Commentary—

Why On Earth Would Anybody Farm?

By William A. Collins

Love to plow and

Love to till;

But farming’s now,

A bitter pill.

Folks don’t farm much here in Connecticut anymore. There’s more money to be made in growing houses. Profits are down, especially for milk. Other crops can be grown cheaper on bigger farms elsewhere. Local farmers’ markets are popular, though, because you can cut out the middlemen, and you can get a good price for your organics. Still, many farms here can only be saved by having the state buy up their development rights.

In real farm states, it’s worse. There aren’t enough farmers’ markets to go around, and the middlemen control much of life. They and the chemical companies decide not only what price you’ll get for your crops, but what seeds you’ll plant. They use their muscle in Congress for diverse purposes, such as to protect their monopolies, to influence who gets federal aid, and to promote navigation projects. These projects allow them to ship raw grain to distant mills for processing. That puts mills in the Farm Belt out of business, and thus cuts down on competition.

Family farmers have another enemy too: factory farms. Even here in urban megalopolis, we can smile at the zoning battles over whether chicken factories are really farms or industries. Angry neighbors, who are legion, claim that they should only be allowed in industrial zones, not near subdivisions.

But pig factories are far worse, as North Carolina has found out. They feature lagoons, or pig cesspools. The agribusiness companies that profit from them don’t even own the land. That way they can’t be sued when the cesspools let go. They just rent out the pigs to the “farmer.” They pay him for his trouble and for the use of his land. Regular farmers can’t compete with that.

And then there are imports. You may have to put a label on a key chain that’s made in China, but not on a hamburger that’s grown in Australia. Customers who might prefer American-grown hamburgers have no way of telling the difference. The middlemen have enough clout in Washington to stop that.

Indeed those middlemen even had enough clout to persuade Congress to turn agriculture over to the tender mercies of free trade. Farmers were supposed to benefit from higher prices abroad. But those prices in fact went down, not up. Now the world glut of many crops threatens to flood in here, driving our own commodity prices below cost. You won’t be surprised to hear that the only folks making money out of all this trade are the middlemen and agribusiness.

One bright new hope for many farmers, especially downward-spiraling tobacco growers, was hemp. With its near-magical power to produce fiber, it offered a huge market in replacing pollution-prone wood pulp and dozens of other products. But the Drug Enforcement Agency killed it. Harmless hemp looks too much like its criminal cousin, marijuana.

Thus has the yeoman farmer, the bulwark of every nation, been trampled by the stampede of business and government. There is plenty of money to be made in agriculture these days; it’s just not in farming. The profits go to meat packers, grain traders, seed manipulators, pesticide manufacturers, cereal makers, tobacco companies, and all forms of agribusiness. Poor family farmers have little chance.

Except maybe with the new popularity of organic food. Growing that stuff is more personal, and it sells great in Europe. As more of us seek it out here, the market grows. If we hold fast to our demand for both good food and good labeling, family farmers will at least have a fighting chance to start over again with new co-ops and new markets.

 It’s a slim chance, but we could then eat healthier and help the good guys grow good things at the same time.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)