MEXICO, Mo. (AP) - On Becker Family Farms in central Audrain County, the transition of ownership from one generation to another two years ago was also the time to specialize in crop production.
With their uncle retiring, Ross Becker and his brother Thad Becker were faced with the choice of maintaining the operation as it was, with cattle grazing in pastures and fields of corn and soybeans, or investing purely in cropland as they purchased the family farm to operate it with their father, Dennis. The pastureland, which was leased, was for sale at the same time.
"We couldn't buy him out as well as all the ground at the same time, so we decided to buy some of the row crop ground that was for sale and let the pasture go," Ross Becker said.
Many farmers have made that choice over the past 40 years. As the total number of farms decrease and the average size increases, fewer farmers are raising both crops and livestock, the Columbia Daily Tribune reported. While most pronounced in pork production - the number of hog producers has fallen 97 percent and the average herd size has increased 14-fold in eight counties in Central Missouri - it is also happening in cattle and grain.
Becker has been working for his father and uncle since he was a boy and as he was growing up his family raised hogs, cattle and field crops. They got out of the hog business about six years ago, when their contract with MFA to produce pork ended and they found their aging barn, which could house about 400 hogs, was too small, he said.
"We didn't want to invest money on building a big house, so we got out of it," Becker said.
Becker and his brother may have made the right choice. They farm on 1,400 acres, raising corn and soybeans. Much of Audrain County is well suited to crop production on expanses of land flattened by glaciers in the last Ice Age.
It is also a place where farm consolidation and specialization is well underway. From 1978-2017, the number of farms in Audrain County declined 32 percent and the average size increased 45 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Census of Agriculture.
Taken every five years, the data for 2017 was released in April. Farms in Audrain County had the highest sales and the highest net farm income in the eight-county-region that also includes Boone and its immediate neighbors, Callaway, Cole, Cooper, Howard, Moniteau and Randolph.
Over the past nine months, GateHouse Media gathered statistics and conducted interviews about life in eight counties of Central Missouri - Audrain, Boone, Callaway, Cole, Cooper, Howard, Moniteau and Randolph - and how things have changed over the past 20-50 years. For agriculture, there is an increasing divide between producers who want to work on smaller plots, raising food for local markets, and those who are raising livestock in concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, or planting genetically engineered hybrids.
Largely on the rapid growth around Columbia consuming land previously devoted to pasture and crops, there are fewer farmers than 40 years ago and the average farm in Boone County is smaller than 40 years ago. There are no CAFOs in Boone County, the only county in the region with planning and zoning regulations, while Audrain has the most, according to Department of Natural Resources records.
Politically, the Missouri Legislature is on the side of the large producers and increased production from specialized operations like CAFOs. This year the General Assembly passed, and Gov. Mike Parson - himself a cattle producer - signed, a bill barring local jurisdictions from enacting stricter controls on CAFOs than state law.
The bill overruled regulations enacted in 20 rural counties, including Howard, Cooper and Callaway, intended to make CAFOs more responsible for their waste and push their buildings farther away from adjoining property.
Missouri, with 95,320 producers, is second only to Texas in the total number of farms and most remain family owned.
The changing nature of farming includes changes in which land is available for production. The biggest loss is in wooded pasturelands used to graze cattle, said Bob Garino, a Missouri state statistician for USDA.
"We're not losing our good cropland, but we are losing a lot of this pastureland," he said. "There's been a lot of land lost in the south central part of the state, a lot of pastureland."
In the eight-county region, less pasture means fewer large cattle operations, those selling more than 1,000 head per year. Only Randolph County, with five such operations, had more in 2017 than 10 years earlier, when there were four. Where there were 13 in Cooper County in 2007, only one remained in 2017.
Longer term, there were almost 2,700 fewer farms in the eight-county region of Central Missouri reporting sale of cattle in 2017 than in 1978.
Another reason for the shift could be the loss of local markets.
When Tom Groves, an Audrain County cattle farmer, first started his cattle operation in 1980, he could sell his stock in Mexico. The sale barn is now closed.
"The livestock market here in town used to be one of the biggest livestock markets back in the '80s. I now take my cattle to Bowling Green. That's 60 some miles away from here," Groves said. "(The) majority of cattle producers are in south Missouri."
Cattle operations are also more labor intensive than row crop farms. And the workload has grown to prevent disease and as regulations on treatment of animals has changed. Calves could be put straight on a bottle, rather than weaned, when he started.
"They all (cattle) have to be vaccinated, boostered, cut with a knife, no horns," Groves said. "They have to be poured and then I have to wean them for 45 days. I have to tag them with a Missouri state veterinary tag or through a MFA health check."
There are 22 percent fewer farms statewide than in 1978, but the loss in the region has been far less, only about 6 percent. While the average farm has grown by 15 percent, the regional average size has declined slightly, in part because 200,000 fewer acres are in use, land consumed by growth and purchased to give more room for water after the 1993 Missouri River flood.
