Farm Byline

It’s estimated North Dakota farmers planted just over 400,000 acres of sunflowers this year. If any of those sunflower fields are along a road, it’s a safe bet someone will stop and take a picture when the crop is in full bloom.

There is such a picture of a blooming sunflower field on the cover of the 1980 annual statistical summary of North Dakota agriculture. The fact sunflowers made the front cover 44 years ago was an acknowledgement of the position sunflowers had achieved in the state’s crop production mix.

A retired western North Dakota rancher told me he had been to the East Coast recently, visiting in-laws, and was appalled by how many of the people there had little or no understanding of production agriculture. His concern is shared by many in agriculture and it’s certainly not new.

June’s National Dairy Month observance finds me thinking about North Dakota’s dying dairy industry and all the dairy stories I’ve done these past 50-plus years, especially the last one.

When I started, North Dakota had several thousand farms with dairy cattle and two large dairy producer organizations. There were numerous cheese plants, creameries and bottling plants. Our June stories were about dairy shows, dairy princesses and cow milking contests.

A good headline grabs your attention, draws you in and makes you want to know the rest of the story. That’s how it was for me when I read, “North Dakota Farmers Lead the Nation in Precision Farming.” I wondered, “Can that be true?And if it is, why would that be?”

The couple sitting across from us at the banquet table were longtime friends. At one point, the woman asked, “So, Al, what’s your next column going to be about?” I said I was considering writing about outdated conservation practices, like flax strips. Her husband said, “Flax strips! I’d forgotten all about flax strips.”

Sometimes, the roadblocks to telling an impactful TV story aren’t what you would expect.

You may have heard or read something about the “cow that stole Christmas.” On Dec. 23, 2003, this country’s first documented case of BSE or “mad cow disease” was discovered in a dairy cow in Washington state.

I was in a tractor, grinding hay, when the news came on the radio. I remember it like it was yesterday. When I got back to the house, I told my wife, Peggy, the U.S. beef industry would never be the same.

Last month, I went to the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives office and paged through some issues of this magazine from the early 1970s. I’ll explain why in a little bit.

The question posed to me was, “How did growing up in the 1950s help shape the person you became later in life?” The ladies who asked it grew up in the ’50s as the Pfeiffer sisters and wrote a book,“While the Windmill Watched,” about their experiences.

I was born in 1947. The ’50s were my formative years – a boy growing up on a 640-acre diversified farm. I was influenced by my parents, obviously, and their primary values – church and family (a large extended family with many cousins).

A veteran North Dakota commodity group leader has reminded me several times how important my morning farm broadcasts were to him. He says he would turn to my broadcast to find out if there had been developments in Washington, D.C., that affected his commodity. He wanted to know what would be waiting for him at the office – brushfires to put out, or what phone calls to expect.