Growing food is a lot more important than what many of us knowledge workers do. Farming keeps us fed and alive. But our globalized free market economy has made small farmers and ranchers seem expendable. We tend to deem them unskilled and readily replaceable.
“Vote With Your Dollar” Is Not Enuf
Some of us recognize the problem of local food security, made more obvious as the pandemic disrupted supply chains. We may go to a farmer's market and commit to buy local, but not often enuf and not in sufficient numbers to have much impact on industrial food production.
Farmers Face Constant Uncertainty
Farmers have always faced fluctuations of weather and other natural cycles such as pests, but globalized markets and the impact of changing policies subject farmers to an even more unpredictable set of fluctuations.
Agricultural markets are characterised by fast changing market dynamics and high price fluctuations, as a result, farmers are often confronted with substantial changes in the prices they receive for their goods or the prices they have to pay for the primary input. The uncertainty about the development of the future income caused by this price volatility can lead to sub-optimal investment decisions, if insurance or risk mitigation is non-existent or is highly priced.…Indeed, this price volatility can lead to temporary financial difficulties for otherwise generally fully viable farms. (European Investment Bank, 2019, p. 4)
Food commodities are set up with middlemen financiers who rake in the profit, when it comes, in exchange for taking on the financial risk that a particular season may have a low-yield crop. Sounds fair enuf, but it isn’t. Farmers pay insurance to avoid sustaining losses with commodity trading. This eats into their profits. The farmers are financially pressured into a losing game. Because they can’t afford to lose a whole season’s profits, they pay more than they can afford to, in order to lessen their risk. The financiers make sure the fine print keeps them protected and advantaged. The financiers are risking money they can afford to lose, but they are certain to gain in the long term.
In documents such as that quoted above, the banks sound like concerned rescuers, but this financial system sets farmers up to fail. It’s not that anyone intended for them to fail. There was no conspiracy. Financiers are simply acting in their own interest, with the well-accepted idea that the invisible hand is leading all to do what they do best, for the benefit of all. Meanwhile small to medium farmers have not developed a paid cadre of lobbyists to defend them. Farmers were not cynical and worldly enuf to realize they needed that political clout, until it was too late. Small farmers already too far behind, and farming takes more time than they have.
Policy Disadvantages Farmers
As rural dwellers, smaller farmers and ranchers are rarely in circles of political influence. Thus their needs tend to be ignored. Big agribusiness gets subsidized, and this leaves smaller producers even less able to compete in the marketplace to make ends meet. While they are struggling constantly to not lose their land to the increasing taxes and debts coming due, they hear some state politician’s cousin gets a public arts grant to make a giant clothespin on the grounds of a public building. Like me, you might have artist friends and appreciate art, and you could also understand this situation is aggravating to people working constantly long hard days to feed themselves and their communities.
Branded as Yokels
Farmers need some better branding. Many are understandably angry, sad, and have all the wrong talking points. That’s three strikes against them:
· Some are an angry political contingency because economic policy has left them in a dire situation.
· They were described even before the pandemic as experiencing an epidemic level of depression in Canada and the United States. It’s been worse since then. A Canadian research team found 76% of farmers are experiencing moderate to high stress. Add to that anxiety, depression, plus emotional exhaustion and cynicism (two components of burnout), suicide ideation, and lowered resilience, all of these experienced by farmers more than the national average.
· These rural dwellers used to be considered the “salt of the earth,” good to the bone, unpretentious, perhaps naïve and unsophisticated. Now some are politically lumped in with a quadrant that contains that “basket of deplorables.”
It’s worth a venture into the controversial topic of IQ to point out that the “flyover” states are not behind in this metric. Leaving aside the research on how stress, culture, and a multitude of other variables affect IQ scores, you can scan this for yourself. From this list of the average IQ for 50 states, take a look at the midwest farming states. There are eight above the average and five below the average. I figure that’s the closest I can get to indicating there’s no justification for thinking people who stay in small farming towns aren’t as smart. Are they naïve? If that means they aren’t cleverly conniving, then yes. There are stereotypes about the hedge fund manager, the slick advertiser, lawyer, car salesman, and a host of other professionals that you have to watch your back around. Ever worried a farmer was going to take advantage of you? So there’s your better branding: still good to the bone, and probably average to above-average smarts. You couldn’t survive as a small farmer without considerable skill and smarts.
