A road trip though the land of Trump
I’ve just returned from the road trips of all road trips in the land of Trump. Our farm study tour covered 41 states in the United States, five Canadian provinces and 30,144 kilometres. In anyone’s book that is some serious mileage on the road, but it was also a great learning curve. Whichever way you look at them the numbers in the US are staggering. There are 320 million people, 77 million beef cattle, 14 million dairy cattle, 5.3 million sheep, 71 million pigs, 233,000 poultry and turkey farms and 2.1 million farmers.
The average farmer is similar to New Zealand at 58.3 and 90 per cent of farms are family farms. The average family farm is 174 hectares with debt of about 14 per cent on total family farm assets and this is a major plus for any working farmer.
Corn and soybeans are the two biggest crops with hay coming in at number 10. Poultry and pigs are at five and six and are at a sales level pushing into beef trading.
Nearly half of US family farms have a low gross farm income. Even a small farmer is called a rancher. The average beef cow and calf operation is 40 cows but there are big numbers of them with almost invariably one spouse working full time off farm and New Zealand may also be getting close to this. The average US woman outlives her husband by five to seven years and the US financial planning industry is starting to really notice this.
In my opinion, New Zealand has nothing to learn about the US health system which is costing two to three times the present NZ family cost. It is easier to stay well than to get well in America.
On the road I saw that perhaps 50 per cent of US people still support President Donald Trump and the other half do not.
He seems to like fighting fires and even lighting them. He seems to treat every problem or issue as though it is a real estate deal. It is hard to see him lasting beyond four years. The farming group though tends to support him perhaps because US farming is in its fourth year of low profitability.
Grass fed beef is getting some media space in the US as are synthetic meat and almond milk. In a survey 7 per cent of people thought that brown coloured almond milk came from brown cows. The US is spending billions on so-called synthetic meat and milk. The dollars are so significant that even if only a small amount of the investment comes to something it will not help New Zealand.
Talking to Americans, they like our lamb, our white wine and our isolation. Their population is 70 times NZ and many of them know little about us or exactly where our country is. Over there it struck me that Mr Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un are a volatile mix. About half of our total exports worth $61 billion go to Asia so disruption is almost likely. Interest rates also do not like uncertainty and disruption.
In my travels, both the US and United Kingdom have displayed the effects of income and asset ownership inequality. Neither of these issues are easily fixable and much of the world is an uncertain volatile place at the moment. We need to take this on board and cut our cloth accordingly. ❚ Pita Alexander is an accountancy and agribusiness director at Alexanders.