Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Save Family Farms, Because Wall Street Won't

I write this just after following a sloooowwwww crew of John Deere combines down a narrow gravel road; they were flying Trump flags and holding up traffic. They had just harvested a 60-acre field near here, in about two hours, and left it scalped. I didn’t follow to see where they were headed, but there’s not much land that flat and fence-less around here, so I imagine they’ll have the equipment loaded on semis and be on their way to Iowa by nightfall.

Following their long, slow wobble gave me plenty of time to think about this column, and to think about how to fix the Democratic Party in time for the 2024 elections. I can see how they can develop a backbone and begin to serve people instead of corporations by just following a few simple steps. But, first, a few words about the modern agriculture equipment. No sensible farmer I know, with his/her eye on the bottom line of their business, would own such machines. In fact, these behemoths are owned by corporate specialists. That’s the modern way of big ag. The system depends on handouts and by that I mean government handouts.

Neighbors are giving up their equipment and hiring corporate reapers to do the work. With farm debt projected to increase to a record high, and farmers going bankrupt at a rate not seen since the 1980s, farmers have sold their equipment and signing with out-of-state crews on a contract basis. The crew I followed is owned by a corporation from Texas. One of the combines was an X-9, a new model that sells for just under $1 million and can harvest 200 acres per day. And, with its modern lighting, it can harvest at night. Or, better, this crew might manage their equipment remotely, with robot-controlled precision, so it could go day and night while the humans play cards at McDonalds or watch TV in a hotel.

The X-9 takes up more than 12 feet of roadway, so you can imagine why I didn’t try to pass. The machinery is ridiculously over-built for my neighborhood. We still have small family farms here, managed by actual families and passed from generation to generation. But the corporate crews begin in late summer, harvesting in Oklahoma, then work their way north, arriving in Missouri (here) in mid-October and going on north, maybe into Canada, following the wheat harvests. To prepare for their coming, farmers kill their growing fields by using Roundup, a chemical which may account for the wheat allergies that suddenly hit consumers a decade or so ago.

When I asked a friend, a salesman for John Deere, how the math works out on this equipment, he said, “it doesn’t pencil.” Not until the incentives like depreciation and write-offs are factored in. Then, the math works if the owners have other income. Like investing in the stock market where John Deere shares sell at $240.

This year, the government gave farmers a bonus. Reporter Alan Rappeport for the New York Times wrote that federal payments to farmers have marked a new record — $46 billion. One might think that this payment is Trump’s bribe to pay for votes, but as Joel Greeno points out to Mr. Rappeport, the chance of a normal family farmer getting the money is slim. Greeno, president of Wisconsin’s Family Farm Defenders, explains that most federal money goes to corporate farmers, and “Rural America is not seeing that money because it’s not getting here.”

Corporate farmers are, of course, the ones buying the giant John Deere equipment, which fuels the stock market, so a donation to those guys is a win-win for Wall Street, so that subsidizing farmers is really subsidizing corporate America.

We won’t go into who buys the farms that go on the auction block right now. I think you know about foreign ownership of American land, now on the increase, or by retirement funds like TIAA that buy land that might be purchased by young families, but, instead, let’s talk about solutions.

The pandemic has created a new awareness in consumers of how fragile and greedy the corporate supply chain is, and that’s meant that folks are looking for new sources of necessities like food. Small, local farms have found creative ways to sell, and those new strategies will last if consumers keep supporting them. And, formerly cheap corporate foods have become expensive, so buying local is a win-win. We’re building a whole new, non-Wall Street economy, now that Wall Street has been proven such a sham.

Now, I had planned to use this column to tell you how the Dems can become winners again, serving people instead of the corporates, but I’m out of room, darn it. Just time for one step, but it’s an easy one: Help Americans build new, local economies by supporting small, independent, family farms. And we’ll look at more strategies another day!

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She also is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people who are affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History”. Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2020

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