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Family Farmers |
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The Betrayal of Family Farmers and Farmstead Ideals
An ex-family farmer from Arizona speaks out(2nd edition - April 2008) by A.O. Kime Once a family farmer of 1,120 acres in southeastern Arizona from 1973 until 1998 (25 years), ultimately ruined by hyperinflation and treachery, is a time worthy of deep reflection. The last quarter of the 20th century illustrates perhaps better than any point in history the farmland betrayals... the reasons behind that dieing way of doing business. Of course, the purposeful elimination of small family farms has throw into chaos our centuries-old social and economic order. Born of globalization agendas and nurtured by malicious manipulation, the repercussions are proving catastrophic. Family farmers not only cultivate values but, as an industry, small farms are a nation's economic backbone... a historical fact. The purchasing habits and operational style of large corporate farms, on the other hand, are proving a poor substitute. While farming itself will live-on despite governmental intervention, being an immortal profession, by design not so the small family farm... which means saying more goodbyes to the quality of life. After all, the extent businesses integrate human values is usually relative to their size... often flourishing in small businesses, existing less in larger ones and virtually nonexistent in the biggest. Although 'efficiency' was once the exclusive domain of private enterprise and entrepreneurship, this changed when Washington got into the efficiency business for the sake of agricultural exports. Due to the fact governments are too big to have any moral fiber, on their pedestal sits efficiency instead of values. There is nothing honorable about forced efficiency by always keeping 'profit' just beyond reach... as if dangling it on a stick. Agricultural policies are designed to keep farmers perpetually in dire straits to force upon them more production. Survival of the fittest should be nature's domain... not Washington's. To witness extinction is hard to grasp at first, the significance isn’t realized until sometime later. In grammar school (1940s), I saw the passing of the Old West as our dairyman neighbor parked his buckboard for good. So too, he retired his bullwhip, harnesses and mules... now being just nostalgic memorabilia. Politically relegated to yesteryear's scrapheap as well, today we are witnessing the last gasps of the family farmer. Stereotyped farmersWhile family farmers have been stereotyped accurately over the years, that is, being family-oriented folks, ethical and hard working although always struggling financially, of a seemingly indestructible character, it was their trusting nature which became their Achilles heel. A trusting soul and a dash of naivety proved a fragile combination in dealing with our new-age government bureaucrats. The street-smart agricultural officials of the last half century, the hierarchy primarily and subservient to a fault, became the apocalyptic agents for doomsday when they began sacrificing family farmers for globalization purposes. Four million fewer farms across America is testimony... being less now than before the Civil War. Mechanized machinery only explains more land under cultivation, not fewer farmers. The recent ethanol boon (corn) and increase in exports due to the falling dollar doesn't change the overall picture either. Agricultural boons, after all, are invariably short-lived whereas the faltering greenback merely testifies to the growing economic crisis. With monetary adjustments worldwide inevitable, the surge in exports will be temporary as well. The normally passive, easy-going family farmers were seen as the perfect pawns for globalization and were setup to take a big fall. Over the past several decades, it has been the policy of the USDA to eradicate family farmers for the purposes of globalization (see family farm and agricultural socialism). Their modus operandi? For the hand-to-mouth farmers, it is a simple three-step procedure... first loan them money, then restrict their ability to pay it back (overproduction equates to low prices), then foreclose. Weed out the inefficient ones, the thinking went... except 'inefficient' equates to 'small'. Is inefficiency a crime if, in the opinion of the farmer, it sufficiently serves his needs? Of course, it isn't a matter of the farmer's needs (or his idea of efficiency), but that of the U.S. government. Forced efficiency be damned... family farms are the backbone and cultural classroom of America. They support better the local economy and provide more jobs than large corporate farms while at the same time cultivate values... time-honored values. Family farms are the breeding grounds for ethics and a place where children, being impressionable, most often adopt them. But the yellow school buses gathering kids from the countryside are far fewer or running nearly empty these days. It will be rap music these children hear instead and to know gang-signs, tattoos and ecstasy. Under the shadow of government, they'll also learn about pretext and hypocrisy. This is the price America is paying for globalization. The role of old barnsOf course, co-existing with the stereotyped farmer are the associated images. Urbanites probably visualize family farmers having a bunch of kids helping out by milking the cows, cleaning out corrals or eating together as a family. They might also picture a family farm as having an old farmhouse with a porch, a tree with a swing, perhaps stacks of firewood and a weathered old barn nearby. And, they