Page 24 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

By growing potatoes in 11 states, Black Gold supplies local supermarkets with the 5-pound bags
of fresh, locally-grown red potatoes that consumers prefer. Committed to growing food “close
to where it needs to be,” Halverson predicts that “large scale conventional farming will
continue to be a very powerful force in agriculture.” Stressing the importance of constantly
improving efficiency, he says that “in many cases, scale equals efficiency” and that he expects
consolidation to continue in pretty much all phases of farming.

“I think that’s been going on for years and will continue,” he says.

By 2040, he says, Black Gold “may not be that many more acres, but I’m certain that in
order to be efficient, there’s going to be more production per acre.” He concludes that
“being efficient will be what separates the really successful producers from the also-rans.”

As part of his drive for greater efficiency, Halverson says Black Gold is “integrating the new
technologies,” but, with farming’s tight margins, “we really have to look hard at these new
technologies to make certain that there is a positive ROI (return on investment).” He already is
using new technology like data acquisition on his tractors and predicts that “there will be more
electronics and robotics, more sensor-driven technology, as a result of the high cost of labor.”

Halverson also expects to see more diversification of the entire ag sector, to include increasing
roles for “growing crops on the rooftops of some supermarkets,” urban vertical farming,
hydroponics, and high-tech greenhouse ag for “certain very high-value crops” like leafy greens,
herbs, tomatoes, and berries. “But to me,” he says, “it’s quite limited as to how many people
those farms are really going to feed, so I think you’re always going to need traditional
agriculture.”

Tim Raile – Having tried it all, going all organic

“We raised our last non-organic crop this last year,” says dryland wheat farmer Tim Raile. His
8,000-acre operation in western Kansas and eastern Colorado has a third of the acres certified
organic with the rest in three-year transition, on track for certification by 2020.

A major blow came this year when Raile’s entire certified organic crop was destroyed by hail.
“All we had this year was transitional crops to sell, so it was a tough year.” Fortunately, federal
crop insurance softened the blow. Other offsets to the high costs of transitioning came
from Clarkson Grain, which provided expert advice on making the transition, and from a contract
with Kashi, a Kellogg subsidiary, that provided “premiums on some transitional wheat acres”
thanks to guidance from Healthy Food Ingredients.

Raile says he is switching his whole farm to organic because previously “we were in a
wheat/corn/sunflower very intensive rotation, with chemicals, herbicides, pesticides. We did that
for about 15 years. But we could see that it just wasn’t sustainable. It worked really well for the
first 10 years, but then the last five, we could see that the weeds were just evolving as quick as
our farm was to be resistant to weeds. It just made it where our expenses were getting out of
hand trying to control the weeds and it still wasn’t working so we had to look into something
different.”

Raile says he’s among the first in his area to go organic but that “I’m seeing more and
more interest and more and more large farms switching to organic.” He’s points to the

22 www.Agri-Pulse.com