Six trends you can’t afford to miss if you’re in agriculture Nov 5, 2015 Ron Smith

Lowell Catlett doesn’t dismiss the obstacles facing agriculture today. He chooses to look beyond them. “There has never been a better time to be in agriculture,” he says. “There has never been a better time to live in rural America.” The Regents Professor in Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business and Extension Economics and Dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at New Mexico State University, spoke at the recent Oklahoma State University Rural Economic Outlook Conference, where the focus was on the many challenges facing agriculture — low commodity prices, increased production costs, and the uncertainty of ag lending, among others. For the latest on southwest agriculture, please check out Southwest Farm Press Daily and receive the latest news right to your inbox. Catlett also bills himself a “futurist,” one who explains, in terms that even a liberal arts major can grasp, how technology will, and is, changing our lives for the better. His presentation, a mix of distinctive detail and barbed quips, is designed to amuse and educate. He pokes fun at his own profession from the get-go. “Economists exist so meteorologists will have someone to laugh at,” he said, as he warmed up the Stillwater, Okla., audience for his discussion entitled “Six Trends You Can’t Afford to Miss.” The accuracy of economists’ predictions has been pegged at 47 percent, he says, but “You can flip a coin and beat that by 3 points.” The irony that the analysis of economists’ accuracy was most likely developed by economists isn’t lost on Catlett. Climate change, he says, has “been up and down, weird as hell, but the world has experienced the largest economic output ever recorded. Production of greenhouse gases is down over the last decade, production (manufacturing) is up, and pollution is declining.” China, he says, is depending on fewer coal-fired plants, and the world has added more trees in the last 25 years than it harvested.