probably think family farmers pretty much run a low-tech operation. While that may describe a few farms and farmers, the rest can be characterized in a wide variety of other ways. Western and Midwestern farms, for example, are generally bigger and thus look less like a family-run operation. It doesn't matter, unless they're huge investor-type corporate farms, they still endear the same code of ethics as the small family farmer. And, except for dairies and feedlots, the farms in the west would less likely have farm animals. Further, because farms in the west are more recent, they wouldn’t yet be graced with weathered old houses and barns which are stereotypical of a family farm. Most western farmers probably wished they had them though; there is something indescribably grand about weathered old houses and barns. Old barns don't have an exclusive right to this endearing atmosphere however. Standing next to, or leaning against, anything farm or ranch related somehow has a way of invoking this atmosphere. Uniquely, it is where a nod in agreement is preferable to a handshake as if something is telling you to be leery of hand-shakers. Old barns likely hold a lot of memories though... surely being where someone’s grandpa often stacked hay, milked cows or maybe where he got his first kiss. Maybe it was where Uncle Billy got kicked by a mule in 1927 or where Sally’s prized quarter horse was once an awkward foal. Conversely, the farm buildings in the west, which could loosely be called 'barns', are made of metal and aren't likely to hold fond memories. For some reason, metal can't hold memories as good as wood. Of course, wooden barns also hold alfalfa, tack, a few stray chickens and maybe a couple of tractors. On the other hand, the metal ones typical in the west don't hold alfalfa, tack and a few stray chickens but instead hold some of the biggest tractors money can buy. Farming in the Sulphur Springs ValleyThere is a reason for these huge tractors. In the mid 70s USDA officials told farmers that in order for America to compete worldwide, we needed to plant as much as we could. I still remember their haunting words... "plant fencerow-to-fencerow boys". That's why we gathered up as much farmland as possible and took out enormous loans. In our valley, even the marginal farms saw life again and after it was all gobbled up, it wasn't long before cultivated crops replaced some 50,000 acres of cactus and mesquite. By 1979 the farm acreage here in the Sulphur Springs Valley (Arizona) had dramatically increased to 175,000 acres, more than doubling that a few years earlier. This phenomenon was to be short-lived however. Along with hyperinflation, in a few short years crop prices took a nose-dive and the acreage under cultivation began a rapid decline. By the mid 1980s, anticlimactically, without fanfare, as if merely the passing of clouds, it shrank to less than 30,000 acres. Many farmers just packed up and quietly moved away, broke, never to be seen again. Even though the acreage increased slightly during the mid to late 90s and held steady at between 35,000-40,000 acres, that meant some 135,000 acres were still lying fallow. Where mesquite trees and a variety of cacti once existed became a sea of tumbleweeds instead and when the wind blew, the remaining few dozen farmers, myself included, had to constantly tend to their irrigation ditches with a pitchfork. A tumbleweed, once having been blown into a water-filled irrigation ditch, will uplift the siphon tubes which stops the irrigation process. The wind will also stack these tumbleweed high against anything in their way, against houses, outbuildings, barns and farm equipment. The tumbleweeds simply dominated the countryside and removing them was almost a daily chore. Repeatedly it was stack and burn, stack and burn. One week the wind would blow them in one direction, then the next week blow them in another. Some tumbleweeds were even starting to look familiar... as if having seen the same ones go by the week before. Fond memories and farm debtDue to these tumbleweeds and other differences in the west, maybe I can't really speak for the majority of family farmers... maybe weathered old barns are authorized to determine whether I can or not, not tumbleweeds. I've always suspected that weathered old barns, in some mysterious way, create the essence of a family farmer. My barn was made of steel and tin, not graced with timbers and rough-cut lumber although it was sorta old, built in the early 50s. We never called it a barn though; we called it our ‘shop’. On one end of this metal shed was a place where the wetbacks once slept. It had two tiny rooms and once had a stove. Close by were our corrals but they were constructed mostly of barbed wire... of little charm. While I can still remember things which happened around my corrals and shop, they aren’t really ‘fond memories’... not what a weathered old barn or wooden corrals might invoke. After all, one can’t sit on a barbed wire fence to ponder life or watch a frolicking calf. Nor is there anything romantic about a metal building. And besides smelling like diesel instead of alfalfa hay, it was only a first generation barn. I never had an Uncle Billy or Grandpa that knew it earlier and it wasn’t even a barn, it was a metal shed. All I remember is fixing things or welding something. I have no fond memories of it... none that I can think of. We had no milk cows, goats or chickens either although I often winter-pastured cattle on my alfalfa fields. Otherwise all we had was three horses and once a hog. I haven’t milked a cow since I was ten. Come to think of it, except for Christmas, we never said grace at dinnertime