TheAgitator.com
Oh, for the Days of Severed Limbs and a Life Expectancy of 40!
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008This is really dumb. There’s a reason we’ve moved on from an agrarian society. America doesn’t need more farmers. There’s no danger of us running low on our domestic food supply. I’ve noted this before, but there’s a weird conservative Burke-ian streak among some on the left for “the way things once were.” Listen up: When America was primarily a farming nation, America was a poorer, sicker nation. There’s no reason for sentimentality, here.If Obama really wants to help the family farm, he could veto the next pork- and subsidy-laden farm bill, which would be immensely beneficial to small farms in the developing world. It would probably help the remaining mom n’ pop farms here in the U.S., too, given that most farm subsidies go to very, very wealthy farms, and enable them to sell crops for less than what it costs to grow them.
Given Obama’s history, though, that isn’t likely to happen. He enthusiastically supported both farm bills that passed while he was in the Senate.
Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma) raised a good argument a few weeks ago on NPR’s Science Friday: that eaters– and not just agribusiness– needs representation on the Agriculture Committees in Congress. You could add small farmers to the list of people who need representation, too. Leaving the Farm Bill entirely in the hands of midwest agribusiness interests makes about as much sense as leaving the fuel economy standard entirely in the hands of Michigan Representative (and spouse of a car lobbyist), John Dingell.
I think that more farms would be a good thing. Smaller scale farming is more productive per acre than huge mono-crop farming and promotes more diversity in both crops and methods. But the way to do this is to kill the farm subsidies we already have, not to create new ones. But there is still no need for more than a few percent of the population to farm and there is really no shortage of people interested in farming and no reason to encourage people whose energy might be better spent elsewhere to farm.
The small struggling farmer is fable continuely spun as the truth by the agri-firms. Its like the auto industry talking about the poor small family car manufacturers in order to get public support for their bailout. I still haven’t figured out how such a small percentage of Americans can have that much lobbying power.
Hmmm. Now how does that saying go? Something like…
No Farms, No Food.
Yes, that’s it.
Yes, there is. The ability to produce food locally means that it becomes way more difficult to starve if we get hit hard by a recession.
I’ve always thought it was stupid to ship things like cheese from across the continent when there are farms that can produce it locally.
“If Obama really wants to help the family farm, he could veto the next pork- and subsidy-laden farm bill”
That’s just crazy talk.
There’s votes to be bought in Iowa come 2012.
Bullshit. There are A LOT of struggling farmers in New England. Milk prices (not grocery store prices, the prices paid to the farmer) have not gone up more than a few percent since the 80s and costs have skyrocketed (fuel, insurance, taxes, hired help, you name it). I come from a farm family. I come from a farming town. We now grow subdevelopments because farmers can’t make the money they need to survive.
It is anti-woman too. Back in those halcyon days one of the primary causes of death for women was giving birth.
If a recession gets that bad you’d better be growing your own food and have the fire power to keep it.
Its called specialization of labor and comparative advantage. It is what has allowed us to get away from subsistance level production.
I can’t stop laughing at the title of the post.
What makes me laugh is the urban left’s romantic visions of farming, when the reality of farming life is much closer to the god, guns and grit that has migrated to GOP.
I worked for several years on farms and, while there is a lot to recommend it, it certainly is not some idyllic eden.
A big problem for the small farmer, IIRC, is that the subsidy system not only rewards larger players, but only rewards certain products within a complex system of subsidies and regulations. This is much closer to a command economy than free enterprise.
For example, a New England dairy farmer could compete on the basis of providing raw milk, or specialist cheeses etc: finding his competitive advantage. Unfortunately, the current USDA/FDA rules make it very difficult (or impossible) to do so. Thus, he must compete with large factory dairies who benefit from economies of scale etc.
Ben, how much of those struggles are attributable to the perversion of the market by subsidies? Seems like the only ways for that to work are if somebody’s found a more efficient way to get milk to the market, or sombody’s selling it at a loss because they are getting subsidies for “serving the public good.”
Is anyone in favor of moving the Iowa caucuses to a later date?
Is anyone in favor of moving the Iowa caucuses to a later date?
I think the fact that Florida and Michigan seated delegates despite breaking the rules set out means the next primary season will be a free for all. Any state that wants to have the influence of Iowa will be able to do it.
There’s no danger of us running low on our domestic food supply. .
There certainly would be temporary shortages if the food production was a free market subject to boom and bust cycles. If there is one aspect of the economy which maybe should be tinkered with it’s farming. There is not much harm in having a perpetual oversupply of food than otherwise would have happened in a free market, but the consequences of the inevitable shortages created by a market economy are pretty grave. It’s one thing if there are too few cars made to meet the demand, but a food supply shortage is too gruesome.
