Our Future Farmers: John E. Ikerd, Author & Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics

John E. Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri Columbia, College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. Join is for this hour long conversation with one of the unsung heroes of the sustainability movement. This prolific writer, speaker and teacher sits down with Shane to explore our shared future. As Ikerd says, "We are at a critical time in agriculture and cannot go on like this. If [rural] towns are really lucky they can get a prison. If you cannot get that, maybe a landfill. and if all else fails, a CAFO. This model of rural economic development will not work.

It is also a time of great possibilities, we are going through a period of great transformation. we are moving out of the industrial era and into something fundamentally different. The big question is the one of sustainability. We have gone though decades of extraction, and its gone. so how do we meet the needs of the present without diminishing the needs of the future?

There is a growing realization that when you use up the productivity of nature and of people you realize that there is no place to get anything anymore. The financial crisis, the gulf. we cannot continue to extract and exploit. Going through the transition we must rethink every aspect of our lives and when we are done our lives will be fundamentally changed."