Agriculture sows big business stories

By Flickr user Jennifer Dickert

Some crops, of course, are grown year-round, but as major spring planting season looms, it’s a good time to pluck some business features from your local soil.

Agriculture makes up roughly 16 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and is a huge employer.  To drill down to state impact, follow this Bureau of Economic Analysis link to the state-level GDP interactive map.  

Select “agriculture” under the industry menu and use the default parameters in the other fields; you’ll end up with a color-coded map and below that, a more useful Excel chart showing you the 2008 dollar output of the agriculture business in your state.  California, for example, generates a whopping $27 billion a year, while arid Nevada a mere $262 million.

What DO they grow in the desert?  Mostly livestock, as a quick peek at the Nevada Department of Agriculture site shows.   Your own agriculture department is a good first stop for statistics and story ideas; here’s a directory from the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture.  (Click around to other states, too, to get a sense of issues and trends.)

The Wall Street Journal reports a sunnier 2010 outlook for crops and commodities, thanks to economic stabilization.  That’s good news for growers; perhaps not so much for consumers if food prices take wing.

Here’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture link to materials from its Outlook Forum held earlier this month; you can review a variety of speeches and presentations that prognosticate about the coming year.  The topics illustrate the issues and challenges facing growers today; note that ancillary subjects like transporting crops, water supply, feeds and individual commodity outlooks all suggest interesting facets that don’t necessarily involve seeds and soil.

Be sure to check with your state land-grant university’s extension service for experts, leads to agri-business start-ups and incubators, interesting product research and other information. Here’s an interactive map that explains what the Cooperative Extension Service is, and how to find your local office.  Also, this eXtension site is a sort of national cooperative of many state services and a great source of information and story leads.

I’m a big proponent of tapping corporate expertise: if you have a food grower, processor or manufacturer in your area, ask for a sit-down interview with their economists, forecasters and researchers to talk about the financial outlook for agribusiness in your area, new innovations, changing employment trends (what are the hot jobs in the sector? Hot college degrees?) and other topics.  It’s a great way to cultivate professional relationships and when you’re asking about the overall industry, you aren’t putting the corporation on the spot, so they tend to be more candid.

Don’t forget to tap meteorologists: Wild weather already has threatened crops this winter, and by some accounts, including this USA Today piece,  many of us are in for flooding and other fiascos come spring.

Other topics that spring to mind:

Kooky crops.  Who grows venus fly traps, Christmas trees, popcorn, purple potatoes?  A few years ago Vlasic or its suppliers developed a super-secret cucumber whose slices had the same circumference as a hamburger, so you only needed one pickle per.  I don’t see them in the stores any more; must’ve been too costly to continue.

Storage can be an issue.  On a recent visit to the Tabasco factory in Louisiana, the guide told us that the mush made out of each year’s pepper crop is fermented in 20 different warehouses across the Americas.  The geographic diversity reduces the company’s risk of losing an entire year’s output.  Who knew?

Technology.  Biofuel crops, genetic modification, irrigation techniques, equipment.  Who designs the machines that strip corn kernels from the cob, for example?  Even if you don’t have a major grower in your area, you surely can find a supplier.

And again, food prices are of concern to suppliers, manufacturers and consumers.  Here’s a link to a previous post on that topic.