Make the impossible dream come true!

Imagine: Saipan, Tinian, and Rota growing over 500,000 lbs of fruits and vegetables monthly! Imagine: Processing over 100,000 lbs of pork monthly! Imagine: Raising over 10,000 lbs of shrimp monthly! Imagine: Harvesting over 50,000 lbs of fish from our oceans monthly! Imagine: The addition of thousands of pounds of value-added products made from the above products! For our own use and for export! The end result is a prosperous and employed community. This is not an impossible dream! We can do it! How?

Agriculture boosted by technology will make this happen. Yes, agriculture can be our next big industry, second to tourism. Our three major islands—Saipan, Tinian and Rota—have the basics to produce these quantities! The land and resources are here waiting for us to utilize them. Here is how to achieve this and realize the importance this can mean to us economically and socially.

Farming today is not the farming of 20 years ago. Farming is an industry. Today’s agricultural production has doubled, while total input use, including labor, land and machinery, has declined slightly. The impetus to this is that technology is bringing about one of the most dynamic periods in American agriculture. As an example, between 1948 and 1996, agricultural productivity increased more than eightfold.

Today, productivity increases center on rising yield per acre and per animal. Also, farmers are spending more on management services and efficiency-producing inputs, such as chemicals and irrigation, and less on traditional inputs such as machinery. As a result farmers produce more and higher value products.

Another change has been the move to consolidate smaller farms with large farms. In this manner costs are reduced and less farm labor is required. Larger farms are able to adopt technology more rapidly than smaller farms.

One of the major problems farmers many times face is the inadequate supply of water. But with drip irrigation this problem is surmountable. Drip irrigation method, also called drop by drop irrigation and underground irrigation, functions as its name implies. Drop by drop, water is distributed to the active root zone of plants.

This method, if managed properly, might be the most water-supply-efficient way of irrigation, because runoff and evaporation are reduced significantly. Drip irrigation in today’s agriculture is frequently integrated with plastic sheet, further diminishing evaporation, and is also a method of fertilizer delivery to the plants. Drip irrigation is done with the help of narrow tubes that deliver water directly to the base of the plant. Has any farmer used this method here?

With today’s technology, farmers with thousands of acres of land receive the same information and control backyard gardeners have at their fingertips. Computers, satellites, and microchips are giving farmers better information and making machinery smarter and more powerful. In other words technology is dramatically increasing the amount of land each farmer can work effectively.

Not only in agriculture is technology creating greater productivity; it is helping livestock producers by using computers to get better information about their operations. Computer chips imbedded in the ear of an animal can be used to monitor growth and production. A farmer with dairy cows can easily monitor milk production and health records by scanning the chip imbedded in the animal’s ear. These are only a few of the ways that technology is increasing and improving production on the farm.

In addition to technology, more colleges are doing research to improve farming techniques. Researchers help synthesize and analyze the overwhelming mass of information available to farmers through their extension services. For example the Northern Marianas College through its CREES department offers great assistance to any farmer who desires it. How many farmers are asking for assistance from CRESS? It’s free!

The science of biotechnology is developing specialized seeds and breeding stocks to give farmers and ranchers increased profits through improved control over their production. For many years, producers have been using conventional propagation and breeding to cultivate beneficial attributes. However, genetic engineering promises more precision, helping scientists examine the entire spectrum of genes from all organisms for potential improvements to crops and livestock.

Genes are being developed to protect poultry and cattle from specific diseases. Genetic technology is more complicated in livestock than in crops, but scientists are pinpointing markers to guide them to genes that will someday revolutionize the meat industry.

The revolution continues with better chemicals that help farmers plant a cover crop following harvest of the primary crop to protect the land from wind and water. The chemicals suppress weeds, and feed organic matter to the soil. Use of cover crops has increased because today’s herbicides let farmers kill the cover crop fully so that it will not compete with the primary crop.

All of these advances in agriculture technology are also adding to value-added farm products. Through better crop production and control, food manufacturers are adding to our diet new and varied foods. Consider the demand for organic fruits, vegetables, meat, and eggs. They all sell at a higher price because of their improved production and quality.

Also a factor that is helping improve the productivity and sales of agriculture products is improved shipping methods. In today’s grocery stores, food is just as likely to come from around the world as from a farm in the next county. We have truly become a globalized world not only in communication but in agriculture. This is the major reason an air cargo bridge is now being planned in the CNMI to improve exports. Think of the thousands of pounds of locally grown agricultural products exported while importing thousands of dollars!

By now you are wondering why I took you down this path suggesting that agriculture can be our second largest industry. Daily we wrestle with the question about what is the best industry to revitalize our economy. What many people are ignoring is that our people must be employed or they will become parasitic and more dependent on food stamps while only 1 percent of the insiders prosper. The 99 percent of us will remain poor as the people on Tinian are after having a 12-year-old major casino.

A few days ago I flew to Tinian. Looking out the window of the plane, I lamented at the thousands of untilled acres that I saw below. I repeatedly kept saying to myself: These are the acres of diamonds waiting to be cultivated! By cultivating these diamonds under our feet, millions of dollars are waiting to be earned with pride and dignity. And as we develop our agriculture industry, hundreds of our people will be employed and earning money, instead of lining up at the food stamp office.

Today agriculture is not a hobby but a serious industry. When we incorporate the technology that is daily being developed and apply it to agriculture, the CNMI—Saipan, Tinian, and Rota—can virtually feed us, feed Guam, and the huge military market beckoning to us.

To sum it up: Agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing, and value added products can amount to almost $1 million income per month on our islands. In addition hundreds of us will be employed. At the same time we will have built a bridge between Saipan, Tinian, Rota, and Guam with our “Marianas Produce.” We will again become brothers and sister.

I am reminded of the lyrics from the song: The Impossible Dream:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love, pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause…

To reach the unreachable star!

But then what is the worth of life but to reach for stars beyond our grasp! Samuel Jonson over a hundred years ago wrote: “Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation but the only riches she can call her own.”

Yes, agriculture, animal husbandry, and fishing coupled with technology can become our second most important industry. It need not be an impossible dream. People, if we stop our buts (excuses) we can do it! Keep the smiles going!