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TechnoratiComes a Time to Fight for Family Farmers
When Abraham Lincoln formed the US Department of Agriculture in 1862 he referred to it as the "People's Department" because it served the common interest of so many Americans. America's concerns about food and the economy were addressed and investments in cutting-edge research guaranteed the nation's food security.
More than 200 years later, we are in the midst of a historic financial crisis and part of the solution lies with the "People's Department." It's time for our newest federal leaders to recognize the unmatched ability of family farmers to strengthen local economies. We can all learn from the ingenuity and innovation that family farmers demonstrate time and time again in the face of challenge.
In the 1980s, American farmers found themselves in a fight for their lives. Low prices for farm products, plummeting land values, rising interest rates, and skyrocketing production costs overloaded farmers with crashing debts that forced tens of thousands to lose their land. In response, the Credit Act of 1987 freed up credit for farmers and allowed for loan restructuring so farmers could honor their debt. Farmers were able to stay on their land and create a thriving network of local and regional food systems that provides jobs and food for their neighbors today.
Yet again farmers are faced with seemingly insurmountable financial hardship. The credit farmers need in order to pay for their seasonal start-up costs is tight, like credit is for the rest of the country. Instability in market prices and threats from weather-related disasters make it hard for banks to guarantee their investment, discouraging lending and encouraging high interest. At the same time, rising operating costs and declining prices for their products are making it nearly impossible for farmers to keep up with their debt. Many farmers have to put their homes up as security on their farm loans, which means if they fall behind on their farm loan payments they can lose their businesses and their homes.
The USDA, with help from other agencies, should restore fair credit, prices, and practices for family farmers. As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack makes plans to implement the 2008 Farm Bill, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would be well served to consider lessons from the 1980s and extend loan protections under the federal bailout to family farmers, preventing home foreclosures and bankruptcy among farmers and ranchers. As a condition of receiving any federal government funds, Treasury needs to require banks providing farm credit to restructure loans when farmers are unable to make payments due to circumstances beyond their control, such as market- and weather-related disasters. Requiring no additional funding, this simple action would prevent thousands of farmers from joining the ranks of the jobless and homeless while guaranteeing a safe, secure food supply and creating local job opportunities.
Vilsack can also act quickly to get funds to farmers who need it most. Farmers who were hit hard by disasters in 2007 and 2008 still have not received the funding available in Farm Bill disaster relief programs. And the USDA needs to get the word out fast about additional funding for direct operating loans that Congress included in the stimulus bill. If farmers are having trouble accessing the credit they need for this year's growing season, the Farm Service Agency might just be able to help. Swift implementation of already enacted legislation can mean the difference between losing more farmers and keeping those farmers on the land.
Family farmers are a national resource with the potential to help solve the challenges we currently face. The agriculture sector is projected to have contributed more than $130 billion to the US economy in 2008. The hard work of family farmers is strengthening local economies, reducing the nation's reliance on fossil fuels, protecting natural resources, and increasing national security. The United States is re-laying the groundwork of its economic stability, and family farmers are the key to a strong foundation.
40 Comments so far
Show AllNeil Young is focusing on the largest current issue, farm credit. This is an issue of justice, of poverty. This is current because the farm bill was passed last summer and things have moved on in focus.
I've seen tens of thousands of posts in activism in recent months for possible Sec of Ag candidates, against Vilsack, for White House farmer. This is the biggest current issue, in terms of dollars, at USDA. Neil Young is right on target, much more so than most progressives. Follow his lead.
The price issue he mentions is even bigger. It's the one I always point to, the number one factor in rural development, cash flowing credit, impact on dumping on LDCs and the need for food aid, way to stop CAFOs, why we have cheap high fructose corn syrup and transfats, etc.
The price issue will come up again quickly, however, if this farm bill fails, as it very well might. Then we'll have an emergency farm bill before this one's five years are up. (After the 1996 Republican farm bill signed by Clinton, we had 4 emergency farm bills.)
