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TechnoratiClinton, Obama Must Answer to Farmers
The Wisconsin primary is less than a week away, and I have some questions for the Democratic candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.
I would like to be enthusiastic about this election, I really would. After the past eight years, who wouldn't be ready for the "change" that they talk about? Even the Republicans are talking about change.
It seems, however, that the American people may have little to say about what that change will be. The media have already decided who the viable candidates are, and the superdelegates may decide who the Democratic nominee will be. We are supposed to act like a nation of sheep and just go along, but perhaps this time we won't.
Wisconsin is a state where agriculture is still important, and while farming may not be as glamorous as, say, politics, we still have more people engaged in agriculture-related jobs than any other occupation in the state. Still, when politicians come to Wisconsin, they may do the obligatory photo op on a farm, but they spend their time courting the voters in the big cities. So what are Clinton and Obama promising people like me -- people who spend more time worrying about cows than poll numbers?
Many farmers in Wisconsin don't have health insurance. I'm lucky because I do. It's not very good insurance; it's expensive, and it doesn't pay for much of anything. I need to be really sick before I can collect. Clinton and Obama both say they have a health care plan. I don't think they do; they have another insurance plan. They want people to have insurance, but insurance is not health care. They're looking out for the insurance companies, not the people. They should support giving us the same coverage they have. Put everyone in the plan -- if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us.
As farmers, we are told we need to compete in the global marketplace. They have both said they want to level the playing field so we can compete fairly with farmers around the world and we will win. No, we won't; we won't win, and neither will farmers anywhere else in the world. Clinton has some history with agri-business corporations Monsanto and Tyson and the world's largest food retailer, Wal-Mart. Is it part of their corporate philosophy to let farmers win?
Both Clinton and Obama support biofuels as a means to end our dependence on foreign oil, yet corn and soy production is based on oil -- diesel fuel for tractors, oil to manufacture crop chemicals and fertilizer, oil for transportation and processing. They both want to increase auto fuel economy standards, but not for 18 or 20 years! Why not now?
They both support local and regional food systems -- buy fresh, buy local. Good, but what will they do to make it work? Will they take food out of trade agreements and encourage American farmers to grow food instead of commodities? Or will food, like health care, be just another money maker for corporations?
Will they cap subsidy payments and give responsible farmers a chance? Will they encourage a set-aside for marginal land that should never be farmed? Will they restore government purchase of surplus crops to establish fair and stable farm and consumer prices?
Do they plan to do anything to rein in the power of multinational grain corporations? Those corporations now dump our cheap subsidized grain on southern nations, undermining the local economy and, as in Mexico, driving farmers off their land and across the border to work in the United States. There's your immigration problem; our corporations created it, and walls and fences won't cure it.
Do they know the term food sovereignty? It is a simple concept. It recognizes the right of people, all people, to grow the food of their choice -- food that is nutritious, safe and culturally appropriate. Food sovereignty demands that food be healthful, green, fair and affordable. The only problem some might see with this idea is that people would profit, not corporations.
The candidates' support for local and regional food systems is sorely needed, and I hope they agree that we need to let the rest of the world feed themselves.
Obama's campaign recently told the Bush administration that he didn't really need any foreign policy advice from the architect of the worst foreign policy in a generation. Bush's agricultural policy is just as bad. Change it.
Jim Goodman is a farmer in Wonewoc and a policy fellow for the Food and Society Fellows Program.
© 2008 Capital Newspapers
18 Comments so far
Show AllJim, Esteban, I agree for the most part.
However, the US agriculture is THE MOST subsidised in the world (INtl paper's reliable reference).
I know it is going to BIG agribusiness multinational -agri. I agree that the Govt should give subsidies (Europe does) and it should go to small farmers growing food for Local needs, organic conversion, and idle land - ancient and wise practice.
Corn/soybean for fuel is a SIN that cannot be justified in terms of energy balance, as I think Jim was trying to say. By several accounts, it costs more energy to produce gas via corn/soy than it yields; no wonder it needs subsidies! it will cause world hunger as predicted by Economists.
Food sovereignty is a right for any country. It is a sin that we import 40% of our food: who is aware of this?
Will politicians, Republcrats or Demoblicans, have the guts to change a very old policy (getting worse as small farms disappear); perhaps agreat depression without small farms to feed the people and inflation preventing affordable imports will wake them up, but too late.
