Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (c). The Economy again. . . Agriculture

President Calvin Coolidge carrying Wyoming's economy in his right hand. ..  after all, what other hand would free marketer Coolidge be carrying the economy in?

This past Tuesday I supplemented my first post on Wyoming's economy, dealing in that instance, with the extractive industries.

Now I'm doing with that with agriculture.

 

Agriculture really deserves to have price of place in Wyoming's economy, even if it no longer does.  It's the branch of our economy that makes the state what it is, for everyone. Whatever anyone does here, they do it because of agriculture.

Funny how we ignore it, while giving lip service to its heritage at the same time.

 

More than any other force, it was agriculture that caused Wyoming to come into being.  The attraction of the state to the cattle industry caused the evolution of the state from a frontier into a cattle, and then sheep, domain to come about starting in the 1860s.  The cattle industry came to so dominate everything about the state that it left the lasting term "The Cowboy State" to define Wyoming.  And agriculture remains, although not anywhere as dominant as it once was.

But it doesn't really have to be that way.

 

In other states, in recent years, agriculture has tremendously rebounded.  And American agriculture remains an industry that not only satisfies nearly all of our own needs (although this is also not completely true, but that's partially due to NAFTA), but is also an expert industry.  Wyoming's industry remains strong, but it isn't as strong as it could be, and in fact has suffered some real loss, due to Wyoming's economic libertarianism.  With some adjustment to that, the industry could be much stronger, and much stronger for actual Wyomingites.

Agriculture is prey, we should note, to much of the same set of problematic economic forces that the extractive industries are.  We are not going to eat all of the agricultural production we generate here any more than we are going to consume all of the petroleum oil that we produce here.  So the price of every agricultural commodity we produce is controlled by events outside the state.

 

Indeed, while it doesn't pertain much to me as we eat volunteers, so to speak from our own cattle, or wild game, when you buy meat at the grocery store in Wyoming you traditionally pay a lot more than you might in some other locations.  I'm often shocked by the price of meat at the counter, on the rare occasions I purchase it here.

And that has a lot to do with the fact that nothing is turned into a finished product here.  The meat isn't, by and large, packed here.  Wool isn't, by and large, processed here.  You get the gist of it.  And none of that is within the direct control of the farmer and rancher.

 

Nor is the price of the most necessary element of an agricultural enterprise.  In recent decades that has tended to be controlled by outside forces, and for some odd reason that's been driven in the West by those who can buy ranch land at playground prices.  No rancher can afford to pay those kind of prices and this means that people entering ranching who aren't party of landed families are basically foreclosed from doing so, if they really want to enter agriculture.  If they're rich people who want to own ranch land that's another matter.

All of this can be impacted statutorily, and some of it fairly easily, if there's a will to do it.  So far, however, there's been no will.

Let's start with agricultural land.

In some states statutes have been passed and tested which preclude the corporate ownership of agricultural land. That keeps out big absentee corporations from buying up the land.  Nearly as easily, it would be quite easy, statutorily, to draft legislation which would require that those holding agricultural land be engaged principally in agriculture for their livelihood.  That would shut the door on people who make their money in something else from buying agricultural and and pretending they're ranchers or just holding on to the land and it would, by extension, vest the land in people who are really willing to engage in what is a fairly hard way to make a living.

If this seems like its a simple fix, it is.  It would undoubtedly work.

 

But it's not going to be tried any time soon.  It controls the use of land, and Wyomingites including agricultural Wyomingites tend to be opposed to that philosophically, even if its in their best interest, and even if that means that at the end of the day money controls the use of land and they don't have it.

Addressing other problems would be more difficult, but not impossible.  Problems that exist in the packing industry have been well known for decades and consolidation of the industry has effectively driven the small packing houses out of business in the state, unless they are specialty packers.  State sponsorship, along the same lines as now about to get rolling, maybe, for air transportation could address that and could do it successfully.  As all the constituents in the state are here for successful packing, the state could enter this on a break even basis, or on the Theodore Roosevelt corporate participation model, and successfully compete, bringing jobs to the state.  A person could easily imagine packing houses located in southeastern and southwestern Wyoming, and Fremont County.  Such plants would likely draw in cattle and sheep from neighboring Nebraska, Utah and Colorado.

 

Its that's a little too socialist, and it may very well be just that, a state sponsored agricultural co-op might be an even better option.  Something along the lines of the Irish Ornua (New Gold). Ornua, formerly the Irish Dairy Board, is an agricultural marketing co-op that was founded by the Irish government.  You know it as Kerrygold, a brand of really excellent Irish dairy products.

The key here is that Ornua is state sponsored, but it's singular in purpose and its a co-op owned by the farmers whose products it markets around the globe.  A similar Steamboat brand of beef, or something, could model itself on the Irish Diary Board and seek buy in from the state's producers.  Indeed, that element would be necessary as ranchers basically won't organize themselves.

 

A similar, or perhaps identical, approach, perhaps by the same entity, could be undertaken for other Wyoming agricultural products, such as wool.  A state woolen mill, for example, could be organized by the same entity.

Again, I don't see any of these things happening soon. Which doesn't mean they aren't worth considering.  Otherwise, we seem content to do nothing.  The approch noted above, I think, would increase the number of Wyoming farmers and ranchers who are really Wyomingites and who are working people, and otherwise boost employment in the state in what are basically industrial concerns.  We've long been accustomed to the concept that support industries are good for the state in the oilfield. They exist, although they are largely ignored, in the agricultural field as well. This would increase them to the state's benefit and make agriculture a more local, more productive and more stable industry than it is.

But my guess is that none of the candidate are going to mention anything about agriculture this election season at all.