Some Things Just Don't Make Sense

Miller Family Farm - York, PA

An interesting aspect of our journeys over the past year has been the opportunity to see, first hand, the effects of current economic conditions on local communities in many parts of the country. Communities everywhere are experiencing the common problems of unemployment, decreased property values, large drops in local and state tax bases and disappearing small businesses. This is especially true in rural communities. There have been small towns we have driven through that, although a few years ago housed a few businesses and residents, are nothing more today than literal ghost towns. Some areas have been affected harder than others, but no matter where we have been, everyone hears the same news topics over and over; no jobs, cutbacks in local services, disappearing businesses and ballooning national expenditures.

While many people in all parts of this country are complaining about new federal programs and their impacts on the average citizen and local communities, they are oblivious to older federal programs that waste billions of dollars per year. While the debate raged on and on about how to pay for the health care bill, our government is paying subsides to the tune of $3 billion dollars per year to less then 20,000 cotton farmers. The program encourages American planters to grow cotton even when supplies are high, and this overproduction keeps prices low on the world market.

Given that we have children in this country going to bed hungry every night and that the official number of unemployed people today is 15,089,451 the cotton subsidy sounds really dumb right? Well, it gets dumber. At the same time we are paying American planters subsidies to grow cotton nobody needs, we are also paying Brazilian cotton farmers over $147 million dollars a year of our tax dollars to compensate them for the unfair advantage we pay our farmers! Time magazine summed up this mess by saying, "If you're perplexed, here's the short explanation: We're shoveling our taxpayer dollars to Brazilian farmers to make sure we can keep shoveling our taxpayer dollars to American farmers... Basically, we're paying off farmers to maintain our ludicrous status quo."

Now, before you think this money is going to the small, independent farmer who busts his or her butt every day to provide a quality farm life for their family, think again. Most of this cotton subsidy - our money - is going to big corporations who bought out the small family farms who could not compete with them and their government subsidies.

This topic is personal to me because I spent my formative years growing up on a family farm in northern Indiana. It was a great way to spend my youth and I am grateful each and every day for the lessons learned about life on that land. There's something very special about working alongside relatives on land that your great-grandfather homesteaded. It was often a difficult and hard way to make a living, but one that was filled with rich blessings and the support of a very large extended family. Unfortunately, the days of the independent family farm are quickly becoming a thing of the past in this country.

Farm subsidies have always been an important part of our national economy and security. They were first put in place to both safeguard the family farmer from the vagaries of weather and to protect our nation's food supply. This not only stabilized rural economies, it also helped make our nation the largest food producer in the world. Then, slowly, multinational corporations began to buy out family farms and expand their dominance in all areas of food production. Not surprisingly they built, and continue to expand, this dominance through the the very subsidies that were established to help the small farmer.

For example, did you know in America: 80 percent of all soybean production and processing is controlled by one corporation, Monsanto; that between 1995 and 2005, 73 percent of farmers and ranchers in New York state did not collect one cent of the $1.11 billion in Federal farm subsidies for that state - instead, most of that money went to just 10% of subsidy recipients including over 1,300 businesses in New York City (most large multinational corporations); that wealthy men like Ted Turner and David Rockefeller are taking in large sums of money each year in the form of farm subsidies; that most of the poultry you purchase at major chain grocery stores is controlled by multinational corporations who cornered the market in the 1960s; that most of the pork you purchase in major chain grocery stores is controlled by multinational corporations who cornered the market in the late 1990s; that the same is true for beef and corn products purchased through major chains; that multinational food-based corporations annually maintain one of the largest lobbyist influences in Washington, D.C.?

Today the inequity of how the federal government allocates farm subsidies - our money - is playing out in the dairy industry. It was given daily coverage on local news channels while we were in the Northeastern states last summer. Yet for the impact this crisis will ultimately have on independent family farms and our nations milk supply, it has received woefully little attention by national news chains.

Each day, our nation is seeing hundreds of independent milk producers going out of business due to a lack of adequate federal price supports. Right now dairy farmers are losing $200 per cow each month due to the gap between current bulk milk prices and production costs. If trends continue, we may immediately lose 20,000 of our nation's 60,000 family dairies and billions of dollars from rural communities, which are already hurting more than large communities during this economic downturn.

This dairy crisis is just not the result of overproduction or a sudden decline in demand spurred by the global recession. Instead, it is a disastrous combination of factors beyond the independent farmer's control. The price of milk paid to farmers collapsed a record 30% in January 2009 alone, the result of a volatile pricing system manipulated by a few corporate players. In addition, our country is allowing an unregulated flow of milk substitute imports from China. Most of the milk-based fillers used in processed cheeses and many other products now come from overseas, not from American farmers.

All our nation's independent milk producers are asking for is a fair price support from the government. They are not asking to get rich overnight or ripoff the taxpayer. They simply want a fair chance to maintain their businesses and keep ownership of their family farms. While this crisis drags on, our federal government has yet to pledge any increased support; they instead have established a committee to research the problem and present recommendations.

While some may argue that the expansion of multinational corporate farming is simply the result of economic trends that lead to lower prices for the consumer, I would have to say that I find that view short-sighted. We have seen the impact of lowered farm incomes on many rural towns and the outcomes are sad. With the loss of every dollar from small family farmers many jobs, local businesses and personal lives are placed into distress. It's not comfortable to stay in or drive through rural towns that are obviously dying due to a collapsed local economy. Ghost towns are once again becoming a part of our rural landscape.

I also find it short-sighted to not think about our food base being at the total control of multinational corporations. There's just too much at risk. As a family farmer from Iowa said, "If the government thinks they have problems with our nation's reliance on oil imports or the collapse of the banking industry, what will they do if we are dependent upon foreign entities for our food supplies?".

It just seems to me that if this nation can shell out our money to Brazilian farmers so that we can continue to overproduce cotton, or pay millions to wealthy landowners in subsidies, or pay multinational corporations a huge share of subsidies that were meant for the small, independent farmer they could, instead, spend our money in ways that better support independent dairy farmers and rural communities. That money, right now, could be going to the those who daily work to maintain the beautiful family farms we have seen in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and other parts of this great land. It could be going to those small towns who are currently dying a slow death. It could be going to us instead of another country.

There's a lot I don't understand but, like the title says, some things just don't make sense.

copyright 2009-2010 Lane A Geyer

photo by Deb