Yesterday I listened to a gentleman from Kansas give a presentation on biomass energy. Now, if it were someone from Madison giving that presentation, you might call them a hippie. They might have dreds. Maybe they live in a commune. Perhaps they smoke pot. But a farmer from Kansas? This man is a pragmatist. He's a businessman.
How about the audience? Ok, I'll admit to being an environmental kook, but I was the exception. The rest of the audience consisted of his peers, the members of the NFFC (National Family Farm Coalition).
Join me on the flip to discuss why the left should partner with family farmers - not just on biomass, but on other issues as well.
The National Family Farm Coalition is made up of a number of member organizations, representating various crops and livestock in states all over the U.S. This past weekend I crashed (more or less) their summer meeting, and I met farmers from Kansas, Iowa, Montana, New York, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Texas, Ohio, and Missouri. We were also joined by representatives of various political advocacy groups, primarily from Boston and DC.
As you can see, the attendees came from both red and blue states - but they came from the rural areas. At least in Wisconsin, the rural areas are more likely red even though the state itself is blue.
I'll be honest - I grew up as a city kid, and rural America was irrelevant to me. Now that I live just outside Madison, I kind of straddle both worlds, urban and rural. Now I see the importance of our family farmers to our country... but I bet few of the kids I went to high school with do.
Stepping back into my urban mindset, I can look at an 2004 election map of the U.S. and think "What the hell is wrong with those hicks living way out in the middle of nowhere? We in the cities didn't vote for Bush and look what you idiots did - now we're stuck with him!"
I admit I only read the first chapter of Thomas Frank's book, but the point resonated with me - the state of Kansas voted against its own best economic interest (thank you Karl Rove) because of god, guns, and gays. From that perspective, you'd practically think that any gathering of farmers would have an agenda highlighting the evils of gay marriage and abortion and how they are wrecking America's family farms. But it was not so in the least.
First of all, I want to illustrate a point with a description of a cranberry marsh we visited. Wisconsin is the leading producer of the nation's cranberries, and most berries are sold for juice (I think they said that only 7% of cranberries are sold as fresh fruit).
The woman who led us around has had the marsh in her family for three generations (over 100 years). You could tell from listening to her that she is a tremendous businesswoman. The equipment required on her marsh costs hundreds of thousands of dollars... sometimes that much for just one piece of equipment. She sells 2/3 of her crop for juice and 1/3 as fresh fruit. She manages all aspects of business - marketing, PR, finance, management, operations, quality control, compliance, you name it.
The second hat a farmer wears is that of a scientist. Just imagine what you would need to know to grow cranberries - you need to know about cranberries, but you also need to understand your ecosystem in order to manage soil, water, pests, and more.
The third role her family fills on the farm is that of a mechanic and inventor. Cranberries are only produced in about 5 states, and even as the largest cranberry state, we've only got 250 growers. The companies who make farm equipment do not find it profitable to focus on cranberry equipment. Furthermore, it takes even more specialized equipment to harvest cranberries that you sell as fresh fruit, and that equipment is used by an even smaller segment of cranberry growers. Her husband and son maintain their equipment, but they've also invented several machines used on their marsh.
How many people work in jobs requiring that much skill? A family farmer who cannot excel in business, science, mechanics, and more will not be a family farmer for long. The crowd at the NFFC meeting had good heads on their shoulders.
In addition to all of the other skills listed above, the NFFC members are incredibly politically savvy - definitely more than most Americans, and probably more than many of us. What I witnessed this weekend was nothing less than democracy in action, as it was intended to work by our founding fathers.
The group of farmers at the NFFC was nonpartisan, but as you know, reality has a well-known liberal bias. They know which politicians listen to them. They have long memories, and they reflected back on federal farm policies and how they affected the farm economy over the past century. This is where it starts to get interesting for city kids like me...
If you look back through the past 35 or so years of federal farm policies, you can see how it all went to hell for family farmers AND consumers. If you don't believe me, check out these annual obesity maps of America. At the same time Americans have gotten fatter, agribusiness has gotten richer, and family farmers have gotten screwed.
Supporting family farms is about communities. It is about local economies, public health, clean environments, and all of us little guys standing up to the big bullies together.
Our subsidy system is rigged up so that farmers must produce at high volumes. Family farmers make their money on prices (a commodity price to a farmer is like a wage to us), but agribusiness makes money from high volumes. The more agribusiness can buy low and sell high, the more money they make.
