Farm Bureau president to stress dealing with economic challenges
Upchurch has raised cattle in Cumberland County since 1976 but had to stop hog production six or seven years ago.
“We really liked that type of farming, until we ran into a situation where we had an oversupply and consolidation of a lot of the industry,” Upchurch said. “The market prices got so cheap that we just decided to get out.”
The Tennessee Farm Bureau will be helping farmers find new business models that keep smaller producers from going under and take advantage of environmental trends, he said.
Tennessee farms have decreased from 91,000 to 90,000, according to 2002 Census figures. Total farmland decreased by 100,000 acres to 11.7 million acres the same year.
For Upchurch, these statistics don’t speak as loudly as examples he sees every day, in his own life and the lives of more than 600,000 state Farm Bureau members.
“There’s been tremendous change,” Upchurch said. “Back in the early ’70s, we had 400 pig producers in Cumberland County. A lot of these farmers were part-time farmers — they worked in factories or other businesses, but they had a part-time farming operation. Today, we might have two or three.”
It’s much harder to make a profit farming unless running a large, commercial operation, Upchurch said.
“Many of them are going to different types of farming to add value to the products they produce,” Upchurch said
One business model gaining popularity across the state relies on co-ops and product alliances, groups of smaller farms participating in a shared business plan to reduce costs and improve bargaining power.
The Tennessee Council of Cooperatives lists 196 co-ops and alliances across the state ranging from the Appalachia Honey Producers Co-op to the Upper Cumberland Beef Alliance.
“I think that’s what smaller producers are going to have do,” Upchurch said. “They are going to have to build alliances and work through an organization so they have a voice.”
Rising energy costs are providing both a challenge and an opportunity for farmers.
“Fuel cost is a tremendous unit cost for agriculture. I’d say it’s probably doubled in the last two years,” Upchurch said.
As a means to reduce costs and increase the market for crops, Upchurch is seeing a bright future in biodiesel and ethanol fuel.
The Farm Bureau is encouraging cities and businesses to start switching their fleet fuel to either one of the renewable fuels, Upchurch said. After a report by the state comptroller in April, the bureau also asked the state for consumer incentives for purchasing vehicles that run on alternative fuel.
“The advantages of ethanol and biodiesel over your petroleum fuel is that it burns much cleaner, and it’s a renewable product that we grow here,” Upchurch said.
Biofuel is just one aspect of agriculture environmentalism. Upchurch said farmers are fundamentally environmentalists with a big role in sustaining the land, even in the midst of tremendous economic change.
“We take care of the land, and we take pride in the way we take care of the land,” Upchurch said. “It’s our livelihood and we want to pass that on to our children and that way of life.”
Farmers are concerned that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain could pose a new threat to farmland.
“That’s probably energized our members more than any issue in years,” Upchurch said.
The state Farm Bureau will be working with legislators the next session to draft a bill to better protect property owners from having the land declared “blighted” and then seized by local governments for other use.
Upchurch, a Fentress County native, has just taken the reins of the nation’s largest farm bureau from 10-year veteran Flavius Barker.
He plans to continue following the philosophy set by Barker, which is to rely on new technology to reduce costs, maximize production for both small and large farms and spread information among members.
The organization’s Web site hosts audio and video files for download and directories of producers and products across the state offers e-mail updates to members so they can keep abreast of issues.
“Farmers have done a great job of changing the types of systems to take advantage of technology,” Upchurch said.
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On the Net:
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