State Fair showcase for Nebraska’s biggest business — agriculture

Along with hundreds of agricultural shows and displays, this is the 10th year agricultural associations and organizations have joined together to tell their story at the State Fair.

Grouped together in the Exhibition Building, their theme this year is, “The Story of Nebraska Agriculture.”

When Nebraska commodity organizations looked for a theme for this year’s State Fair, “it really wasn’t too hard to think of an idea,” said Christin Kamm, public information officer for the Nebraska Department of Agriculture.

“We are just trying to get the word about agriculture out, and the story of Nebraska agriculture just fit very well with what we are trying to accomplish,” Kamm said.

That story, she said, is a simple but important one.

“We want people to know where their food is coming from,” she said. “We don’t want them to think it is just coming from a grocery store. We want them to understand that your dairy milk is coming from a dairy cow, that your wheat producers are growing the wheat that is turned into the flour and the bread you are eating and consuming every day.”

What it boils down to, Kamm said, “is just about educating the public about what we are doing and why we are doing it.”

Rhetorically, Kamm asked, “Why is that so important?”

“Because everybody has to eat every single day,” she said. “So it is important for them to understand that farmers and ranchers are out there making product for them.”

To get that story out to the more than 300,000 people who come to the State Fair annually, Kamm said, nearly every major agricultural commodity group is represented at the State Fair.

“There are more than 25 exhibits here at the State Fair,” she said.

It is important for agriculture to get its message out, especially in tough years like this year, when a major drought has gripped the state’s agricultural industry.

“Our farmers and ranchers are a resilient bunch, and they are very understanding that they may have a really bad year but next year will be a really great year,” Kamm said. “That is a chance that they take every single day in the farming and ranching industry.”

The Nebraska State Fair is a huge family draw, and that means the fairgrounds are always swarming with kids. It’s those kids that these agricultural commodity groups are trying to reach with their message about food production.

From the stage shows produced by the Nebraska Department of Agriculture to the various hands-on displays, Kamm said, it’s important to get kids’ attention.

“We want kids to walk away learning a little bit about agriculture,” she said.

Along with food production, Kamm said, the state’s agricultural industry helps create jobs and fuel the economy, especially in recent years when the nation’s economy was suffering from an economic downturn.

In 2010, Nebraska ranked fourth in the nation in cash receipts from all farm commodities at $17.3 billion and net farm income was fourth in the nation at $3.95 billion. It was fourth in the nation in cash receipts from all livestock and products at $8.45 billion and fifth in the nation in cash receipts from all crops at $8.82 billion.

Nebraska is constantly adding value to the crops it grows, such as corn. In 2011, Nebraska farmers had the nation’s third largest corn crop at 1.54 billion bushels. More than 600 million bushels of that corn was used to make 2 billion gallons of ethanol (second largest in the nation). The vast majority of the rest of that corn crop went to feed livestock, which helped make Nebraska the nation’s top red meat producer in 2011 at 7.16 billion pounds of meat. That kept meat packing plants across the state busy, such as the JBS plant in Grand Island, which employs more than 2,500 people.

“If you want to learn anything about agriculture, this is the spot to be,” Kamm said, referring to the agricultural exhibits at the State Fair. Along with the various agricultural commodity groups, there are also exhibits about soil and water conservation, forestry and other practices that help keep Nebraska’s natural resources strong for agricultural production.

One of the agricultural exhibitors represented at the State Fair is the Nebraska Pork Producers Association. Larry Sitzman, former director of agriculture for Nebraska, is the NPPA executive director.

Sitzman said agriculture is Nebraska’s biggest industry.

“It is responsible for the most jobs,” he said. “It is responsible for the state’s economy remaining positive. It is the most important thing at the Nebraska State Fair. It is all about agriculture as agriculture is Nebraska.

“By the Nebraska Department of Agriculture bringing us all together in one place, it makes it very available for the school kids and the citizens of the state to come and learn more about agriculture.”

For Rod Johnson of the Nebraska State Dairy Association, having agriculture represented at the State Fair brings “the different facets of agriculture all together in one place.”

“We have a good working coalition between most of our groups, and this is just another opportunity to showcase that,” he said.

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