Younger Democrats may have limited knowledge of pre-internet activities. There was limited internet activity in the early 1990s, for example. Go back another 18 years and we're talking about people who were born in the mid 1970s, for example. Older Democrats who followed the news will remember the farm crisis of the 1980s. It hit mainstream news in a big way for a while during 1985. The main rural justice issues also showed up in Democratic Party planks and platforms from that era.
During the recent decade, farm and food issues went in a very different direction. Though the need for traditional Democratic farm and food policies has not gone away, knowledge of them has largely disappeared. Farm and food issues are now led by the food movement, which takes a powerful stand for justice, except in terms of Commodity Title policy, where their lack of knowledge has led them to unknowingly oppose rural justice.
Today, as farm and food activists look ahead to the next farm bill, our immediate need is to take action against the misunderstandings of the food movement. There is no point in confronting congressional leaders about the need for the Democratic Policies that were so successful in the past, when our own movement leaders know nothing about these policies, and take stands, unknowingly, against them.
The movement for rural justice through federal policy was led by "family farm" groups and Democratic Congressional leaders for decades. This changed sometime in the early 2000s when two things happened. First, in Congress the Democrats took power. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin became Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman. Prior to becoming chairman, Harkin had been the champion of the traditional Democratic farm programs as they were reformed and revived during the 1980s and 1990s.
These proposals had not won in Congress. Instead the Democratic New Deal programs, the key nonsubsidy provisions of the Commodity Title of the farm bill, had been ended with the 1996 "Freedom to Farm" bill (FAIR). Apparently, when the Democrats took power, farm state Democrats (ie. Harkin, Dick Gephardt, Paul Wellstone, Tom Daschle,) believed that it was essential that they propose a farm bill that would actually win, and they were not confident that they could lead the nation back to a Democratic farm bill. They then led the Democratic party to switch over to a Republican farm subsidy approach, a greened up version of "Freedom to Farm," as revised, 1997-2001. In Freedom to Farm, Republicans had increased farm subsdies for a few years, but scheduled for them to end by 2002. This then returned the country to the Herbert Hoover years, but covered up the damage with massive subsdies. American farmers (and their banks,) were to be foolishly dumped into a free market scenario.
As economists have long known, free markets don't work for the main, storable farm commodities that are grown in the various regions of our country. These crops, (especially in their regional groupings,) lack "price responsiveness" on both supply and demand sides. Consumers don't eat 4, 5, 6 meals when corn, wheat and rice prices are low, for example, nor do individual farmers refrain from planting all of their farmland year after year when prices are low. They still try to make money to pay taxes, interest on loans, and other whole farm expenses. We know, then, the plain economic fact that these commodity markets do not self correct in a free market. Farm prices, then, have usually been low, but with occasional spikes and damaging volatility, to the extent that markets have been free. For example, prices for the big five program crops, corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybeans, were below zero (collectively & usually individually, vs. full costs) every year 1981-2006, except 1996, a good year for corn. The same was true for lesser program crops (ie. sorghum grain, barley, oats). Farm prices were allowed to fall during these years because the key Democratic farm programs, (price floors and supply management on the bottom side of price, and reserves, with price ceiling triggers for price spikes,) were reduced, from Eisenhower until the Republican Contract for America period, when they were eliminated).
As the family farm movement and farm state Democrats had predicted, Freedom to Farm immediately failed, as America lost even more money per unit on farm exports. (Meanwhile farm state Republicans, like Iowa's Chuck Grassley, expressed surprise at the failure of their legislation.) Congress then passed four emergency farm bills (between 1996 and 2002). The emergency bills did not fix the underlying problems with a return to new versions of the effective Democratic programs of the past, but rather put large subsidy bandaids over them. These emergency bandaids were then made standard in the Democratic (and Republican) Farm Bills (and proposals) of 2002 and 2008.
Ok, that' s one thing that happened in the early 2000s. Meanwhile a second development reinforced that trend. The food movement grew and came to "lead" the fight for farm and food justice. The food movement was very internet savvy, (very young,) and very successful at building a movement. Unfortunately, in the process, they largely missed the main farm bill provisions of the family farm movement and the Democratic Party's history. Most of the work by NGOs in those earlier Commodity Title fights, (the key provisions in what had come to be called the Harkin-Gephardt Farm Bill,) was pre-internet, family farm centered, and was lost. You won't find it covered in the main food films, YouTube videos, food books, and food blogs, (excepting an occasional sentence, and Jill Richardson's better book). You also won't find it in the mainstream media, as 477 media posts, (2007-2008) by the Environmental Working Group document.
Instead of the nonsubsidy provisions of Harkin-Gephardt, the food movement (and related movements, ie. environmental, hunger, church justice, sustainable agriculture,) focused upon farm commodity subsidies as an antidote to the cheap grains subsidizing transfats, high fructose corn syrup, CAFOs, and ethanol, in the U.S. and worldwide. Massive data from the ground breaking Freedom of Information victory by the EWG, the Farm Subsidy Database, was radically misinterpreted by EWG and others, and therefore fueled these mistaken priorities.
The result was devastating. Both historical and econometric data conclusively prove that farm subsidies did NOT cause the very low prices we saw for a quarter century for farm program crops. (See the 4 proofs I present in the videos linked below, "Michael Pollan Rebuttal," parts 1 & 2.) Instead, farm commodity subsidies proved to be the great "scapegoat," (as the African American family farm group, The Federation of Southern Land Cooperatives: Land Assistance Fund, called it). The Democratic Party, the Food Movement, and related movements, then advocated for the very Commodity Title policies (failed Republican Free Market policies, with, or without compensatory farm subsidies,) that the various grain buyers and input sellers of corporate agribusiness (exporters, food and feed mills, processors, CAFOs, pesticide, fertilizer and machinery companies, in the U.S. and worldwide,) had advocated for for decades, at the expense of the U.S. economy, farmers worldwide, and most devastatingly, Least Developed Countries (which are 70% rural and therefore hugely dependent upon farm prices and farm income).
In my work to reverse these trends prior to the next farm bill, I have posted a petition at change.org calling upon food movement leaders to support the essential Democratic farm program provisions of Harkin-Gephardt. These provisions are championed today by the National Family Farm Coalition in their Food from Family Farms Act. Linked to the petition is my YouTube video, "Michael Pollan Rebuttal 1: Debunking Pollan's 'Corn Subsidy' Argument." Part 2 of the video, and historical videos on Harkin-Gephardt can be found at my YouTube channel, "FireweedFarm." Writing and online links (ie. Brad Wilson, NFFC, MRCC, IATP, APAC, GDAE, La Via Campesina, the Africa Group, Europe,) to writing about these matters can be found at my zspace page, in blogs and my "Farm Bill Primer" and "Food Crisis Primer."
You can support these efforts by signing my petition.
See more historical and political information about these policies in my blogs at zspace and La Vida Locavore, on my YouTube channel, and in my "Farm Bill Primer," available through the links above.