By Mike Barnett

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Remember that famous line in the movie Network, the movie made in the 1970s starring Peter Finch as deranged news anchor Howard Beale? I’ll certainly never forget it.

I had a Network moment at the recent American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting in Seattle, where president Bob Stallman stood in front of over 4,000 Farm Bureau members from across the nation, and said, “To those who expect to just roll over America’s farm and ranch families, my only message is this: The circumstances have changed.”

By Mike Barnett

Americans enjoy the most affordable and abundant food supply in the world.  The price of food is cheap…for now. But that’s subject to change.

Here are five reasons why:

• The price of oil will go up. Remember last time that happened? The price of food shot up, too and is just now starting to come down. But don’t blame the cost of commodities. There’s only pennies worth of corn in a box of corn flakes. Transportation, packaging and processing costs rise with the cost of fuel. Next time the price of oil skyrockets, look for increases in the price of food. Solar, wind, nuclear and biofuels must continue to make advances to lessen this dependency on oil.

There will be more than 9 billion people on this planet in the year 2050. Can we feed them? I believe the answer is – yes we can. I also believe it’s possible that we might not be able to.

It’s possible, if not likely, that I will still be around to see the result of that question, at age 96. However, I have three sons and a soon to be born granddaughter that I expect will be among that number. So I have more than a passing interest in the potential of our food supply. We are doing some silly things in that regard. We are limiting our ability to produce food with foolish regulations, high taxes and a public mindset that seems determined to focus on the trivial.