Farm Aid is the lead funder in focusing directly on the price issue, which is by far the largest food and farm justice issue in the world. We need the Food from Family Farms Act (nffc.net), or the Harkin-Gephardt Farm bill of the 1980s and 1990s, (or New Deal non subsidy farm programs) updated for today.
Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, Senate Ag chair, is the key decision making leader on this, the biggest food farm issue (US and world). Harkin will lead Vilsack and Obama. But which direction? Rep. and Ag chair Colin Peterson" is the key person with the power to decide on the House side. And all of the agriculture committee members.
Should we be concerned about HR 875 and Senate Bill 814? I have heard the requirements and restrictions laid out in this legislation will destroy the family farm. (and don't it figure - JUST as I'm starting my small sustainable ag business as the next step in my trying to live lightly!) Has anyone researched this, have more info? Is this an exaggerated alarm, or do we need to address this? Thanks!
This is NAIS, a false food safety issue. It makes consumers scared, but it gives a great competitive advantage to agribusinesses seeking concentration of food and farms, especially CAFOs (livestock factories and feedlots). But it doesn't address the true food safety causes, as illustrated in the film "Fast Food Nation."
More here: http://www.ruralvermont.org/nais.html
http://www dot familyfarmdefenders.org/pmwiki.php/FoodSovereignty/TheUSDASNationalAnimalIdentificationSystemNAIS-AThreatToFarmersConsumersFoodSovereigntyAndLocalControl
http://www dot nffc.net/Pressroom/Press%20Releases/2008/PR%2006.25.08%20School%20Lunch%20and%20NAIS.htm
More will be coming from NFFC.
So how do you distinguish between a corporate farm and a family farm? Here is a list of the top of my head, not all conditions need to be fulfilled.
1. The owners actually work there.
2. It is a partnership, not a corporation.
3. No corporation listed on a stock exchange has a part ownership.
4. The history is of family ownership with hands on involvement for at least two generations.
5. If they lost one of their hired help, a family member would know how to substitute.
More food locally, less from elsewhere (especially China)!
We can have corporate (what we have now), or we can have community (what we once had).
Corporate exists to steal. Community exists to share.
Support small farmers, support local, support community!
Thanks,
nedlud
rtdrury: your comment was commendable - small is beautiful!
Thank you Neil, and Willie, and John, and others for not giving up on the Jeffersonian ideal. Corporate agribusiness and the so-called family farm megafactories need to be starved to death. No more subsidies for any large farms and no more patent protection for Monsanto and their goons.
Whoa, you know nothing about the issue Neil Young is raising related to price. Please don't comment like this. Ok, sure, there's plenty of misinformation of the sort you're spreading on progressive web sites. But it's a false paradigm.
It's not about subsidies for large farms. Those are compensations for losses per acre, and the bigger the farm, the bigger the losses, except for some economies of size. The real mega issue is not mentioned by Hotrod. It's below cost gains for buyers of farm commodities. We need price floors, not subsidies and not subsidy caps, they miss the whole point.
See these sources; Farm and Food Myths (http://www dot zcommunications.org/blog/view/1815);IATP, "Fair Farm Bill" series, etc. (http://www dot agobservatory.org/issue_farmbill.cfm); Food and Water Watch, The Farm Bill: Food Policy in an Era of Corporate Power (http://www dot foodandwaterwatch.org/food/pubs/reports/farm-bill).
Food security is one of the most important issues of this time. Family farmers should not be expected to compete with transnational corporate agribiz. I just posted an article today about making sure we have an accessible and safe food supply on my blog at http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com
And thank you as always, Neil Young, for all your years of good work for the cause. . . . swan . . . .
If we can't grow our own, let's all buy locally grown organic produce while we listen to our beloved Neil Young, I remain
Last year my associates and I published a National Renewable Ammonia Architecture. We've got good science behind us but we're lacking a visible champion such as Mr. Young. How in the world do we get attention on our work?
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4892
If that link doesn't come through a simple Google for "national renewable ammonia architecture" will do the trick.
And if you don't know what ammonia is used for ... well ... why are you commenting in a farming thread in the first place? :-)
To all here who advocate for the repeal of prohibition against Cannabis-massively innudate the whitehouse.gov website with comments to do just that. The president's email is president@whitehouse.gov, I invite all of the same mind to do likewise there. Keep on being Green!
But please don't mention that you're in any way associated with farmers, sustainability, or progressivism. Tell them you're all libertarian conservatives who want the government out of your lives in true conservative ideology.
In the 70s the Grapevine, a small weekly newspaper, hailed marijuana as the #1 cash crop in Tomkins County, New York.
Segueing back, the battle between agribusiness and small farms is one of the many crucial struggles of our times.
Right-on EZ,
U.S. drug policy, and marijuana prohibition in particular, impacts the global environment, food security, nutrition, health, agronomy and economics. Cannabis agriculture is critical to organic farming and the free-market production of fuel.
Questions for everyone:
How bad do things have to get before all solutions are considered?
At what point does a "law" become so transparently perverse that it ceases to command respect?
If God gave man "every herb bearing seed" on Page One of the Bible, then dosen't that mean our feedom to farm is the first test of religious freedom?
Since Cannabis seed is nutritionally unique and essential, how can it possibly be within the rightful jurisdiction of any court to induce scarcity of it?
Get in touch if you want to learn more about "essential civilian demand" and how we could end prohibition of Cannabis by this spring.
Utopian platitudes. What a drain on real issues, real action.
All people don't have to understand what's really going on. Activists need to learn how to become effective organizers.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/
Organic consumers mail alerts - write legislators to oppose handouts to Monsanto and get it to family farmers
ezeflyer; My sentiments exactly.I've just been in touch with Farm Aid to ask if any of their eforts involve promoting hemp growth. I'd prefer legalizing marijuana but understand how the Puritans explode over that.
Now more than ever in Appalachia and elsewhere,hundreds of thousands of people could make a decent living by growing hemp-and perhaps some pragmatic compromise could evolve that fewer farmers would resort to growing pot and huge sums could be shaved from the "drug war".Ah, but there's the rub,eh? The State troopers and DEA enjoy flitting around what's left of the mountains and building large bonfires of Nature's finest-always careful to stand upwind of course.You wouldn't want any of the innate aggression involved to be soothed out of the troop's minds.
Has Obama said anything substantive about reining in the "drug war" and our obscene incarceration rates?
Hemp as an industrial product could be produced in oversupply as easily as any other product, with prices below costs in a bad farm program. It could be taken over by factory farming and dominated by the agribusiness complex.
Enough of this utopian romantic nonsense. There is no solution in hemp for bad farm programs.
Neil Young is right on target, in contrast, in this article.
what isn't mentioned here, yet, are the subsidies that farmers get for growing their crops. additionally, as of three weeks ago, some area farmers were still waiting for the government to tell them how many acres of which seed they needed to plant, regardless of the fact that the drought in central texas is of the exceptional category, and getting worse by the day, if that's even possible. furthermore, these same farmers who are waiting on governmental instructions continue to take out insurance on the soon to be planted crops that are guaranteed to not come out of the ground. on the other hand, many of these farmers neighboring farmers haven't even bothered pulling the machinery out of the shed.
This is not accurate information, which isn't surprising since most of what you hear on the web and in the mainstream media is false on subsidies.
Subsidies are compensations for massive losses, as anyone who has seen the data knows. So farmers get to lose money for growing their crops.
The farm program is no good. In a good program, first of all, there would be supply management and reserves, with price floors and ceilings. No subsidies would be needed.
Get on board with the Food from Family Farms Act, as Neil Young is. (nffc.net)
If farmers would get together to lobby to legalize, grow and sell organic pot, hemp, hemp seed, oil, fiber, etc., their economic woes would disappear. It's what Jefferson grew and used and what Washington urged us all to grow.
Hogwash. I've never seen any evidence posted on this at Common Dreams
And you say you climbed the flag pole at the Democratic Convention in '68 to tear down the flag to help the police start a riot?
AMEN Bro-that's the truth, and everyone needs to know it!
I will be astonished if it isn't too late really.
What is needed now is a requirement to break up corporate owned farms and sell the land to small owners who want to work it.
