US has charm despite too many lawyers
Iam back in the United States on my sixth farm study tour. Spending long periods on the road gives me time to think about New Zealand agriculture and make observations about life in rural US. The insights I get on these road trips makes for fascinating comparisons between this enormous country and our own small nation.
What have I already learnt so far that may be of use back home?
The US has much more of a continental climate than New Zealand with its higher and lower temperatures. The noisy Americans are the ones that tend to visit New Zealand and those that stay at home are quieter and are very friendly towards New Zealanders.
Holding down good grass is harder in the US and maize is absolutely crucial to their farming systems. Their beef cattle are on grass for the first 12-18 months of their life, before being fed a Club Med diet in feedlots for the last
100-120 days of their life. Maize makes for about 50-60 per cent of their diet. There are only five million sheep in the US and this sector is overshadowed by its huge pork and poultry industries. The US subsidises its farms with about
US$20 billion a year, mainly through insurance, but it is only about half of one per cent of its total government budget.
What are you going to hear about from America other than rising interest rates, rising inflation rates, rising wages, immigration exports, trade tariffs and fake news? Certainly the conversations I hear revolve around the growing importance of almonds, big capital being spent on synthetic fish and synthetic eggs, and volatility in their car industry.
The key dairy issues, apart from the actual payout per 100 hundredweight of milk supplied is their feed cost to payout receipt ratio. There are almost no cows out on farms and they are all housed under cover. I have seen several 3000 cow dairy operations that only own about 25 hectares, but the lower land cost is offset by substantial building costs sometimes in certain parts of the US you can drive for 200 miles and there will be maize crops grown on both sides of the road.
About 14 per cent of US farmland is irrigated, but droughts have a serious effect, usually because the cost of maize increases. For my mind, the US has too many guns and far too many lawyers. When you go through an American town the three best maintained buildings are always the bank, the fire brigade and churches with cemeteries often on a slope for the view. At both ends of each town there are new storage unit complexes. Even in Texas, though, there are empty shops in smaller towns. So what has been my takehome messages after each of the trips? Damn all really, but I love drifting around in the US, putting 500 kilometres a day under the tyres and talking to American farmers, ranchers, university extension officers and bankers.
For all our differences we do have many similarities. In essence, good farming is essentially about mud management. That sounds simplistic but in essence it’s true. The soil provides the nursery for the plants to grow, which feeds the animals, which produces our food. The devil is in the detail of course.
The highest return in New Zealand farming is from those hours an owner with 100 per cent skin in the game spends inside his or her messy, poorly lit office on administration, budgeting, testing gross margins and focusing on loss areas. For many farmers this time may not represent job satisfaction, but its importance is a close second after breathing.
As a country we are a long way from accepting that many New Zealanders will never own their own home, but this realisation will gradually come. For many New Zealand children, the bank of Momma and Poppa will continue to be as important as ever. You and I need to take this on board and run with it early for our home life, early education, tertiary education, cars, house deposits, marriage breakdowns and various emergencies and unforeseen events. Taking all that into account, is New Zealand a good place to live?
The yes answer applies to this and other questions - Is New Zealand a good place to bring up children? Within reason, is the New Zealand government stable and sound? Climatically, is New Zealand reasonable? Is New Zealand strong on fresh water? Does the New Zealand government have a reasonably low term debt? Is the writer getting job satisfaction for 90 per cent of the time?
When all is said and done, life is good.
❚ Pita Alexander is an accountancy and agribusiness director at Alexanders.
For my mind, the US has too many guns and far too many lawyers.
Pita Alexander