The farm census can be a snapshot of how two variables, weather and markets, both largely out of farmers' control, can affect their livelihood. In 2017, Missouri farmers had their second-best corn crop ever and a very good soybean crop. Prices were near long-term averages and the good yields resulted in $443.5 million crop sales for the eight-county region.
Five years earlier, when the drought of 2012 brought the second-worst corn yields on record and soybeans giving 20 bushels an acre less than 2017, prices were astronomical, up to $8 a bushel for corn and $18 for beans. But with little to sell, crops from the eight-county region brought only $288.5 million.
Corn and soybean production has increased rapidly over the past 20 years, largely due to the introduction of new varieties.
"The leaps and bounds of seed genetics over the last 10 to 15 years is better than what we've seen in the last 50," said Mike Sharpe, certified general appraiser and seed dealer with Sharpe Ag Services Inc. of Laddonia.
The census won't be taken again until 2022, so it will miss last year's drought and this year's floods. That doesn't mean the farmers will miss them.
"Beans last year were really good, but corn was pretty poor," Becker said. "We had a dry spell through the summer that corn, kind of about time it was coming mature, needed some rain and didn't do real well. The beans were later coming on so they yielded pretty good last year."
Even where river floods haven't covered fields, the heavy rain that has produced the high water is putting planting far behind schedule.
Through June 3, only 69 percent of planned corn was planted statewide, compared to 97 percent on a five-year average, according to the Agricultural Statistical Service weekly report. Only 18 percent of soybeans were in the ground, compared to 63 percent on five-year average.
"The biggest issue (this year) is getting things in the ground," Becker said.
For most of the past four years, residents near proposed CAFOs, first in Callaway and later in Cooper County, have worked to prevent large new sow breeding barns from being built in their neighborhoods.
While those two new operations have made headlines, there are 56 others in operation in the eight-county region of Central Missouri. Only Boone and Howard counties have no CAFOs, while Audrain County has the most, with 27 permits.
CAFO regulations measure "animal units," with beef cattle, for example, counting as one animal unit and equal to 2.5 hogs weighing 55 pounds or 10 pigs weighing less than that amount.
Of the regional permits, 40 are identified in state regulations as IC CAFOs, allowing for 2,500-7,499 hogs or 10,000-29,999 pigs or a combination of the two. The Tipton East operation in southern Cooper County that generated enough controversy for the county Health Center Board to pass new regulations is an IC operation.
The Callaway Farrowing CAFO in western Callaway County will be an IB operation, allowing 7,500-17,499 hogs 55 pounds or larger or 30,000-69,999 pigs under that weight. There are seven other IB operations in the eight-county region, four in Randolph County, one in Callaway County and three in Moniteau County.
Defenders of CAFOs argue they are necessary to produce the food demanded by urban consumers at a reasonable price. Don Nikodim, vice president of the Missouri Pork Association, said it is better for the animals.
"When I grew up we grew pigs outside," Nikodim said. "They were exposed to Mother Nature. This year was particularly nasty to deal with that. If you're a pig outside now living in this, you're in all kinds of rain and mud. Most pigs today are raised in environmentally controlled buildings. They keep the pigs warm in winter, cool in summer."
The problem with many new CAFO applications, said Brian Smith of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, is that the people actually working there are not owners. Both the Callaway Farrowing and Tipton East operations are owned by out-of-state companies.
"They simply are just trying to extract what they can from those communities," Smith said. "They'll buy feed, equipment elsewhere. They strike these larger deals because they have farms in multiple states and what not. That really takes away from our rural communities and causes them to go into a decline."
The political winds favor CAFO operators and the issue splits lawmakers along party lines. All the Republican lawmakers who represent central Missouri counties voted in favor of the bill barring local governments from regulating CAFOs more strictly than the state and it was sponsored by a regional lawmaker, Sen. Mike Bernskoetter, R-Jefferson City.
State Rep. Sara Walsh, R-Ashland, said her constituents want consistent rules.
"You can't have different regulations on one piece of your land, and then have something entirely different on the same contiguous piece of land," she said. "We must have consistency, and that's what (the bill) does."
Multiple lawsuits are underway challenging the new operations, including a challenge to the Cooper County health ordinance which would limit where liquid manure from CAFO operations could be spread.
Another bill filed by State Rep. Kent Haden, R-Mexico, also would have limited inspection authority of animal operations to state and federal inspectors. The only county-level inspection agency would have been county sheriff departments. That bill, however, did not make it to Parson's desk.
The legislative support for CAFOs puts the interests of a handful of large producers over the interests of other farmers and the public, Smith said.
"We have just under 100,000 farmers and that's what's maddening about some of the legislation that we see passed and also attempted," he said. "In reality we have about 500 CAFOs in this state. Less than one-half of 1 percent of the total farms, yet look how much agriculture policy, especially at our state level, is geared toward that model."
The legislation was supported by the Missouri Cattlemen's Association along with Missouri Farm Bureau, Missouri Corn Growers and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce.