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Family Farmers Demand Real Change
As President-elect Barack Obama confronts the current economic crisis, in the shadows lurks an issue that demands equal attention, despite it's low profile during the campaign: agriculture. As an African-American farmer from Mississippi, I am hopeful that our next president will also recognize we cannot afford business as usual when it comes to the subject of our broken food system.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, while originally known as the "People's Department" under President Lincoln, has in recent decades been controlled by the voices of the corporate commodity groups and agribusiness interests. Those monied interests have continually stomped on the concerns of family farmers and consumers. As a result, our current disastrous model of industrial agriculture pushes for bigger factory farms, more genetically-modified monoculture crops, and more "globalization" and free trade that emphasizes export-driven growth and allows for cheap imports to displace American farmers.
Americans now must deal with poisonous Chinese imports in our pet food and dairy products, a flood of e.coli outbreaks in our meat and spinach, salmonella-tainted tomatoes from Mexico and contaminated water supplies due to factory farm pollution.
A new food and farm movement uniting family farmers, consumers, environmentalists, public health advocates and others has blossomed in recent years, backed by scientific research.
A landmark study released in April 2008 by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) concluded that industrial agriculture practices were posing a dire threat to water, energy and climate security. It also noted that continued pushes for trade liberalization and export-model growth had deepened poverty and inequality in the developing world. The report says governments must go beyond simply advocating for more biotechnology and free trade as solutions to feeding our planet.
Meanwhile, the Pew Forum and Union of Concerned Scientists have also released reports documenting the severe ecological, economic and public health threats from the growth in factory farm practices in rural communities.
We are hopeful that new Secretary of Agriculture Governor Tom Vilsack will be a forceful advocate on President-elect Obama's promises for change. We sorely need reform in our agriculture policies, including anti-competitive behavior against family farmers by agribusiness, the regulation of industrial livestock operations, rebuilding local and regional food systems and a new direction in our trade policy.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's recent $12 million fine of Dairy Farmers of America for price manipulation shows we also urgently need a USDA and Department of Justice committed to fair and competitive markets that enable family farmers to make a living. While many corporate livestock groups are hoping for decreased environmental regulations, family farmers believe we need more sustainable practices to preserve our rural communities and protect water and air quality.
We also hope, given the current volatility in commodity prices that has impacted both farmers and consumers, that the Obama-Biden Administration looks into establishing Strategic Grain Reserves. Ever since they were eliminated under the 1996 Farm Bill, we now find ourselves dependent on speculative global markets for our food security. Just as deregulation of our financial markets has been a disaster for our economy, so has deregulation of our food supply imperiled seriously our ability to address food shortages in case of weather or other catastrophes.
We look forward to working with the new Administration to implement important victories in the 2008 farm bill, including the diversity initiative to broaden access to all USDA programs to minority farmers and beginning farmers. We urge swift implementation by USDA to promote efforts to ensure that schools and institutions are purchasing from and supporting local farmers and providing healthier food whenever possible.
The time is now to rethink our food systems and begin rebuilding them towards sustainable, localized models predicated on the principles of food sovereignty. We must abandon the WTO model of "free trade" for agriculture that only pushes for globalized markets and exports that destroy rural communities and the environment. We believe Obama's promises for real change offers us much hope and possibility for the next USDA Secretary.
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21 Comments so far
Show AllAmen.
VeraSun, the largest publicly traded producer of ethanol in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late October, 2008. (The largest domestic ethanol producer is POET and it is privately held.)
Many experts in the industry think that even after reorganization VeraSun can not be made solvent. In a heads VeraSun wins, tails farmers lose ruling the bankruptcy judge has ruled that VeraSun has until ten business days before a corn delivery contract comes due to state if they are going to honor the contract or cancel the contract.
Since current corn prices are significantly lower that what VeraSun contracted for the delivery of corn VeraSun is canceling all contracts. Farmers who had contracted to sell corn to VeraSun at prices as high as seven dollars a bushel are now forced to accept the cash price around $4.50 a bushel. If corn prices should go back up above the contract price VeraSun can chose to honor the contracted price and force farmers to sell at prices lower than the current cash price at some future point in time.
