Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. Thank you for joining us, whether you're watching the YouTube live stream or listening to the podcast, our first live Friday show in a couple of weeks. Glad to have you here. If you're new here, this is Economics on Tap. It's our weekly happy hour episode.
And today we are checking in on the agricultural industry in Oklahoma. Bet you all thought we were going to do terrorists, didn't you? No, we're going someplace else. Here to make us smart about this is Anna Pope. She covers agriculture and rural affairs for KOSU and Harvest Public Media. She's joining us from Oklahoma City. Welcome to the show, Anna. Hello.
And I suppose even agriculture is effectively a tariff story as well. But I know you've been covering something else in the meantime. We're going to get to that in a little bit. So, Anna, first thing we do usually is drinks. What kind of drink did you bring to happy hour?
I brought some white wine, and then I have a bottle of water here right by me.
Nice. What kind of wine? A Pinot Grigio. Nice. Very refreshing, which I guess is appropriate given your coverage area at the moment.
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Chapter 2: What challenges are Oklahoma's agricultural workers facing?
I did my old faithful and old fashioned, but to jazz it up, I added some lemon basil lavender tonic that somebody sent me a while back from Sweet Haven Tonics. So it adds a little extra flavor to it. So cheers and welcome to the show.
Thanks.
All right. Let's talk about what's happening in Oklahoma. And yes, I know the tariff story is the big one. We're going to be getting into that on another show. But I do did want to check in on Oklahoma because the agriculture industry has been hit really hard by tariffs. We can talk about the ag industry in a bit.
But, you know, Anna, you've been on a different story that hasn't been getting a lot of national attention. The wildfires burning in Oklahoma and Texas right now. Where are the fires and what's it like where you are?
Yeah, so a lot of the big major fires are in northwestern Oklahoma, specifically in our panhandle. Earlier this week, I went to Woodward, which is not in the panhandle, but it's about two hours and 15 minutes away from Oklahoma City where I'm based. And, you know, they saw fires in the city, but they were able to maneuver the fire around a lot of structures. So no lived-in homes were burnt down.
And also people were evacuated. About 4,000 people were evacuated and were able to go back to their homes. But, you know, there was still a lot of acres burned, high and fast, high flames and just fast fires. wind speeds caused like a lot of, you know, it was a battle for people.
And I think the folks that I talked to who were actually fighting the fires in that moment, they were really like surprised that nothing really burned down with the exception of three storage structures. Um, but in the North, farther Northwest in the panhandle, um, over in Beaver County, I, A 283,000-acre fire has crossed from Oklahoma into southwestern Kansas.
And there, there's a lot of ranches up there. And so that's always a really difficult thing to experience. Not only are you having this...
property damage like in the form of fencing which is expensive and also um and maybe your home or different structures your bar and things like that are in danger but you also have livestock and so it's you know people are getting reports and hearing like of you know cattle being harmed or you know dead because of the fires but then also maybe even some reports of people having to euthanize livestock which is always really um sad and it's also like a story about you know
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Chapter 3: How are wildfires affecting agriculture in Oklahoma?
So when you look at data from the Kansas City Federal Reserve and different things, you'll see crop-heavy states. kind of their numbers as far as farm income are declining while states that are more reliant on beef are rising. And that has to do with supply and demand. And so basically the U.S. 's cattle herd is the smallest it has been since 1951.
And that is because of some rough droughts that has shrunk the herd. And therefore, it's taken a long time to rebuild because it takes months for cows to breed calves and therefore to get them to be processed. And so while we have seen a reduction, while we've seen a less amount of beef there to begin with, consumer demand has remained high. And so that results in high prices.
And farmers or ranchers who raise beef are looking at this and saying, you know, we've had some
really rough years and we need some good years to offset the bad years and um so they're still facing high production costs they're still facing high input costs all the challenges are still there but beef is making money and so they're selling their cattle and so a lot of agriculture economists have been kind of waiting for signs in the in the markets to show that branchers will have to start holding it back their herds to rebuild the population
And so in states like mine where cattle is king, it also – I mean, we grow a lot of wheat. Wheat is our top crop. But for a lot of people there, they've been really paying attention to any decisions around beef, any kind of beef markets, kind of just depending on the money that's going to be coming in so they can – If they need to fix machinery, if they need to do anything along those lines.
I remember talking to a rancher not too long ago who was like, yeah, I'm kind of, I got in, I had to repair some equipment and that's hundreds, that's the dollars. And so we're kind of waiting, we're kind of banking on these high prices right now to make us through to the end of the year.
Well, and I suppose next week you're going to be checking in with all those ranchers about how this tariff ruling is going to be impacting them as well.
Yes, I was about to say I will be checking in with all of the farmers and ranchers and trying to see how this impacts our state and what this means for people and what this means for folks at the grocery store because, you know, consumers and producers are connected.
Well, Anna, thank you so much for that check-in from Oklahoma. We are going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to play a round of Half Full, Half Empty. All right, we are back with Anna Pope of Harvest Public Media and KOSU. We're going to play a round of Half Full, Half Empty.
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