The soil hasn’t been this bone dry since the Dust Bowl that consumed almost a decade back in the 1930s. Most of the farmers in West Texas “have lost their cotton crop the last three of four growing seasons—part of the most severe regional drought in more than 50 years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2012 temperatures in the US were the hottest in recorded history. And a May 2013 report by the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate concluded that ‘human-induced climate change’ played a statistically significant role in the record-breaking temperatures of 2011, adding that the period from October 2010 to September 2011 ‘was Texas's driest 12-month period on record.’” Mother Jones, October 30th.
Most folks here think it’s just a matter of time before a new weather pattern, one with bounteous rain, returns to these plains. They don’t have irrigation resources (they call it “dry farming”), so they have always depended on nature to perform. She hasn’t for a while. The story is repeated in other parts of Texas, much of Kansas, Oklahoma, etc. The Heartland.
West Texas used to experience 17 inches of rainfall a year, even 9-14 inches during that nasty dust bowl. They aren’t even seeing Dust Bowl numbers these days. “The latest news is not reassuring. As of October 2013, more than 80 percent of West Texas farmers declared their cotton a failure and collected crop insurance claims, subsidized by US taxpayers.” Mother Jones. It’s called “insurance” so that it doesn’t look like a farm subsidy, but the premiums paid don’t remotely cover the cost of damage payouts, all of which are paid by the feds (read: taxpayers).
“If recent research by the US Department of Agriculture is any indication, the crop failures will be a sign of the future. In a February 2013 report, the agency rounded up relevant scientific findings from 56 experts from federal service, universities, and non-government organizations. The results cast doubt on the viability of the US heartland in the age of warming—and not just for dryland cotton. ‘Continued changes by mid-century and beyond,’ the report said, ‘are expected to have generally detrimental effects on most crops and livestock.’ Among other problems, ‘weed control costs total more than $11 billion a year in the US. Those costs are expected to rise with increasing temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations.’
“Interviews with more than a dozen climatologists, agronomists, agro-economists, and agricultural statisticians have generally echoed the USDA's prognosis: after about 30 years, greenhouse gas concentrations will reach critical enough levels to significantly disrupt agriculture. But even the next ten years will probably prove challenging for American farmers, because the weather will be more variable. As Columbia University associate professor of international and public affairs Wolfram Schlenker put it, ‘there's more certainty that there will be less certainty.’” Mother Jones.
But the farmers own this land. It is the core of their lives, their families. Without this resource, they are lost. So they plant the seeds, because if they do not, they don’t qualify for payouts under the crop insurance plan. But they also know that those seeds will not produce any cotton or soybeans, or whatever they used to grow. It’s all about checking all the boxes for that great big insurance claim they know they will make. Many have been told that God will not let them fail, that He will fix the damage since man had been encouraged to use the land for his benefit. They are waiting. Seed companies are still doing well, however.
“The crop insurance program works in favor of the companies that produce the GM [genetically modified] seeds—and a range of other related agricultural inputs—that farmers in the area typically buy in non-drought years. No wonder, then, that more than 120 insurance and farm interests, from John Deere and Monsanto to the insurance companies Ace and Wells Fargo, lobbied for crop insurance in 2012. (In an email, Monsanto spokeswoman Christy Toedebusch declined to comment on the role of federally subsidized crop insurance, noting that the company is in the process of purchasing the Climate Corporation, which will allow it to sell supplemental crop insurance. She added that the company's seed pricing ‘is in line with the marketplace.’).” Mother Jones.
Taxpayers are paying for this ruse. “According to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, taxpayer subsidies for crop insurance averaged $3.1 billion annually between 2000-2006, but have more than doubled to an average of $7.6 billion for 2007-2012. Much of the fiscal bleeding has resulted from what's called a ‘harvest price option,’ an insurance option that compensates farmers for the revenue they missed when prices skyrocket amid climate-related scarcity. In the extreme weather since 2009 costs have tripled overall, rising every year from about $4.8 billion to the record high of more than $13 billion in 2012, according to Patrick Westhoff of the University of Missouri's Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute…
“Based on USDA data, if the current version of the farm bill were extended ten years into the future, even without expansions under debate, crop insurance would cost $8.41 billion per year, or $84.1 billion total, according to Jim Langley of the Congressional Budget Office. With the expansions the projected costs rise to about $99 billion. And that figure does not account for recent climate-related impacts on crop yields, including the drought of 2011 and 2012 in Texas and the Midwest.” Mother Jones.
With harsh times comes a slow degradation of the farmland itself. These practices can’t work forever, and banks are sitting in the background ready to foreclose. Unfortunately, the banks will then be stuck with this parched and barren land, the system won’t get better… and the farmers will be decimated. And even if a blessed rain were to fall, the land and the process are just not the same. “Even if the rain came, it would have been extremely difficult to produce a crop with the conventional seed the farmers planted. That's because it would have required old-fashioned weeding—spraying Roundup would have taken out the plants along with the weeds—and these farms were mostly too big for that. They would have had a hard time summoning up the old hoeing crews from the pre-biotech days.
“‘We used to have migrant crews that would come in and take care of the weed problem,’ says [Louis Addison, an agent with Adams Crop Insurance in Lamesa, TX], ‘but the GM seeds have basically done away with that. It makes it very difficult on the farmer, you're almost pushed into this GM seed deal because it's about the only way to farm anymore.’” Mother Jones.
As the bi-partisan Congressional budget committee talks lumber forward, farm legislation is one of those “entitlements” that farm state conservatives don’t want to touch. Since it’s called “insurance,” that is a loophole that can keep these subsidies in place while Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid and other “entitlements” less hidden by name are on the block. We’ve destroyed our educational system, over-promised workers with defined benefit contribution pension benefits that we really cannot deliver, our infrastructure is crumbling and the government-funded research that could lead to new hi-tech jobs we so desperately need.
Yes there’s a role for government in making our lives better. It not about meat-axe removal of government functions… it’s about figuring out how to have a government that actually works and benefits most of us. Focus on leveling the playing field, taking away the slant that only benefits the top of the economic ladder. Focus on taking care of all of the people who need help. Amen.
I’m Peter Dekom, and we either make government work for most of us or we will continuing killing the democratic institutions that made the United States the greatest nation on earth.
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