I think I need to clarify some of the points I am trying to make here. The first is that what posters and diarists say here matters to outcomes in the real world. There are many progressive farmers in Canada and the US. A lot of us read dailykos. In fact I have gotten to know a couple in the few months I have been here.
The belief that farmers are stupid or its slightly more sophisticated version, any farmer who voted for Trump is stupid, which is clearly widely held here at DKOS annoys the crap out of us.
Progressive farmers tend to be very pragmatic and often are also extremely progressive in their farm practices. Being a sustainable farmer with low to no carbon footprint and regenerating worn out land and native habitat requires a major commitment. It also requires a depth and breadth of knowledge that few people would ever try to acquire.
The world needs more regenerative, organic, and sustainable farmers, gardeners, and ranchers. Good land management is a vital part of meeting the challenges of global warning and providing clean air and clean water to future generations. If Democrats want to make the future a place we can all live in you need farmers on your side. And as an American farmer I want to say we will need a government with sane agricultural policies to help us adapt to the major changes that global warming is going to cause to the food chain. A united progressive movement can do much to help accomplish these very worthwhile goals.
But a united progressive movement requires an acknowledgement that past Democratic policy has not been good for middle America and farmers and ranchers in particular. There is this wide spread idea here that everything was rosy for family farms and ranches before Trump. Family farm incomes were relatively stable from 2008-2012 and began to drop from there, by 2014 there was an obvious pattern. And 2015 was quite bad, my American operations saw income fall by 8%.
www.ers.usda.gov/...
Now not all of that was the fault of the Obama administration but some of it certainly was. Try reading Michael Pollen’s article, Why Did the Obamas Fail to Take on Big Ag?
www.nytimes.com/...
There is a war going on in rural America and Democrats are on the wrong side (so are Republicans). But before I explain that let me clear up some myths about me that seem to come up here frequently.
I didn’t vote for Trump. I am a dual citizen but vote in Canada. I am also a radical environmentalist and a democratic socialist. I think Trump is dangerous and toxic and did from before he ever ran for President.
I am not a rich farmer. I am not really even rich in the conventional sense. But I own and farm and ranch a very large amount of land on both sides of the border. I do it through four separate Corporate entities. My cousins do the actual farming and ranching in the US. I just make the decisions. It is an ongoing struggle just to break even. And I have no debt. I can’t imagine how you would ever do it with debt pushing you into the ground.
I am a typical family farm in that I work off farm to support my farming hobby. It is exceedingly difficult in the modern system to make money farming if you actually try to do the right thing for the environment, the land, and your employees. I own a tightly held private biotech company that pays for my hobby.
All the American land has been in my family since 1912, some of it longer than that. I acquired all the Canadian land myself and it was mostly luck, good friends and supportive family, that allowed me to do it. I bought all the ranch land out of bankruptcy. I got the American land because nobody in the direct line of inheritance wanted it.
The option was to sell to a large farm corporation and nobody in my family wanted any part of that. This is the war. It is between small family farmers (I qualify in terms of net profit — though in terms of land I am a large scale farmer and rancher) and Big Ag. Big Ag is winning and the Obama administration was committed to keeping it that way. Get big or get out. This is called the Butz model named for Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon.
There is an argument to be made for this. It makes your food cheap. And that matters. It also increases yields which helps feed a growing world population.
But it is terrible for the environment and exposes the food chain to enormous risks. Much of American farming consists of just a few strains of a few crops. One new plant pathogen and we all starve.
From a farm prespective what Big Ag does is denude the land of people and kill entire communities. It also forces small farmers to try to farm like big farmers.
American family farmers aren’t wrong to feel threatened.
www.ers.usda.gov/…
www.statehousereport.com/...
So along comes a Presidential candidate who plays to the worst fears of farmers and ranchers and says he will do all the right things. It was actually a brilliant strategy. It was garbage, all lies. He was garbage, a chronic liar and mentally ill. But it sounded good.
The younger more educated farmers didn’t buy in. But the older less educated farmers, and in America that is most farmers, did. Almost completely.
However, to suggest it was that they are stupid, or brain washed by Fox, or only interested in abortion causes us to miss an opportunity to come up with sane farm policy that will appeal to the younger, much more sophisticated generation of farmers. Particularly the large number of women who the USDA says are farmers but who garden commercially. Get the younger generation of farmers and the women who garden commercially and red states are in play and places like Minnesota are safe.
This is a stunning opportunity for Democrats to become the party of farmers. Since clearly Trump and Moscow Mitch are terribly anti small farm. All it takes is Presidential candidate with smart farm policies and the inclination to walk into the bears den and chat the bear up. Then that candidate does what they promised.
It will be decades before the republicans can use the electoral college system to control America. And by then the US will no longer be white. The majority of voting citizens will be people of colour.
I hope that makes it cleared.