by Ben Nuelle LISTEN: world-of-agriculture-10-28-16
Election day is now under 12 days away. Who do farmers and rancher want to lead their country?
According to an Agri-Pulse poll, 55 percent of farmers and ranchers say they?ll support Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump.
Agri-Pulse Communications President Sara Wyant says that?s compared to 18 percent for Hillary Clinton.
?But I think one of the more interesting facts about this is that the race is still fairly fluid even in farm country. We took this just a couple of weeks ago between the 5th and the 18th of October and now as we?re reporting less than two weeks away from the election. Fifteen percent of respondents said they were undecided and eight percent said they did not want to answer questions over the telephone,? Wyant says.
They also conducted this survey in January.
One question asked how satisfied farmers were with the direction the country was headed.
?We found a whopping 86 percent said they were somewhat or very dissatisfied with the direction of the country. That is quite an uptick from our earlier poll. We also found those levels of dissatisfaction were at 90 percent or higher in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio,? Wyant says.
Farmers said the most important issue facing the country was economic growth.
?About 19 percent nationally selected that option which was up ten points from what we had seen in January. Interesting enough, in January, the top choice had been national security and terrorism had been a number one issue. That was quite a bit of a shift that dropped down considerably,? Wyant says.
Wyant says their research indicated regardless of farm size, political party, and age; there was a significant concern about regulatory burdens on agriculture.
Seven hundred fifty farmers and rancher were surveyed with farms ranging from 200 to 1,000 acres.