Chris
rickster469 February 15th, 2008 8:30 am
"When was the last time YOU visited your local farmers market. Right now the cost can be somewhat higher but the profits do stay in the area. Prices will drop when people like you start spending you money on local production instead of blindly handing it over to large coporations."
Since I am disabled I don't visit much of anything that requires much walking. I agree with the sentiment though
Lobo Gris
What a load of BS conservative PROPAGANDA-
have any of you looked at the Farm Bill lately,
it is on line, I suggest that you all read it.
Farmers are in receipt of an absolutely stupid amount of
GOVERNMENT WELFARE - TAX MONEY GIVE AWAY - FREE SUBSIDY
REMEMBER THE FARM SUBSIDY? LOOK INTO IT - PLEASE -
FARMERS ARE FULL OF IT, THEY ARE PARASITES ON AMERICA
Mr. Goodman has many cogent things to say with which I agree.
He asks if farm subsidies will be "capped." They need to be. At zero.
Nanoo February 15th, 2008 8:31 am "This is a good article. Land needs a rest, or if worked every year it's worked to death.
You're right and wrong. Good land can be worked every year if you know how. You ever hear of crop rotations. Well it's not just a random event. The next crop has to replace the nutrients in the land that the preceding crop removed, Example: planting beans after corn/grain. The small garden farmer will plant his corn and beans together. Planting tomatoes and cucumbers together is beneficial to both of the plants. They call it companion planting and every plant I know of has companion plants. Marginal land can be improved in just a few short years with proper management.
This is a good article. Land needs a rest, or if worked every year it's worked to death. Property taxes don't take that into consideration.
The candidates' support for local and regional food systems is sorely needed, and I hope they agree that we need to let the rest of the world feed themselves.
Here in Oklahoma and other states as well I reckon we get the privilege of being encouraged to buy milk from the happy cows of California. You would figure this would have something to do with the high cost of milk. Most grocery store beef comes from out of state as well as a lot of vegetable crops. That's why food prices are so sensitive to fuel prices.
Lobo Gris February 14th, 2008 3:10 pm "Too late Farmer. A large portion of the food we consume is already imported and there is as much chance of turning that around as there has been turning around "free trade."
When was the last time YOU visited your local farmers market. Right now the cost can be somewhat higher but the profits do stay in the area. Prices will drop when people like you start spending you money on local production instead of blindly handing it over to large coporations.
nra freedom, you've got it right.
if you can't make a living without sucking on the government tit, try something else.
Why are we subsidising the agribusiness cartels and giving tax breaks to big oil?. We should take the subisidies going to the cartels and private farms of the Rockefellers and Bill Gates and give it to the small farmers (actually, isnt this against WTO policies, the Mexican farmers are ticked off they have to compete against subsidized food from the US farms)
From William Engdahls seeds of destruction
--- the four largest beef packers controlled 84% of steer and heifer slaughter - Tyson, Cargill, Swift and National Beef Packing;
-- four giants controlled 64% of hog production - Smithfield Foods, Tyson, Swift and Hormel;
-- three companies controlled 71% of soybean crushing - Cargill, ADM and Bunge;
-- three giants controlled 63% of all flour milling, and five companies controlled 90% of global grain trade;
-- four other companies controlled 89% of the breakfast cereal market - Kellogg, General Mills, Kraft Foods and Quaker Oats;
-- in 1998, Cargill acquired Continental Grain to control 40% of national grain elevator capacity;
-- four large agro-chemical/seed giants controlled over 75% of the nation's seed corn sales and 60% of it for soybeans while also having the largest share of the agricultural chemical market - Monsanto, Novartis, Dow Chemical and DuPont; six companies controlled three-fourths of the global pesticides market;
-- Monsanto and DuPont controlled 60% of the US corn and soybean seed market - all of it patented GMO seeds; and
-- 10 large food retailers controlled $649 billion in global sales in 2002, and the top 30 food retailers account for one-third of global grocery sales.
At the dawn of a new century, family farming was decimated by corporate agribusiness' vertically integrated powers that surpassed their earlier 1920s heyday dominance.
The industry was now the second most profitable national one after pharmaceuticals with domestic annual sales exceeding $400 billion.