With crude oil selling for$40.00 to $45.00 a barrel and corn at $4.50 a bushel the once very profitable ethanol industry is in real trouble. Also the Federal subsidy on ethanol is a $.46 cent per gallon tax CREDIT. If ethanol is not profitable to produce there are no profits to tax; hence no subsidy.
Why, given the dire financial position of VeraSun, the judge would make a ruling that screws over thousands of farmers is a freakin mystery to me. It would have been far better to give the farmers the choice to void the contracts so they would be free to market their grain as they saw fit rather than let VeraSun hold them to contracts that they, in all probability, will never honor.
You the same dude as the one with that name over at SmirkingChimp? I demanded fair play and integrity from the dishonest merchants that operate Organic Valley (Family of Farms) and got sacked for my efforts to uphold my rights. They are not the same people as they try to tell you they are through carefully crafted 'perception management'.
Things are very bad and getting worse in Amerika...
An excellent article by someone that knows what they are saying.
"Just as deregulation of our financial markets has been a disaster for our economy, so has deregulation of our food supply imperiled seriously our ability to address food shortages in case of weather or other catastrophes."
Truth.
"including the diversity initiative to broaden access to all USDA programs to minority farmers and beginning farmers. We urge swift implementation by USDA to promote efforts to ensure that schools and institutions are purchasing from and supporting local farmers and providing healthier food whenever possible."
Talk about great ideas!
I'm glad to see NFFC publishing around here. Where have you been? I've been working my tail off.
Living in Iowa I can attest: if you expect Vilsack to be a defender of farming and the small farm operator, guess again. This comes from a response he sent to me in 2003:
"Based upon the past, I believe science has a role and responsibility to try to respond to this challenge(feeding an increasing population). I believe that biotechnology currently being incorporated into the creation of genetically engineered and genetically modified foods provides some hope for meeting that challenge within a reasonable period of time."
"I also believe that biotechnology may provide opportunities for specialized farming, which may create expanded profit opportunities for small family farm operations. On the other end of the spectrum, I also think the opportunity to grow organic foods also creates a similar niche."
I fail to see how you can talk about franken foods and organic foods in the same breath, but good ole Tom, the small town lawyer with no farm experience except what he gets from Monsanto and their stooges at Iowa state, believes this crap. When corn and seeds from genetically modified crops cross with those that are not grown for this purpose, watch as the corporate legal office buzzards circle and extract excessive toll for "using" there seed patient, yes, I can see a lovely mix of franken food and organic food being grown together at the same time, NOT!
He has supported CAFO operations (factory farming, confined Animal feeding Operations) , Ethanol operations that waste valuable food for fuel, and all manner of techno farming including biotech and genetic engineering. He believes the FDA have tested and found these genetic franken foods safe, when in fact they have not tested or approved them.
The main issue is what Harkin and the Democrats will do in farm policy. 1. Will Harkin stay as ag chair or move to a more powerful committee? 2. Will the Democrats switch back to a traditional Democratic Commodity Title for the farm bill. Or move ahead to one with better international support? In 1996 Harkin, Wellstone, Daschle, Gephardt and others strongly opposed Freedom to Farm. But in 2002 when Harkin became ag chair, they all switched to a greened up Freedom to Farm. It had no price floors, supply management, price ceilings or reserves. We lost money on exports (until late 2006 through summer 2008). And Freedom to Farm was far worse than Reagan/Block's 1985 farm bill, which was clearly worse than Nixon/Butz's farm bill.
Didn't the Democrats decide to give George Bush enough rope to hang himself following 9/11? But then they had no opposing platform to run on (on many issues) in 2004. In 2008 the Democratic Presidentials coming through Iowa stayed with the Freedom to Farm Approach, and a Freedom to Farm type farm bill passed in congress.
With Bush out, will Democrats still continue this approach? Is Obama, are the Democrats pragmatic enough to make a profit on farm exports? We need the money. Out of Roosevelt's New Deal we got the Steagall Amendment of 1941 where the Banking Committees supported the farm policies I'm advocating as a stimulus package, (and we had no farm depression or Great Depression after WWII, as we had after WWI).
