Rural Crisis: A Call for Justice and Action

October 13, 2023 / brad4farmjustice / Leave a comment

Message adapted by the Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., May 17, 1984

THE CRISIS OF THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND

We warn that America is teetering on the slopes of a dark precipice: we are dangerously close to abandoning the egalitarian and communitarian goals of our religious and social heritage. We are well on the way to becoming a landless and fragmented people subject to the whims of those few holding disproportionate wealth and power.

Like our ancestors of the Farmers Alliance of 100 years ago, our cry seems to be lost in the void. Then, as now, family farmers were being driven off the land due to a mixture of high interest rates, low prices for farm produce, and a stagnant economy. Now, as then, the people of the land are told that this is the result of the inevitable march of history, that this disenfranchisement of the people from the land marks a steady onrush of the tide of progress. One hundred years ago the people of the land looked in vain to their elected representatives for assistance. Now, as then, our congress has favored the proponents of the “trickle-down” theory of economics, allowing the wealthy to pile riches upon riches while the people of the land diminish in number.

Our present period of crisis is unparalleled since the days of the Great Depression. An economic crisis in agriculture – one result of decades of public policy aimed at displacing people from the land – hastens the demise of our family – owned and operated – farms. Ownership and control of our rich land base is being consolidated at an alarming rate, and the loss of farms and people from the countryside is causing serious economic problems in our rural communities. Our cities re experiencing high unemployment rates among workers associated with agriculture-related industries. The economy of our states and of the nation itself is deteriorating because the foundation of that economy – agriculture – is suffering extraordinary losses.

This course of tragedy, which can be charted by statistics, masks an ever deeper and widespread suffering in the countryside. Economic stress results in personal and family stress. Many farm families facing financial difficulties are being personally blamed for their plight, even though it is due to circumstances well beyond their control. There are signs of increasing family tensions and even family violence, and the outright discussion of larger acts of violence against people and institutions indifferent to the rural crisis is heard more and more often.

The Crisis of Values – The Need for the Faith Community

One hundred years ago the Populists raised the alarm that the values of the day – the notorious “Gilded Age” – glorified greed, ruthless competition, and embodied an ethic of “progress” which was devoid of humanity. They demanded that the human costs of this so-called progress become a prime factor in policy decisions, and championed coalitions among farmers and city workers, among black and white persons alike.

The Populists’ most dire warnings have gone unheeded. The crushing effects of “progress” have proceeded apace.

Where does this all end? When so-called rural communities consist entirely of urban bedroom commuters? When small businesses have4 been entirely supplanted by national chain-stores? When the number of farmers has been reduced to 10,000 per state, or 1,000 or 100? Who will decide that enough is too much. And by utilizing which values?

It is into this ethical vacuum that members of the faith community, and their organizational leadership, must plunge. It is true that over the past fifteen years individuals, churches, and representative bodies of the Christian faith have spoken often and eloquently in support of family farm agriculture and of the principle of widespread ownership of land. Yet, the larger society’s pursuit of unbridled individualism and of the accumulation of wealth without limit has continued without interruption.

Perhaps we of the church have been too silent, permitting our leaders to speak alone. Perhaps we have relegated the warnings of the prophets and the lessons of Scripture to the “safety” of a dead past. Perhaps we have forgotten that it was to the chosen people of Israel that Amos presented his list of grievances and his call to repentance. The Israelites, like us, had been very attentive to retaining the forms of religion, but had forgotten its substance. They had grown proud in their successes, and the wealthy rulers and their economic allies had come to oppress their people and to cheat the poor.

Perhaps we, like the Israelites of old, have turned our stony hearts from the message of Moses and the prophets and pursued other gods by making the economy and its siren song of promised individual enrichment fuel our greed and harden our hearts to the growing number of landless and poor among us.

The people of the land demand that we be loyal to our faith and, in so doing, come to their assistance.

The Terms and Promise of God’s Covenant

God’s promise was not limited in time. It and the terms of the Covenant, remain as valid for us today as thousands of years ago. In sum, God’s people were called to exercise loving stewardship over all of creation – land and creatures alike. Such were to be conserved in their use so that their blessings would continue for further generations. Further, we were to properly order our use and disbursement of those resources with regard to each other in order that God’s justice might reign. Greed, the accumulation of more than each person needs, and the driving of growing numbers of persons into poverty are absolutely inconsistent with God’s justice. All of us concerned today with the need for true peace in our war-threatened world should recall that peace was God’s promise to those who exercised the terms of the Covenant stewardship and justice.

THE CALL TO JUSTICE

God still calls us to give our all to the creation of a just world and, even now, summons us to action and justice with and on behalf of the suffering people of the land, regardless of color, race or creed.

We pledged ourselves to heed that call!

We call upon our brothers and sisters of good will:

To realize a conversion of heart, to recognize that the values of individual enrichment and material accumulation are false gods, designed not only to lead one from God’s Covenant but to destroy community and harmony in our land.

