Today’s Topic: Small Farms and Corporate Abuse
OK, so I’m watching CSPAN II which has just had Senators Chuck Grassley and Byron Dorgan talking about their amendment to the Farm Subsidy Bill as presented under Bush’s current Budget Bill, but I have a few things to say.
I emotionally grew up working on a farm, although I was farmed out by my parents during the summer in order to have this honor. My uncle had two boys and needed more hands, so I spent a number of summers working on the farm. Personally I think I went to a better school during the summers working on the farm than the years I went to a US supported public school.
What I came up with is a deeply seated respect for people that work the land in small family situations in order to make some kind of living. I dug potatoes day after day, and I rode the farm moving cattle from one grazing field to another. I hunted rabbit and deer in order to protect our own family plot of vegetables. I even hunted ground hogs, and we ate whatever we killed and hoped that what remained of the plantings would last the winter.
The operational expense of a working farm is tremendous. The cost to have equipment necessary to harvest corn or wheat seems to be a methodical effort to impose debt on those families who farm in order to push them off their land so that Big Agriculture can make even larger farms though bank loan defaults. Of all the companies that manufacture farm equipment, I find that none have a leasing program that allows those with need have the ability to use the equipment without having the onus placed upon them for owning and maintaining the equipment.
It was suggested by Senator Dorgan that a farming family that ended up with a gross revenue of $200,000 US were somehow doing fine. Bullshit. It cost at least $200,000 to buy a harvester, which is pretty application specific. In the world we live in, it is impossible to suggest that the only solutions available to farming communities and individuals is to continue to put up your farm as collateral for farm loans.
A method of taking away the ability of small farmers to make a reasonable living is simply the fact that most seed stock is hybrid and not able to replicate, thus unable to supply the farmers with a costless source of seeds. This means that the farmer is obligated to purchase new seed year and year after in order to have a possible crop. And the fact is that these same family farmers have to mortgage their homes and farms in order to be able to purchase these same seeds.
What happens if you have a combine that helps you plant hundreds of acres of seeds and it is broken down during planting season? Where does one go to get the money to fix the problem if their entire existence is already mortgaged to the bank for the seed necessary for the crop?
The system is biased towards the corporate agribusiness, and there’s not one family farmer who thinks different.
The problem with the way the United States of America treats farming is as if all participants of the available program will benefit, whilst the majority of these programs favor the agribusiness, not the family farmer. The truth is that most farming communities based on a family operation is that they are having these problems happens to be the fact that the large Agribusiness entities can sell the corn to the family whilst setting the prices for corn from their own businesses, and still those families will have to buy new seed next year.
If seed were used that would spawn new fields without monetary input, and corporations would manufacture equipment which could be leased rather than purchased, then the family farmer might actually be able to make ends meet.
I suggest that all farmers look to Europe to get seeds that can be planted and yield crops that would then be able to be planted to grow the next year’s crop. This would end some of the problems.
And believe me, this idea of seed crops that won’t allow the farmer to have multiple years of crop growth isn’t a small part of the problem. It is the problem.
By having Agribusiness having the money to develop all the new seeds resistant to a number of biological problems, a certain amount of necessity is placed on purchasing these seeds. The problem is that the people producing the seeds are the ones in competition with the small family farm. And the small family farm sits on land those same Agribusiness wish to aquire.
In other words, since the 1950s, this country has been working towards killing off family owned farms by providing farm benefits that support the large Agribusiness, not the family farm.
It is easy to see. Just look at the last 50 years of small family owned farms vs what big business has done to agriculture.
2:36:57 PM 
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