Kind of like a new homestead act. Re-sale is not allowed for 5 years and you have to live on the plot you buy the whole time.
Now would be a good time to try something like this, the land is cheap again and the corporations might well be wanting to shed bad assets.
We need to help farmers get livestock back from the factory farms, as value added. The way to do this is to help farmers get a fair price on grains. That then makes grass pastures much more cost effective and competitive, and makes it profitable to spread livestock out on the land in sustainable ways. Grass is also a great way to put carbon back into the soil, where there is room to store plenty of it, and where it will do a lot of good.
A key argument here is that we need to get our leaders to support high enough grain prices where the U.S. would make a profit on farm exports. Making a profit on exports, now while we need the money, is hugely more winnable than the various drastic solutions that outsiders propose.
Land redistribution is not a simple idea. They tried collectivization in USSR, for instance, and though better than the old system, it led to bloody battles over a long period of time. They tried it in Zimbabwe and it ended in members of the connected kleptocracy taking over land and then not having the knowledge or will to use it to grow food --> the current famine.
Even if, for some reason I cannot imagine, agribusiness gave up their holdings, part of the project would have to be setting up agricultural colleges and practical training. If they were serious about giving the land back to the people in Zimbabwe, they would have given farming and farm management training to the landless and worked out a real plan. Training for local farming will be part of solving the food crises in Africa and other places.
Few of us here in the US know what it takes to run a family farm anymore. You cannot wing it. Few of us have the money for seed and equipment.
I am no expert, but it seems to me more practical to start with putting existing family farms on life support. Help them to upgrade and institute organic methods. Help them to bypass middlemen and get goods to urban markets. Ask them what they need to survive. Give them the little bit of something they need to compete with the huge, chemicalized, bio-engineered, hormonized, pesticide, herbicide, high fructose corn syrup making companies. There has to be a way to help them raise free range chickens to lay eggs that competes with the cruel and bizarre chicken factories we currently have. Family farmers are not spoiled. They will make good use of what help we give them.
Joe
Les A. Brown
At this point I don't know if we can depend on the promise of change, unless the change was a president that can articulate a complete sentence that I can understand. The Obama administration doesn't seem care about leading the nation by good example. The face of the family farmer should be invited to the state of the union just ahead of Sully the the airline pilot, hell they wont even arrest the murdering, thieving criminals that just left the White house. Neil my brother, There's something happening here.
Neil Young is a great musician with great political intentions, but he should understand that Tom Vilsack is a hard-core Clintonian who has long been in the pocket of the Democratic Leadership Council -- the right-wing, business financed organization that more-or-less (usually more) runs the national Democratic Party.
In any case, to quote another responder:
KEEP ON ROCKIN' IN THE FREE WORLD, Neil. We love you and need you, just like the family farm movement that will free us from corproate domination in the agricultural realm.
To all you family famers, KEEP ON GROWIN' IN THE FREE WORLD.
Your hard work and courage is apprecated more than you know.
neil young wrote the song OHIO, about kent state in 30 minutes after seeing the kent state headline. as neil young sang----KEEP ON ROCKIN IN THE FREE WORLD---.
Farmers - just one more group that would be aided immensely by a national health care system and the end of corporate favoritism.
It wouldn't hurt if we had a little more "protectionism" as well, despite Obama's desire to avoid it.
We just moved to a small farm after being city and suburban dwellers. We got chickens first and when we went to purchase a heated chicken waterer I was upset to find that the only ones they offered (anywhere) were made in China. Of course when we got it home, it leaked.
I just can't believe we can't make a decent chicken waterer right here in America.
Oregoncharles
"We Can't Make it Here Anymore" by James McMurtry
Looks like you have to cut and paste to hear this wonderful song, with visuals to go along with it.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22052.htm
>>When farmers and their families come to town, they do not do their business with family owned businesses in town. They go to the transnational corporation outlets.
Not from what I seen in the little town of St Paul where I grew up.
The farmers shop at the local CO-OP which is a department/grocery store owned locally.
They go to the ST Paul Foundry to get work done on their machinery. The St Paul Foundry has been in business for over 100 years.