To remember the teachings of Francis of Assisi, who counseled the need to live in harmony with nature and to utilize tenderness in our dealings with others, and not follow the path of competition or hostility; who spoke of the ned to live minimally, and not to pursue the accumulation of surplus goods; and who said that we must live as an integral part of nature, not as one sundered from our roots; from the land and each other.

To stand side by side with their neighbors who suffer personal loss as a result of the economic crisis on the land, and to bring to a halt once and for all the demise of family farm agriculture by supporting actions and public policies that will bring about peaceful change in rural America.

We call upon our church leaders to make the continuing tragedy of rural America – the erosion of our fields and small communities, the demise of family farming and the forced liquidation of family farm operations, the growing concentration of land ownership – an urgent part of each church’s national agenda for action.

We call upon church leaders and members alike to press for enlightened public policy that will end existing favoritism towards speculators in land ownership and to create, in turn, public policy that has as its aim the preservation of diverse ownership of land and the continuation of the family farm system with its attendant values of stewardship, family, and community responsibility.

This we do as a people of God, struggling to be honest to the call to discipleship in rural America and all the world, and believing that future generations will judge us harshly if we fail in this time of grave urgency.

This message is from the Conference “The Church Encounters the Rural Crisis,” Des Moines, Iowa, October 4-6, 1983.

Sponsored by the Iowa Inter-Church Forum, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, Rural America, Rural Iowa and the NCCC/Division of Church and Society.

This Message and the Rural Crisis Resource Kit are available* from:
Division of Church & Society, Domestic Hunger and Poverty
National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
475 Riverside Drive, Room 572
New York, N.Y. 10115

*as of 1983

The Lexicon of ‘Food’ and ‘Farm’

May 2, 2023May 2, 2023 / brad4farmjustice / 3 Comments

The Lexicon of ‘Food’

There was once a website called “lexicon of Food, ” which stimulated thought about the meanings of the words we use. This is a revised version of a post I made under my profile there. Here I suggest some root terms that affect many things, and that need discussion.

In one sense, “food” is simply what we eat, and we all know what it is. On the other hand, in reviewing 21^st century activism related to food, a number of complications and contradictions emerge in relation to this word. There are also questions about fake food, things like trans fats that were never in the human diet. Years ago, A. V. Krebs, author of The Corporate Reapers, quoted Mary Hartman on the TV show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, as saying “They don’t make food out of food any more.”

Beyond “what we eat,” food is used in a variety of compound terms that seem to need rethinking. Examples include “food system,” “food industry,” and “food movement.” When used in these ways, “food” refers also to “farming.” In turn, farming and the processing of farm products also includes “nonfood” products, often at the same time. So the meaning of “food” also seems to include both “farm” and “nonfood. What’s called the “food system” or the “food industry,” then, involves many non-food items, which can be produced in the same factory at the same time. So it’s really an artificial division to speak of a system and an industry that’s merely “food.”

Food books, films and other resources often have a large “farm” component. Farming (farm production) is part of the “food system” or “food industry.” On the other hand, “farm,” (which can be used in similar ways,) is in some ways a much larger category.

Likewise what’s called the “Food Movement” includes “farm” sectors. These sectors include things “farm” that go beyond food. Related to this is the question of things “farm” that are often not included in the Food Movement. Sometimes these days, given the overwhelming urban or food-side leadership of the Food Movement, we find that the other things “farm” are viewed negatively, with arguments that farming should be more or less “food only.” This, however, is a misunderstanding of some key farm issues that are important to the Food Movement.

For example, what are perhaps the biggest farm issues cannot at all be adequately addressed with a food-only bias. “Cheap food” is the easiest example. It’s misunderstood because “farm subsidies” and the “farm bill” are misunderstood. Any adequate solution involves “supply management,” but you can’t do that only in terms of food. You need to manage the supply of “nonfood” farm products as well. Additionally, from a “food only” perspective, crops that are used for both food and nonfood should have the nonfood uses removed. This, of course, would greatly increase the oversupply problem we already have when there are markets for both food and nonfood. If nonfood production were eliminated, and farmers produced “food only,” there would be radical oversupply there as well, and prices would crash.

On the other hand, of course, there are many fewer U.S. farmers than food consumers. Farm advocates have therefore emphasized the “food” aspect of farming, in an effort to win consumer support.

Sociologically and politically, the Food Movement has emphasized the “Big Food” complex. Farmers, in contrast, have referred to it as the agribusiness industrial complex, including both food and nonfood. Additionally, both food and nonfood represent the “output” side of the agribusiness, the products produced from what farmers raise. For farmers, the input complex, selling products to farmers, is also emphasized. So agribusiness isn’t just a food and nonfood complex.

One further simplification on the “food” side is that farmers are often described as having the same economic interests, and the same politics, as agribusiness. It is often not known that there has been a “Family Farm Movement,” a “Farm Justice Movement, which generally directly opposed the advocacy of Agribusiness. So the lumping together of farmers and agribusiness is false. See more on this further below.

I conclude that, in our time, “food,” is the dominant word. This seems to reflect an urban point of view, and a context of urban domination. Cities are the places where power is concentrated, and also where the power of thought is concentrated, in universities and colleges. This has been true since the Bronze Age, when cities emerged as the headquarters for empires, and where rural areas paying tribute served as the primary wealth of empires.