Think about this in terms of food. Is it better if we produce more food each quarter so we can mollify Wall Street? Who is going to eat all of that food? Up to a certain point, feeding the hungry is a good thing... after that point, we're getting fat.
Taking it a step further, what happens when we get fat? High cholesterol, hypertension, prostate cancer, diabetes, and colorectal cancer are just some of the effects of a poor diet. Do you really think HCA or GlaxoSmithKline wants us to eat well either?
Going back to the farmers, they produce more and more and the prices go down. In order to compete, they buy new technology. To buy it, they take out loans. They get subsidized each year to make ends meet, but where do you think the subsidy money goes? Interest payments to lenders.
The winners of this system are trans-national corporations. Agribusiness, banks, equipment manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, and Wal-Mart. Is that who you want to support?
Working with the farmers means working towards win-win-win-win-win solutions on the issues we already care about. The farmers are proposing a vision of food sovereignty. Imagine the oil saved by buying your food locally. Imagine how much fresher it will be if it was picked yesterday within 100 mi of your home, instead of last week in Chile.
Think about how much money will stay in your local community if you buy your food locally (and how much more will stay in the community if the farmers can use local lenders and purchase their needs from local businesses as well). How about our healthcare system? It's not a positive thing that 16% of our GDP goes to paying for our healthcare.
Thinking internationally, if we had fair agriculture policies like the family farmers fight for, we wouldn't have such a heated immigrant debate as we do today. Our policies put Mexican farmers out of work, flood their cities with excess labor, and eventually they come here as migrant laborers. It's morally reprehensible to knowingly doom other human beings to such a life, but it's also not good for anyone. Except, of course, as usual, big business.
I've been writing about food issues for a while now, and I can tell you that farmers stand together with consumers on pratically every single one of the issues. Using pesticides on their fields is bad for their health because they have to work with it. They have followed research surrounding rBGH for years and they are excited that it sounds like rBGH might be on its way out (Wal-Mart told its suppliers it does not want to sell rBGH milk). They take pride in their products and I heard over and over that they wouldn't sell anything they wouldn't eat themselves.
Going back to energy issues, farmers already have the raw materials for biomass energy lying around, and they spend a fortune on energy in our petroleum-based system. Why not take a raw material they already have, create jobs here, increase demand for American farmers, and use that for energy - thus decreasing the cash flow from America to the Middle East.
The non-partisan family farm meeting rang of the same sentiments I heard expressed at Yearly Kos. There is no reason on this planet that the rural areas on the map show up red. We might have cultural differences, and maybe we dress differently or speak with different accents, but farmers are important to us. When they succeed, we benefit too - and I'm afraid that if we neglect them now, it will be too late later and it won't be pretty.
To Get Involved:
1. Get your info from the horse's mouth! Visit a local farm, chat with the farmers at your local farmer's market, or at the very least, check out the NFFC website (and do it often!). You know how well the MSM reports on the news... there's a lot to learn and the farmers are the ones who can teach us.
2. Buy your food locally. Join a CSA, regularly shop at a farmer's market, or learn which items at your grocery store are locally sourced. If you want to really call some attention to the issue, ask the manager of the local grocery store where all of the produce is from and make it clear you like to buy local. If enough people say it, they will hear us.
Find more info at http://www.eatwellguide.org or http://www.localharvest.org
3. Figure out which crops are big in your area and when they are in season. Then buy them in season! Do you really need asparagus in October and strawberries in February?
4. Eat whole foods instead of processed foods. Look at what you eat and ask yourself "Did my great great grandmother eat this?"
5. Don't go to Wal-Mart. Period.
6. When you buy organic, ask questions. The family farmers are fighting to keep "organic" from getting diluted but the USDA is sold out to big business. Where was the food grown? Is it GMO? Did the animals have access to pasture? A great source for info on this is The Cornucopia Institute (they even rank all of the organic milk producers so you know which ones are really organic and which ones call themselves organic but aren't).
7. Write your representatives and local newspaper. If only family farmers care about the well-being of family farmers, then we're all screwed. Non-farmers need to care, and our leaders need to know that we care.
8. Read books. Right now my biggest recommendation is The Omnivore's Dilemma (and if you want to buy it, and you plan on buying online anyway, do me a favor and buy it from my site).