SEGMENT: REFLECTIONS, FAMILY FARM, & GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS
Orion Samuelson>LPL Interviews N-Z>LPL Interviews N-Z, Segment 16
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- GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS
- Small producers will be driven out if government is taken out of the business of farming. Orion compares it to the automobile dealers and pharmacies. Agriculture is more about marketing and managing than producing.
- FAMILY FARM
- Talks about the family farm and how it's changing. Farms aren't dying, they're evolving. The family farm Orion grew up on enabled his family to live with adequate food and clothes. That same farm could not maintain a family today. Now costs require that farms have more acres and more animals to be able to operate.
- CHANGES IN FARMING METHODS
- What are the big changes in the 60s. Very quiet decade--still have the soil bank, some weather challenges, but mechanization had already occurred. Horses were already gone. Hybridization had already happened. Henry Wallace, secretary of Agriculture for FDR increased production. He was the beginning and that had already occurred before the 1960s. Most farms were already electrified. No new major issues. In 1967 ADM built a soybean oil refining factory in Decatur, IL. We were already processing soybeans--oil was a product and then animal feed. Then hydrogenated plant gave us a cooking oil, opened up a market with Japan.
- REFLECTIONS
- Talks about his career and how it has evolved over time. His own personal show and WGN has evolved. In the 1960s there were a lot more farmers. His show has diminished, they do less shows and shorter segments. Do market prices throughout the day because markets are so volatile. And they have become far more volatile than they were decades ago. Talks about the record high prices, corn, wheat and oil and many other products. Other countries are a large influence. Quotes Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz about the market and rising and falling prices. 1972 was a very significant change in agriculture. There were two very important things that happened during President Nixon's time
