Farmageddon

Our system of government was very specifically organized to protect less-populated agricultural states from the “tyranny” of more populated manufacturing states: two Senators represent a state, regardless of size, which has control over treaties and such, although all appropriations bills must come from the House. It’s called the New Jersey compromise and much of this structure is credited to the negotiating skills of Benjamin Franklin. While many believe that the Civil War was just about slavery, the fact is that war also embraced that despite the structure put together to protect farm states as noted above, the addition of new states to the union tilted the balance against them. These states, all in the South, simply said that wasn’t the bargain they signed on for.

The rural states are on the receding end of political power in the United States. These mostly conservative voters voted 61% for Mitt Romney and only 37% for Barack Obama in the last election, but their voice was simply a mild ripple of very little consequence. In today’s world, rural voters accounted for only 14% of the turnout in that election. 50% of the rural counties in the United States lost population since the last presidential race, and for the first time since such subsidies and supports were enacted, the rural vote was unable to push through an extension of the farm bill in an election year. Instead, there has been lots of grousing and talks of secession from such rural voters. It’s a strongly negative vibe, trying to oppose change as their arguments and the power of their vote is increasingly irrelevant.

But rural America is essential; they feed us and provide us with raw materials for all kinds of industries. They manage vast portions of our resources and account for significant values in our export markets. But that’s part of the problem – farm commodities are now simply part of the global flow of commerce, and the vagaries of this massive competitive marketplace impact farmers on a daily basis. The good news is that rising standards of living in emerging markets is also pushing farm prices strongly upwards.

But in this context, rural America seems lost. They complain, rage against seeming unfairness, react to rumors as if they were fact and generally oppose change without offering much in return. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has had it up to “here” with the negativity. Effectively, he’s told rural America to get over it, change has enveloped them, and they need to reposition their message to stop trying to push the clock backwards – it simply isn’t going to happen – and refocus on sending positive signals of growth and increasing values for America’s future.

“‘It's time for us to have an adult conversation with folks in rural America,’ Vilsack said in a speech at a forum sponsored by the Farm Journal. ‘It’s time for a different thought process here, in my view.’.. He said rural America's biggest assets — the food supply, recreational areas and energy, for example — can be overlooked by people elsewhere as the U.S. population shifts more to cities, their suburbs and exurbs. ‘Why is it that we don't have a farm bill?’ said Vilsack. ‘It isn't just the differences of policy. It's the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it.’

“Two-thirds of those rural voters said the government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals… Vilsack criticized farmers who have embraced wedge issues such as regulation, citing the uproar over the idea that the Environmental Protection Agency was going to start regulating farm dust after the Obama administration said repeatedly it had no so such intention.

“In his Washington speech, he also cited criticism of a proposed Labor Department regulation, later dropped, that was intended to keep younger children away from the most dangerous farm jobs, and criticism of egg producers for dealing with the Humane Society on increasing the space that hens have in their coops. Livestock producers fearing they will be the next target of animal rights advocates have tried to undo that agreement… ‘We need a proactive message, not a reactive message,’ Vilsack said. ‘How are you going to encourage young people to want to be involved in rural America or farming if you don't have a proactive message? Because you are competing against the world now.’” AP.org, December 8^th.

Is it that the rural communities are just so far away from the city-view that urban dwellers just don’t see them anymore? I personally don’t think so. My belief is that the conservative farming communities have effectively declared war on the views of the urban communities, lambasting them as lazy, un-American and socialist. They have gone out of their way to block urban values from gay marriage to healthcare, claiming global warming is not man-made, opposing environmental regulation even as the urban coastal communities were slammed by Superstorm Sandy, which most scientists attribute to climate change.

Their choosing to be the polar opposite of mainstream thinking, even in ways that really have no tangible benefit for them, makes anything they want seem like something the urban vote should oppose because it comes fromthem. The irony is that the religious rural diehards who believe in a Biblical intervention to prevent hardship from climate change are among those about to be slammed the hardest: “By 2050, scientists project, the world’s leading wheat belts—the U.S. and Canadian Midwest, northern China, India, Russia, and Australia—on average will experience, every other year, a hotter summer than the hottest summer now on record. Wheat production in that period could decline between 23 and 27 percent, reports the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), unless swift action is taken to limit temperature rise and develop crop varieties that can tolerate a hotter world.” DailyBeast.com, December 10^th (Newsweek). Hard to sympathize with a group that is so out of step with scientific reality and mainstream thinking. Harder still to want to help someone who just can’t seem to stop attacking you and everything you hold dear.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I agree with Vilsack that American farmers need a very serious wake-up call.