We’ve already *got* a lot more “farmers” than show up in the official statistics, if you include the amount of food that’s actually being produced in the informal and household sector rather than commercially.
Ralph Borsodi showed that food grown and canned at home, when all costs (including the value of one’s own labor, canning supplies, amortization on the cooking range, etc.) were taken into account, were about a third cheaper than canned food from the store.
And I believe more people will be encouraged to “become farmers,” in the sense of growing more of their own food or taking up market gardening in preference to working on contract for ADM, through the forces of the market alone as Peak Oil virtually shuts down the trucking industry in coming years.
But it’s a bit misleading to appeal to the example of farm labor as it existed in the U.S. a century ago. Historically, subsistence farming based on intensive cultivation required a workweek that averaged 20 hours over the course of a year (varying widely between seasons, of course), absent a high burden of taxes to the state or rent to feudal landed interests. In the U.S., at the turn of the 20th century, the burdensomeness of family farming reflected mainly the fact that it was not primarily subsistence farming, but commercial farming in an environment where the game was rigged by the banks and railroads to skim as much off the top as possible. When farmers have been able to organize their own cooperative finance and distribution systems, over the opposition of banks and railroads, things have been different.
The average age of farmers in the US is 55 yrs. A lot of specialized “institutional memory” is going to be lost if these farmers aren’t replaced. Agriculture isn’t like manufacturing any other goods, steel is made using the same processes in Pittsburgh and Bejing, but 50 miles difference can drastically change agricultural practices that optimize food production.
I live surrounded by several millionaire farmers, their average “take-home” pay is similar to other small business owners. Simply because they own a lot of assets, doesn’t make them rich. This also leads to the idea of large corporate farms. There are not many of them in the US. Average returns on investment for farmers and ranches is about 4%, corporations aren’t going to farm large amounts of land, the risk is too high and the returns too low.
[...] A comment so wrong (and unfortunately, so common), that it deserves a main page refutation: If there is one aspect of the economy which maybe should be tinkered with it’s farming. There is not much harm in having a perpetual oversupply of food than otherwise would have happened in a free market, but the consequences of the inevitable shortages created by a market economy are pretty grave. It’s one thing if there are too few cars made to meet the demand, but a food supply shortage is too gruesome. [...]
I totally agree with you on farm subsidies, but we do have a real reason to be concerned in the long term. As we quickly approach peak oil production (by 2015 at the latest), we’ll begin to see the inevitable increase in the cost of oil. There won’t be any real options to turn that around. And when increasing output is no longer an option, the most significant fallout won’t be at the pump, but at the rising cost of fertilizers and pesticides (made from petro). At some point, without some drastic invention or modification, our modern agriculutre will be screwed. Of course we can invest in alternatives to petro fertilizers, but that still leaves the heavy machinery of farming. It may mean a partial return of the citizen farmer. Cf. Cuba - even if it is an extreme case.
I couldn’t disagree with you more, Radley, that we don’t need more farms. We very much need more, smaller, more local and more productive farms that rely on the sun and not petroleum for energy and nutrients, and that don’t require enormous calorie/carbon expenditures to get from farm to table (that’s what crunchy folks like me call “sustainable agriculture”). This isn’t nostalgia, this is just a hard reality that we’re going to bump into very hard, very soon. But I couldn’t agree with you more that the federal farm subsidies are nuts. I’m not sure that the government doesn’t have a role in converting from petroleum-based agriculture to solar-based agriculture, but that is exactly the opposite of what the government is now subsidizing. That’s the reason local and organic food costs so much — those are the real, market cost of food grown sustainably without government subsidy. Most folks would be in shock at the cost of food if the government weren’t subsidizing their meat, dairy, wheat, and high fructose corn syrup.
If you long for the “good old days,” turn off the air conditioning.
My guess:
This is an attempt to move rural voters away from the Republican party by offering them something else to consider besides religion, abortion, and family values. Many of the red states were relatively close margins. Dems might be looking for a political vehicle to tip the scales in their favor.
Are you saying there’s some sort of causal connection there?
You’re right: the market will determine how many and what type of farms we need. The problem is we don’t have a free market. You predict a free market would yield less small farms and agriculture. I predict in a market free of agribusiness subsidies and transportation infrastructure subsidies, we’d see a rebirth of small local farming.
I don’t begrudge you your subjective preferences; just be clear that they aren’t part of the libertarian canon, but are this annoying libertarian futurism that sees big business and technology as a panacea.
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