Search Site   
News Stories at a Glance
Deere 4440 cab tractor racked up $18,000 at farm retirement auction
Indiana legislature passes bills for ag land purchases, broadband grants
Make spring planting safety plans early to avoid injuries
Michigan soybean grower visits Dubai to showcase U.S. products
Scientists are interested in eclipse effects on crops and livestock
U.S. retail meat demand for pork and beef both decreased in 2023
Iowa one of the few states to see farms increase in 2022 Ag Census
Trade, E15, GREET, tax credits the talk at Commodity Classic
Ohioan travels to Malta as part of US Grains Council trade mission
FFA members learn about Australian culture, agriculture during trip
Timing of Dicamba ruling may cause issues for 2024 planting
   
Archive
Search Archive  
   
Telling the  tale of two ag economists

Everything I know about economics is shaded by the guiding philosophies of my two earliest teachers on the topic. The first was Jackie, our farm’s longtime hired man; the second was my first econ professor at the Big U. One was yin; the other yang.<br>
“Economics,” the professor solemnly pronounced that first day of class in 1973, “is neither art nor science. It is, instead, the near-perfect marriage of art and science.”<br>
The art part, I came to learn later, was taught by the College of Business; the science part by the College of Agriculture. The tweedy biz boys spent entire semesters lecturing about guns and butter while the pocket-protected aggies spent every class demanding hard numbers—demand elasticities, points of diminishing returns, variable costs per acre.<br>
That hard-soft/science-art difference seems to persist today.
The U.S. ag economy, fueled by rock-hard global supply and demand, continues its rocket ride to beyond the stars. On Feb. 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated 2008 net farm income would top $92 billion, a four percent bump above 2007’s all-time record and a shattering 51 percent above the rolling, 10-year average of $61 billion.<br>
At the same time, however, you can’t swing a soybean-inked Wall Street Journal without smearing your fingers with evidence that last summer’s mortgage fever continues to sicken the general economy: rising unemployment, tepid job growth, falling housing values, Wall Street selling arms, legs and backsides to any sailor with cash in his pocket.<br>
To this former student of Econ 101 and 102 and Ag Econ 100, 220, 232, 324, 325 and 340, these conflicting facts might better be explained by hired man Jackie’s sole insight to macro, micro and ag economics: “It’s these (mild expletive) Republican times.”<br>
Jackie didn’t mean the Richard Nixon Republican times we shared back then. Rather, he meant his childhood, belly-to-the-backbone days of “that (really explicit expletive) Herbert Hoover” and the Depression. He never forgot being hungry and never forgave Hoover.<br>
Indeed, anytime gas prices nosed up a nickel or the price of a pair of bib overalls climbed two bits back then, “Republican times” was the simple, single cause of the outrage he called “enflation.”
And Jackie never put too fine a point on any price movement. A tic up or down for corn or wheat or butter or shotgun shells or health insurance (which he called it “Blue Cross/White Shield” because of the prominent emblem on the return address of his monthly bill) was “enflation.”<br>
If Jackie were alive today, I’m pretty sure today’s confounding economic news would kill him. Well, at least perplex him to the point where he’d lean against a barn wall, roll a smoke and, with either me or one of my brothers, “try to noodle it out.”<br>
The search, however, would end with his same amen: “Republican times.”<br>
While Jackie was illiterate – he’d left school in the middle of the second grade after the teacher of the one-room school on our farm whipped him for de-bearding a local Santa at the school’s Christmas party – he wasn’t stupid. Nor, as I was to learn, was his colorful explanation of general price activity.<br>
Twenty or so years later, I put Jackie’s single economic theorem to the test during an interview with noted Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, a fiercely partisan Democrat. What, I asked, will be the result of President Ronald Reagan’s massive tax cuts and massive deficit spending?<br>
“Rack and ruin,” announced Galbraith, “which are my nicknames for this administration’s two heroes, Coolidge and Hoover.”<br>
Ah, I suggested, Republican times?<br>
“One can say that,” he replied.<br>
One always did.<br>

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Alan Guebert may write to him in care of this publication.

2/27/2008