Originally (1980s, 1990s) Harkin was the champion of higher market prices with the Harkin Gephardt farm bill (like NFFC's Food from Family Farms act). "Make THEM pay," not the taxpayers. Who? Corn processors, soybean processors, CAFOs, ethanol, foreign buyers.
Vilsack and Obama will follow Democratic leadership, I predict. We need to organize on the ag committtees for making a profit on farm exports. Surely that's winnable in this time when we risk another Great Depression.
But first urban/food progressives need to learn WHAT the issue is, and first, to learn THAT it exists. This article is a step in the right direction.
Ok, and secondly, Vilsack's record is much like "Iowa 2010: The new face of Iowa," which came out under his reign. Iowa was to be "life sciences capital of the world" by 2010. It had tokenism for organics and a big push for subsidization of an agribusiness industrial complex. And we pushed CAFOs. But we lost 2-3 independent farmers (better jobs) for each factory farm job created. The negative impacts on economy, ecology and community, all of which are costly, are something we can't afford. John Ikerd is good on these issues, showing that the studies are consistent on the damages. We can't afford any more economic damage. We need to stimulate the economy with organic farming, which creates more wealth (reconciles more values, doesn't just add/and secretly subtract a lot more value, like CAFOs).
Living within the carrying capacity of an area means that there will be sufficient resources for everyone there, with the least expenditure of energy.
Ben Burkett___I don`t know what kind of farmer you are or how long you have been at it, but my recollection of a strategic grain reserve is just a tool to hold farmers prices at a break-even level which does not lead to more food production.
We certainly do not need markets like this last years fiasco, but at least there was some chance to make a profit using risk management practices.
Vilsack was correct in stating that biotechnology is here to stay and will play a large part worldwide in producing enough food for increasing needs. Farmers are using GM seeds in many countries because of the increased production and the reduction of pesticide use. There is no reason why anyone wanting to raise organic crops cannot continue to do so, if that is their preference and they have a market established.
The present farm program has special provisions now for socially disadvantaged and beginning farmers as well as more conservation opportunities.
GM seeds are a bad idea and there's proof.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4230
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/439289.stm
GM seeds are nothing more than a for profit tool for Big Agriculture at the expense of health and the farmers themselves. Small and family farmers can't afford GM seeds.
Oh really? What do you know about the present farm program. Are you growing crops? The present farm program is sold out to insurance companies. The present farm program is like all of america, sold out to big business.
debi
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars
Burkett is on target with price floors and supply management, reserves and price ceilings, adequately implemented. And we should work things out internationally to help make this work. Yes, we need less volatility in the markets, stabilization at a high enough price. Yes the market gives you this on it's own a few times in a century. See Daryl E. Ray, "It's Price Responsiveness" and other articles. We must start making sure we make a profit on exports. We lost money 1981-2006. Megatechnology is very powerful, and has massive resources to fix itself. Organic does not. Still, organic is winning the cost of production issue, profiting more even without premium (ie. double) market prices. See Iowa State University, 2006. There's a huge anomaly in the technobiology paradigm.
A total end to farm subsidies would be a great start...
Are you really that stupid or are you just trying to piss me off?
Yes, let us bail out every failed business in this country except your bread and butter.
Once upon a time Europe thought it could cut off the farmers in their country too. We can import food cheaper than we can grow it they thought. Then a terrorist (Nazi Germany) invaded and they learned their lesson. Today they appreciate their farmers and support them with government subsidies.
Do you even know where your food comes from? Or how it gets to you? Do you trust Monsanto, or Cargill, Mexico, China, or anyone else to get you your cheap food? Brother, you had better be looking to your neighbor family farmer and support his hard work or you are going to be the first hungry person on the block.
We are starving out. The price for every crop we grow from cotton to wheat, cows, to tomatoes has remained static while the cost of growing those crops has skyrocketed. Fuel, seed (thank you monsanto), equipment, repair parts, oh the list goes on, and on, and on.