Along the Towns streets you will find businesses not seen anywhere else and very few of them Chain department stores.
Obviously when they BUY machinery they have to go to the local John Deere, but that is locally owned. Unfortunately local businesses can not manufacture a tractor.
That said a lot will depend on how far away the town is from the Big City. Towns nearer Edmonton are prone to larger chain stores.
The farmers you describe may be happy to consider that since farm machinery is relatively low-tech it is most certainly a prime candidate for the local workshops, putting the likes of John Deere out of their capitalist misery. These machines were built in local workshop for decades in the 19th/20th centuries. Not that we should be expanding on mechanized agriculture, nor "banking" on great economic opportunities from the production of machinery. The machines will be used minimally, serving in place of those who migrate to the cities.
The most efficient enterprise size is about 100 man-powers. So busting up the monsters down to this size maximizes efficiency, HOWEVER, to maximize human happiness/fulfillment we have to smash them up further down to ten man-powers. The hit in efficiency is negligible IF WE maintain STANDARDS in the technical specifications of the machinery. With the free flow of information, local communities can be self-sufficient. And should be, for obvious reasons. 300 million in the USA supporting the imperial-steamroller-from-hell testify to that.
So the prototypical farm produces food, fuel and materials for 10 people on 5 acres farmed by one farmer with a small garden-sized tractor build at the local shop. The tractor consumes 40 gal/year of oil fuel produced on another 1/4 acre by the farmer. No fossil inputs for any food, fuel or material production. The farmer owns rights to about 10 acres. The unused 4 acres are in trees providing for wildlife passage among many other benefits. Farms of two and three times this scale are also prototypical, but not any larger.
>>So the prototypical farm produces food, fuel and materials for 10 people on 5 acres farmed by one farmer with a small garden-sized tractor build at the local shop. The tractor consumes 40 gal/year of oil fuel produced on another 1/4 acre by the farmer. No fossil inputs for any food, fuel or material production. The farmer owns rights to about 10 acres. The unused 4 acres are in trees providing for wildlife passage among many other benefits. Farms of two and three times this scale are also prototypical, but not any larger.
My father grew up on a farm of a half section, later expanded to a section.
This is 640 acres. They farmed all of this with horses and had their own blacksmith shop on premises.
All of the Buildings, House, barn, you name it were built with local help. They had their own woodlot near a lake some 40 miles away and using horses and manual labor cut enough timber to put up all their own buildings. If you go to that area of wood today you could never tell it had been logged.
This was all VERY manpower intensive. My father had 19 siblings. Even at that there were still work crews that roamed the region hired on at peak times of the season.
Trust me when I tell you that the arrival of machinery to do the work was a GODSEND and no it was not built locally.
They were able to produce far more food with less manpower using machinery.
Machinery IS liberating.
Dear Neil and Farmer's aid.
Maybe growing up in Winnipeg you don't remember seeing what farmers do when they come to town, although, had you looked closely, you would have seen the patterns of where farmers and their families go to do business when they come ot town. Had you grown up in Dauphin or Portage or Steinbach you would have seen it a little more clearly.
When farmers and their families come to town, they do not do their business with family owned businesses in town. They go to the transnational corporation outlets.
This sounds like a disgruntled small town business owner.
Farmers are regular people. They often shop like town people and city people do. But numerous research studies have found that towns surrounded by small farms do much better economically and socially than those surrounded by large farms and CAFOs (feedlots and animal factories). It's those large farms and CAFOs that don't shop in town.
See: John Ikerd, "Impacts of CAFOs on Rural Communities" http://web dot missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Indiana%20--%20CAFOs%20%20Communities.htm (short summary of findings of many studies)
See "Industrialized Farming and Its Relationship to Community Well-Being," http://www dot und.edu/org/ndrural/Lobao%20&%20Stofferahn.pdf (more comprehensive, with many citations)
I believe that you are referring to agribusiness folks, as small farmers in no area where I have lived frequent the transnationals.
Mr. Young thank you for all your brave work for farms and against war. Is it possible to have a mega Concert for farms and against war again? -------- Thanks ---------- Peace --------