either. Also untypical, I was on my third marriage and probably drank too much. So surely there were others who exemplified a family farmer more than I. Maybe if I had a weathered old barn I would have acted more like a family farmer. However, it’s sometimes the case family farmers aren’t married, get divorced or aren't family-oriented in the traditional sense. Maybe they don’t have any farm animals or a picturesque barn but their financial straits are still the same. They're all indebted... and debt, we all know, is tormenting. Further, some farmers are highly educated, a few with doctorate degrees and while many aren’t so well-educated, I never once met an ignorant farmer. Foolish perhaps, but they were usually them 'cum laude' dudes. The only farmers who weren't debt-ridden were those of family wealth but that didn't matter, they were still losing money like the rest of us. They’re the ones who make it look like family farmers are making money because of their newer and bigger tractors, bigger homes and are always driving new pickups. Newer pickups aren’t that unusual though, working pickups don’t last too long on a farm, maybe 2-3 years. That's why most farmers drive late model pickups. Most family farmers come up the hard way though, getting their start on rented ground. Field crops versus fruit and vegetablesWhile each farm and farmer is unique, the commonality is that they're all losing money and it doesn’t matter the size of their farm. It doesn’t matter whether they are married or not, have animals or are family oriented. It doesn’t matter if they have a two-story house or a barn. It doesn’t even matter if they have a rich relative helping them out, almost everyone is losing money and getting deeper in debt. The only ones who can sometimes make money, or often do, are those into specialty crops... like fruit and vegetables, Thankfully however, fruit and vegetables aren’t under government control but growing them is a risky business. The problem is, the market will only support so many acres of each commodity and other farmers, trying to avoid the government's next subsidy ambush, being refuges in effect, are always trying to horn-in on these enterprises. Even though it’s risky and competitive, you have a chance to 'make it' with fruits and vegetables. With government controlled crops, it’s a matter of being slowly strangled to death. With each government check you cash, you’re being paid to go broke. To match acreage to meet the demand, specialty crops require only about 20% of America’s farmland, the other 80% is used for high consumption crops like cotton, corn and grains which are under government control. Government control means your going to lose money so that means 80% of America's farmland is in dire straits. That means a tremendous amount of labor and resources are expended for naught except to pave the road towards globalization. It also creates additional pollution (otherwise unnecessary) and unnecessarily saps aquifers. All of this just to sate the aspirations of the transnationalists. The purveyors of agricultural commoditiesAlong with these long-term downsides, government intervention is a ticket to the poorhouse. The only thing farm policies guarantee is that you’ll go broke. Subsidy payments recoup only part of the shortfall which, in the end, amounts to less than break-even. A $30,000 subsidy check usually means the farmer lost twice that amount. Subsidized overproduction, after all, equates to artificially low prices. The mechanics of why and how this occurs is simple. In order to offset imports (balance of trade), pressure is upon the USDA to assure maximum exports and that's accomplished through lower-than-competitive pricing. This occurs in a variety of ways such as subsidies, allotments and price supports which enables them to manipulate the acreage whereby supply exceeds demand. While trying not to create too much of a glut thereby risking grower participation, history tells us they prefer erring on the side of too much production rather than too little. A bone, of course, is occasionally thrown. When they do misjudge (demand exceeds supply), is when farmers make money and the transnationalists don't since fewer exports affects trade agreements, overseas shipping companies and other interests of big business. Also, a shortfall in the balance of trade is exclusively a government problem and why good prices don't last long. Of course, this manipulation of market forces makes a mockery of free enterprise. Further, as purveyors of agricultural commodities, it puts government in the business of farming... in a very real sense making farmhands out of the actual farmers. Actually, since career farmers are captive to the situation, it's more a form of slavery. After all, slavery has different faces which began in America with 'indentured servitude' around the 17th century and evolved into new definitions before and right after the Civil War during the 19th century. Once the prewar practice of feeding and housing slaves ended, for decades emancipation changed nothing except their right to leave. But... go where? Do what? So too, they had to buy their own food now, pay rent. A reshuffling of the rules just put a different face on the same game. Reeducating takes decades... bearing little fruit for the immediate generation. Different century, same dilemma... the farmer now the whipping boy. My extraordinary efforts to save my farming operation revealed an even uglier side of the USDA however... for that story see Farm Policies and the Undoing of an Arizona Family Farmer A.O. Kime Comments? Email allen@matrixbookstore.com
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