Change is coming soon
for struggling family farms | Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower
February 13, 2020
 |
Change is coming
soon for struggling family farms | Jim Hightower. By far the most abundant
commodity produced under corporate-centric agriculture policy is not corn,
cotton or cattle ,but stupidity.
|
As we hurtle into the
2020s, the future of our food economy (and food itself) remains a fiercely
contested competition between diametrically opposed visions: a negative pole
consisting of the concentrated forces of corporate agribusiness, which view the
dinner plate strictly in terms of their own profit margins, and a positive
polarity of family farmers, consumers, food artisans, environmentalists and
other grassroots advocates of agriculture, who envision our food future from
the ethical perspective of sustainability and democratic control.
Of course, in this
Time of Trump, the corporate interests rule national policy. If there ever was
any doubt about which vision the Trumpeteers would push, it was erased by the
little-known fellow he appointed to head the Department of Agriculture: Sonny
Perdue of Georgia. Hailing from the No. 1 peanut-producing state in the
country, Sonny has proven to be the biggest goober of all. As chief of the
agency created by former President Abraham Lincoln specifically to assist
America's small farmers and rural communities, Perdue has been AWOL, blithely
reclining in his ornate Washington office while farm prices have continued to
plummet, bankruptcies have soared and farmer suicides have surged.
Bizarrely, this
no-show even has found great hilarity in his constituents' crises. In August, when
producers began publicly protesting the increasing financial pain that
President Donald Trump's trade games with China were inflicting on them, their
ag secretary responded with snark.
"What do you call
two farmers in a basement?" he asked at an ag industry gathering. "A
whine cellar," he guffawed.
More:A bountiful
harvest takes work | Jim Hightower
Then, in October,
Perdue suddenly bared his corporate soul by impersonating Earl Butz. You might
recall that Butz, former President Richard Nixon's secretary of agriculture,
had infamously commanded family farmers to "get big or get out,"
warning them to "adapt" to the corporate-dictated food economy he was
promoting, "or die." Likewise, appearing at a Wisconsin dairy industry
expo, Perdue rose on his hind legs and smugly lectured the state's hard-hit
farmers on the theoretical framework of Trumpenomics: "In America,"
he icily instructed, "the big get bigger, and the small go out." So
there you have it — the Sonny and Donnie farm program boils down to two words:
Adios, chumps!
By far the most
abundant commodity produced under the corporate-centric agriculture policy
that's been in place for 50 years is not corn, cotton or cattle, but stupidity.
While some years have been worse than others, Washington's overall policy
approach has consistently exploited farmers, our land and water, agricultural
workers, taxpayers, food quality and rural communities — all to further enrich
the handful of monopolistic profiteers that now control both the policy and
policymakers. And we're presently in year six of the worst farm crisis since
the disastrous 1980s.
But hark! What light
is this that glows on yon horizon? Why, it's some new policy ideas that are
emanating not from corporate front groups, Congress or other bastions of the
status quo, but from the grassroots. Family farmers themselves have coalesced
with other political outsiders and victims of Big Ag to put forth a complete
overhaul of industrial agribusiness policies, supplanting them with sensible,
democratic approaches to serve the common good. The most cohesive and
comprehensive compilation of these solutions has come from Sen. Elizabeth
Warren's plan for "a new farm economy," which offers the big
structural changes necessary to, in her words, "break the stranglehold
that giant agribusinesses have over our farm economy." Her proposals
literally have percolated up from the grassroots, for her ag "brain
trust" primarily consists of dirt farmers and rural advocates. In dozens
of small gatherings across Iowa and elsewhere, these ground-level, hands-on
experts have hammered out pragmatic ideas that really would work to produce a
democratic and sustainable farm prosperity.
Building on the
successful "supply management" approach of the New Deal, Warren's
proposal stops the constant "overproduction of commodities," which
keeps busting farm prices and is drastically straining our environment; cuts
billions from taxpayer subsidies that mainly go to wealthy agribusiness
operations; provides effective incentives to get farmers to convert swaths of
their land from intensive production to conservation practices that mitigate
climate change; strengthens and enforces anti-trust laws to break up and
prevent ag monopolies that are bilking farmers; provides hands-on assistance to
help farmers, workers and rural communities build local and regional systems to
free them from dependence on multinational food giants; and purposefully
expands opportunities for beginning, female and racially diverse farmers.
Jim Hightower
Just as corporate
powers have spent half a century rigging the food economy to serve their
selfish interest, so can we create a new one to serve the common interest. The
place to start is with a plan: Visit Warren's website for her full farm plan.
Populist author,
public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes "The Hightower
Lowdown," a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America's
ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites.
National Latino
Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association
1029 Vermont
Avenue, NW, Suite 601
Washington, DC
20005
Office: (202)
628-8833
Fax No.: (202)
393-1816
Email: latinofarmers@live.com
Twitter: @NLFRTA
Website: www.NLFRTA.org
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