Small Farms and Ranches in Four Quadrants
After checking out the prior posts, you won’t need an explanation for the following chart.
Thanks for reading! For a related post, see the section “My Farmer Friends” in the post People who want a simple life.
For Voice-to-text Repeat of the Quadrants Above
This section repeats the writing in the quadrants, for any who have difficulty reading in that format. Because as an image it won’t be verbally read by assistive technology. What’s the benefit of the quadrant format anyway? It’s a heuristic that can stick in the visual memory.
Blue Quadrant: Farm policymakers
It’s most often financially out of reach to become hobby farmers, even with inherited land. Every small farmer needs another income of their own or in the family to stay afloat, because land taxes require that the land return a profit, or it will be reclaimed and sold for houses or other non-ag development. Policymakers set up laws for land trusts to ease this burden, but small farms can’t afford lawyers to put these in place. Dems encourage large scale farmers to reduce their dependence on energy intensive inputs, but those who do so voluntarily will bankrupt themselves. An uneven playing field rewards externalization of the damage of nitrogen runoff = aquatic dead zones. Community gardens pop up as people try to make a small start at local sustainable food production.
Red Quadrant: Big agribusiness
Many on the right are globalist because they benefit economically from free trade and more open borders. Businesses that need cheap labor favor relaxed immigration policies. Large scale agribusiness is further subsidized because of increasing cost of energy inputs, creating further wealth gap while small farmers are disadvantaged in the market. The unsustainable soil depletion and polluting practices of monoculture big agribusiness are ignored as lobbyists convince congress, and the public, that small farms could not possibly feed large populations. Theoretically the market should offer a way out, as small farmers can find profits in local markets with prices increased by specialized products and targeted marketing. Many find this untenable.
Yellow Quadrant: Small farmers and ranchers
They economically compete with subsidized agribusiness domestically. They compete with the cheaper labor available in foreign nations. Unless hiring undocumented workers themselves, they favor stricter immigration laws and deportation, because it disadvantages them. While valuing their traditional community-centered lifestyles and independence, they find it an increasing struggle to maintain even a subsistence-level income. There is intense pressure to sell out their farmland to housing developers and larger agribusiness, especially when their children see opportunities for an easier more secure life available in the city.
Green Quadrant: Permaculturists, humanitarians, & hobby farmers
They dislike the short-term economic incentives that counter ecologically sustainable practices. They favor fair trade to not exploit the land resources and labor force of other nations. They favor regional self-reliance. Genetic crop diversity is being lost because of globalization. Under free trade policies, capitalism has resulted in flow of resources to wealthy transnational interests, disadvantaging the “third world” farmers, as leaders make available their natural resources and labor, often to enrich themselves. This destroys traditional livelihoods and village culture, pushing the previously self-sufficient into city slums, losing self-respect and community.
References
Reference for Article
European Investment Bank. (2019). Using financial instruments to reduce the impact of price volatility in agriculture. https://www.fi-compass.eu/sites/default/files/publications/Using_financial_instruments_to_reduce_the_impact_of_price_volatility_in_agriculture.pdf
References for Quadrants Chart
Food Revolution Network. (2018). The need to grow [Documentary film]. https://grow.foodrevolution.org/?fbclid=IwAR2axYDB0xkoty32kxkokbzUIDtu7TvNrzycKWM1KEiOZVsAlaXoAZZiXzA
Note. Watch for free at this site.
Haspel, T. (2014). Small vs. large: Which size farm is better for the planet? https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/small-vs-large-which-size-farm-is-better-for-the-planet/2014/08/29/ac2a3dc8-2e2d-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html
Hickel, J. (2019). Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal
Ikerd, J. (2016). Family farms of North America. http://www.fao.org/3/i6354e/i6354e.pdf
Local Futures. (2021). The economics of happiness [Documentary film]. https://www.localfutures.org/programs/the-economics-of-happiness/
Note. Watch for free at this site.
Rhodale Institute. (2019). Can organic feed the world? https://rodaleinstitute.org/blog/can-organic-feed-the-world/
Thompson, H., & Zuccareno, T. (Directors). (2018). How we grow. https://virl.kanopy.com/video/how-we-grow