The family farmer is the bread basket of this country and the next time you take a bite of anything you better ask yourself, "Where did this come from?" We are the care takers of this country. We do not want the GMOs, we do not want the chemicals, we do not want Monsanto or Cargill, or the Beef council (google Mad Cow to really have your eyes opened). We, the small family farmers want you to have good quality food. So thank us by making sure we can not make a living.
debi
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars
I am afraid, Debi, that you are simply parroting a line I grew up with when I grew up in a small farm-town in Nebraska.
This is the attitude that has led farmers to follow the Repbulican model and buy their lies for decades.
I'm not saying what you are claiming isn't true.
It is.
But what you and every single family farmer I've ever met seems to have blinders to is the fact that the big-boys have hijacked your argument to ensure that they get their very BIG piece of the subsidy pie.
Take the set-aside acres for example.
Yes, this helps anyone who owns land by allowing them to produce less but have the same yearly income. This is true and it's a help.
Ultimately the consumer pays for this. Either in increased taxes or in higher food costs. You don't get to leave prime Iowa or Nebraska farm ground fallow for free!
I knew many farmers and worked for many farmers. I would certainly trust anything any of them grew. They were family farmers all, and as you say, they weren't living like kings to be sure. I personally (and I think most progressive's would agree) am happy to have either some of my taxes or some of the cost of my food going to help ensure such family food production continues.
But guess what, Debi.
Your government...and Repbulicans are FAR worse at this but Democrats do it too...simply cannot distinguish between a small going family concern of less than a thousand acres and a Major corporate feed-lot or even a major landed corporate farm like Monsanto corp. So the 50 thousand acres owned by the corporation ALSO gets that same set-aside subsidy that YOU DO! If you can set aside 200 acres out of one thousand (20%), Monsanto gets to set aside 2000 acres out of ten thousand...there's no cap on the amount you can set aside. Easy as pie would be to put a limit to the farm size where the program applies. You have to ask yourself why such limits do not exist and who really benefits the most by the absence of them.
Now the fact that Monsanto gets this subsidy...THAT pisses me off.
Just like bailing out the rich bankers pisses me off.
Just like bailing out an auto industry that closes plants throughout unionized America to move to slave-labour companies to "cut costs" pisses me off.
And guess which Political party is right at the forefront of that kind of thinking?
They pioneered it and they got YOU and all the other family farmers to buy into it....yes, the Republican party!
They PRETEND to behave like libratarians...which is the politics that most farmers I know actually follow. Then they thumb their noses at you and go off and feather the nests of their corporate cronies who insist that somehow it is very very bad to give your tax money to the poor and the working poor who could really use a break and instead your tax money should help those poor down-trodden super rich CEO's and bankers and corporate farms instead.
This has helped to kill off the family farm with lightning speed.
As long as family farmers continue to buy into the God'n Country Way-Hey USA bullshit that the Republicans use in the mid-west to keep you guys coughing up the votes then you will see NO CHANGE.
So wake up Debi! (though if you are on the site you probably already ARE awake)
But more importantly...START WAKING UP YOUR FARMING NEIGHBORS.
Oh and as proof of my blanket statement about Republicans completely sewing up the Farm vote I simply cite the red-state/blue-state map in the last 10 elections...actually you can go back further than that.
When was the last time you ever saw farm states go blue?
This was the first election that Indiana went blue almost EVER.
Heaven forbid North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma go blue.
Those 5 states make up such a huge porportion of the farmable land in the USA it isn't even funny. But head out to the rural areas of ANY state and you will find knee-jerk God-fearin' Republicans everywhere.
Farmwife/Debi is correct and physicscitizen doesn't understand the issue.
Sure, we farmers haven't gotten all (or half) of our own kind on the right side of the issues. The same is true of progressives like physicscitizen who's heart is in the correct side, but who's arguments are on the wrong side. And of course, where in progressive land can you find correct information. Just look at how few NFFC articles there are around here. Not many.