The next aim was merging Big Pharma with Big food producing giants (animals are the biggest global consumers of antibiotics), and the Pentagon's National Defense University took note in a 2003-issued paper - "Agribusiness (now) is to the United States what oil is to the Middle East." It's now considered a "strategic weapon in the arsenal of the world's only superpower," but at a huge cost to consumers everywhere."
Howdy Jim! Please ignore some of the ignorant comments above, who don't have a clue of the realities in agricultural economics over the past decades. As we prepare our seed flats and get them into our greenhouses, and await a thaw to plant some garlic, we send our warmest regards. Your letter was right on! Food sovereignty is the rallying cry and the concept of localized food economies that will be the staff of future societies, if we all survive this century.
Since we workers of the land are fewer in number than those incarcerated in the prison industrial complex, it is no wonder that political candidates don't feel the need to truly find common ground with us, but this is at their peril and at the peril of all who ignore this. Government should subsidize farmers, just not those who devour their neighbors in a capitalist frenzy of consolidation, industrialization of production and/or calling in to Monsanto's hotline to rat on neighbors who may have planted GMO seeds without paying the royalties (ie highway robbery in legal form.) Farmers care for land, water, seeds, biodiversity: it is a small thing to ask government to provide a price floor, or manage a supply management system and grain reserves to keep prices above the cost of production. Failing this, of course, we people of the land are going to have to try to survive without any government intervention, or worse, in direct disobedience of regulations on the books favoring large scale operations or factory farms. These are blights on humanity, lowering the human species to that of brutal slave masters. Lowering consumers to virtual inmates in a prison called fast food nation. Most farmers think and live at a much higher plain. The fertility of the soil is our wealth. Good rains when we need them is our health.
peace,
Esteban Bartlett
Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville (SAL)
Jim Goodman, divorce yourself from the capitalist network, which has its tentacles into you through the local agriculture extension office, the farm credit bureau, the farm association that lobbies for you in Washington, the local farm supply which dispenses your petro-chemical inputs, the Chicago Commodities Exchange which sets your prices, the local Chamber of Commerce with views you as a mere cog in the machine, and all the politicians, lawyers and property owners (including yourself) who are determined to preserve the status quo. Keep trying different things and when you hear these little piggies squeal, then you know you're making positive change.
Lobo: It's only too late if we are going to wait for "the powers that be" to fix what they have broken. Which of course, "THEY" will not.
It's up too us. One community at a time. We can, in fact must, cooperate together create the community and local economy that we need. And it is happening throughout the world. And the movements are networking and sharing ideas. Right now. Right here.
This Relocalization Movement is flying under the national radar, but it is happening. It is making progress. And it is working.Many communities are in fact preparing for a post carbon world. This has been going on for years. It is now gaining momentum because the challenges we face are becoming inpossible to ignore.
And NO, my belly isn't growling yet. And with the help of my neighbors and my community, it probably won't. Because I am not alone. We are all in this together. And as long as we work together, we will survive and thrive.
Rebel Farmer February 14th, 2008 2:59 pm
"Food sovereignty! Relocalization of food production! Support local food production or die of starvation. Its your choice."
Too late Farmer. A large portion of the food we consume is already imported and there is as much chance of turning that around as there has been turning around "free trade". The idiots in charge and much of the electorate are unable or unwilling to see the danger they have put us in from de-industrializing us to running farmers out of business with mega-farm conglomerates and cheap (temporarily) imports.
Is your belly growling yet?
Lobo Gris
Lobo: If this government and all its rulers do not answer to the farmers, we will have very empty bellies.
Food sovereignty! Relocalization of food production! Support local food production or die of starvation. Its your choice.
Why must they answer to farmers, they, Clinton more than Obama, haven't answered to any of the rest of the electorate during their present terms.
Lobo Gris
Hey, Mr. Goodman...Were you behind Dennis Kucinich? If not, then you have no reason to whine. Suck it up, Bubba.
On the issue of food and corporate power read/hear the following:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/13/in_defense_of_food_author_journalist
There is an online petition asking the DNC to choose the candidate with the most votes and delegates rather than take the chance that Washington Insiders will override the will of the voters with a secret "backroom deal".
Please sign the petition and pass it on to your friends.
Petition http://www.petitiononline.com/Superdel/petition.html