Small farms valuable assets to society, sustainability
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue went to Wisconsin’s dairy land recently and issued a heartless statement regarding struggling American farms.
“The big get bigger and the small go out,” he proclaimed, leaving family farmers and their advocates across the nation aghast. How can the man tasked with protecting farmers say something so crass? If nothing else, Perdue gave us an honest glimpse into just how biased toward big farms he and others like him really are.
He should have also added that the USDA has long favored the big farms at the expense of the small, and their decades of policies since the Great Depression prove it. The big got bigger because our government nurtured them. And while the U.S. has feigned support for small farms, we have rarely helped them. The striking fact is that so many small farms have survived anyway, a testament to their value to society and their sustainability.
When I was young, I had so many relatives on farms that I believed I too could be a farmer. But by the 1980s, I had witnessed the demise of every farm in our family. Though I still wanted to be a farmer, I realized to do so meant a fight for justice. I never heard farmers “whine,” as Perdue joked elsewhere, nor have I ever heard a small farmer ask for a free ride. Certainly none of my relatives ever got one.
In his recent comments, Perdue noted that no small business has guaranteed income. Yet, we all know that the government has shoveled billions toward agriculture every year.
So, what gives? Perdue is right that small farms don’t have a guaranteed income. What he didn’t add is that large farms get the handouts — it’s almost guaranteed. Witness what happened to the $15 billion that taxpayers have already begun paying for the bailout of the China tariffs debacle. According to the Environmental Working Group, as reported in The Washington Post, the “top 1 percent of recipients of trade relief received, on average, $183,331. The bottom 80 percent received, on average, less than $5,000.”
When agricultural giants on financial steroids — farm subsidies, low-interest loans and bailouts — roam the land, the Lilliputians, though agile and smart survivors, simply can’t compete. In other words, big farms receive privileged status. It’s the small who scrape by and too often pay the price of the failures such as the one we’re experiencing in trade today. This is not fair competition. It’s government favoritism with real consequences.
What should we do about this? For starters, we should stop saying America stands behind its small farmers. From the time of Jefferson, we’ve heard of America’s pro-small farm words, but the truth is we’ve let them suffer consequences of government bias on their own.
If we believe in having a large number of small farms, then let’s put our so-called “bailout” money toward creating a just and sustainable agriculture by helping new small farmers get established. Let’s make the big compete without subsidies. If they’re so efficient, why are taxpayers always helping them anyway?
The higher truth is all of agriculture is in crisis, thanks in large part to climate change. The answer is not bigger ships hauling more grain to other countries. The agricultural challenge of our time is to grow food with less water, using less energy and safer pest resistance, while providing the maximum benefit for the largest number of people.
Let’s help small farmers gain a foothold. If our hope is in the entrepreneurship of the many, the community orientation of the local and the carefulness of people thinking of future generations, then let’s act like it. Jefferson knew the value of community-based agriculture, even as he profited from the labor of unpaid human beings.
Will we continue to say we love small farms while giving unfair advantages to a system that exploits people? Or will we put our money where our mouths are?