First, all of what I say is the traditional, New Deal, Democratic position (as is NFFC). What physicscitizen is arguing is extreme Republicanism. The history of the politics is like this: Eisenhower started gutting NFFC/Democratic farm policies and programs, Nixon Butz pushed the same, Reagan Block carried it farther, Gingrich's Contract for America/Freedom to farm Act killed it. Democrats were better all the way, but not always good enough. But Harkin-Gephardt was way ahead of Freedom to Farm. But Harkin switched to a green Freedom to Farm, which is physicscitizen's position. It lacks any of the key New Deal Commodity Title provisions.
Farmwife/Debi is correct about subsidies, as progressives must learn. And yes, physicscitizen is that stupid. Many but not all progressives (NFFC related groups get it right) have been given false information about this (as is easily provable). You're justified in getting ticked off.
Many progressives falsely believe that farmers (large and small) get commodity subsidies without first losing massively in the marketplace. They believe falsely that subsidies cause low prices and all of the problems caused by low prices (ie. high fructose corn syrup, CAFOs, dumping). Therefore, they believe falsely that eliminating subsidies solves the problems.
To simply remove subsidies would cause a massive farm depression in the United States under the market conditions we had throughout most of the 20th century and 1981-2006 and today (prices are again below costs). It would not raise farm prices, so all of the problems concerning physicscitizen would remain. Hey, that was the original intention of the Republican Freedom to Farm, end subsidies and go to a free market. But it failed and we had 4 emergency farm bills between 1996 and 2002 to correct it, with strong support from farm bankers, who would have been taken down as well.
Monsanto having corn fields and getting compensated for even bigger massive losses is not nearly as much a concern as pure benefits to the output complex (with no accompanying losses): Cargill, ADM, Tyson, Smithfield, foreign countries [processors and CAFOs] buying our grain. We need NFFC price floors and supply management on the bottom and price ceilings and reserves on the top. Monsanto and the rest of the input complex want full production, not supply management. Only then can subsidies be removed without bankrupting farmers.
Declines in farm prices 1953-1960 went with drops in price floors. There were no subsidies. (Many progressives falsely say there were subsidies 1938-1960, ie. Bread for the World, "Hunger 2007," Church World Service.) The major econometric studies on this give only -3% to +4.3% change in key prices from subsidy reduction/elimination (Tufts University, Paradox of Agricultural Subsidies, summary p. 21, online) Daryl E. Ray of APAC found that corn prices would go down, not up.
What I'm describing is a multiTRILLION dollar scandall historically, and yes, I'm ticked off that progressives like physicscitizen talk the talk of justice, but advocate for policies that do nothing about it! physicscitizen, you'll ask necessary questions, learn this and start waking your progressive neighbors, won't you. They need to switch sides on this, the biggest issue in the farm bill, before Obama sets his agenda and they start on the next emergency farm bill. Because the current farm bill, (Yes, farmwife/Debi's right (elsewhere/below) about the insurance thing, ACRE "revenue" and the lack of any adjustments for inflation in DCP (even as costs of production have skyrocketed). Yes it's a "sold out" thing too.
And her quote: "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." Try Lewis Mumford: "Great cities might be leveled to the ground, their temples ransacked, their libraries and records burned: but [rural culture] at least would spring up again, like fireweed, in the ruins." That's the record of history, plowshares against the swords of the power complex (civilizations). (More Mumford posted under "A 50-Year Farm Bill," Common Dreams, 1/5/l09.)
FYI, I voted Nader. Both political parties in this nation are bought and paid for by the mega corporations and until there is real politcal change with a viable labor party we will continue to see more of the same, the working man and middle class smashed in favor of big business.
debi
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars
50 years ago, before small and family farmers were smashed by the corporate agricultural scumbags, food was grown very well, retained its nutrition, and rarely had the hazards we find in today's corporatized foods. In my state, I notice that more farmers who are remaining are really obese and if you were to check out what they store in the fridge, you'd find more TV dinners than you would find any locally grown vegetables or meat these days. Truly sad.
Thank you all for commenting. It helps!
Eat the rich!