snapshot of farms across the United States. As we anxiously await the results of the 2017 census, we can find several trends occurring in agriculture across the country by comparing recent reports.
One trend that we have continued to see for many years is the decline in the number of U.S. farmers as well as the number of farms. In 1982, there were 2.48 million farms as compared to 2.11 million farms in 2012. Supporting these tendencies is the increase in the average age of the U.S. farmer. In 2012, the average farmer was 58.3 years old. In 1982, the average farmer was a mere 50.5 years of age. Nonetheless, the average farm size has increased from 418 acres in 2007 to 434 acres in 2012. The 1910 census showed the average farm size as 244 acres.