While, throughout its (mostly forgotten) history, the Family Farm Movement has opposed the dominant “agribusiness” narrative and paradigm, a newly dominant, (in key ways,) “Food” narrative and paradigm differs in major ways from that of agribusiness, and that of the Family Farm Movement. In some ways today’s Food Movement sides with agribusiness in practical terms, largely out of misunderstandings of the facts. At the same time, its rhetoric opposes agribusiness.

The Lexicon of ‘Farm’

Like “food,” “farm” is an important root term that needs to be understood in our time. In one sense, “farm” refers to what farmers do, as agriculture, in raising domesticated crops and livestock.

In my discussion of “food” I’ve emphasized that part of “farming,” the “farming system,” and the “farm industry,” for example, is not food. It is, therefore, in this way, bigger than food. It includes feed, (animal food,) fiber (i.e. cotton, wool,) and raw materials for many nonfood items. Fuel is also part of all things farm, and has been so for thousands of years. Today we think of biofuels (i.e. biodiesel and ethanol,) but farm fuel also has included and still includes feed for draft animals, such as pastures, crops, such as oats for horses. So “farm” includes that which becomes food, but also includes more.

When terms like “food industry” and “food system” are used, it’s often really impossible to separate out the non-food components, which can be produced by the same “food” processors in the very act of processing “food.” The same can be true in reverse. From cotton, for example, we get cotton seed, which can have a variety of uses, including use as a “food” item. For example, I’ve heard that the brown stuff on Baby Ruth and Butterfinger candy bars was, at times, made out of cotton seed, with no cocoa or chocolate listed among the ingredients.

Unfortunately, as mentioned above, the new “Food Movement” often seems to be rejecting the non-food part of all things “farm.” It’s sometimes suggested that “farms” should produce only “food.” For example, Tom Philpott suggested that 10% of midwest farmland that’s been used for corn and soybeans should be changed over to fruit and vegetable production. While that’s would certainly reduce “food miles,” it would be devastating to farmers that grow vegetables and fruits. By my calculations, Philpott’s suggestion, if implemented, would mean something like a 160% increase in land used for vegetables and fruits, (to 260%!), causing massive oversupply, with a devastating impact on vast segments of the farm and food system. Another suggestion has been to stop raising livestock and use the land for food. That too would lead to a similar massive overproduction, a similar devastation. Each of these approaches is a radical misunderstanding of the farming system. (See https://zcomm.org/zblogs/don-t-grow-clover-hay-oats-corn-de-bunking-a-farmer-bashing-myth-by-brad-wilson/ and https://zcomm.org/zblogs/are-farmers-commodified-excess-resources-to-food-progressives/.)

More generally, the Food Movement often simply erases the word “farm” from various kinds of usage. It’s a “food industry” or “food system.” It’s “food justice,” “food security,” or even “food sovereignty.” Likewise, recently we’ve heard calls for a “National Food Policy.” While there is merit in talking specifically about food at times, it really doesn’t make sense to try to address national policy on the basis of this limitation. What we need is an updated National Farm and Food Policy (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/04/1349377/-National-Farm-AND-Food-Policy-Response-to-Bittman-et-al).

Globally, of course, nearly 80% of the undernourished, (and nearly 70% of the population of Least Developed Countries,) are rural, mostly farmers. For that reason, the call to “feed the world” with inexpensive “food” is misleading and even seriously mystifying. (https://znetwork.org/zblogs/can-x-feed-the-world-wrong-question/) The underlying problem is “farm” poverty and rural poverty, (poverty in rural economies). Much of this is caused by cheap farm prices caused by overproduction. So to “feed the world” with more and cheaper food and with less nonfood farm production is to cause overproduction, cheaper prices, greater poverty, and more hunger and starvation. Instead we need to “pay the world,” to fairly pay the world’s farmers, (the “undernourished,” the LDCs,) which then will create greater wealth and more jobs in their rural economies. To do that effectively we need to manage and reduce the supply of both food and nonfood, in order to raise prices. This approach has been widely supported, for example, by the WTO Africa Group, (https://znetwork.org/zblogs/wto-africa-group-with-nffc-not-ewg-by-brad-wilson/) by La Via Campesina, (https://znetwork.org/zblogs/via-campesina-with-nffc-support-for-fair-farm-prices-by-brad-wilson/) and by the European Community (https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/impact-of-gatt-on-world-hunger-by-mark-ritchie/). They support the narrative and paradigm of the U.S. Family Farm Movement, not that of Agribusiness and the Food Movement.

In recent years the work of the “farm” (“Family Farm” or “Farm Justice”) movement has been taken over by the “Food” Movement (under various names, such as “Good Food Movement,” “Sustainable Food Movement,” & see more in Marion Nestle’s “Food Politics,” “Preface to the 2007 Edition”). Historically, (i.e. over the past 60 years, and also 150 years,) however, it was almost entirely a “farm” (or Family Farm) movement that did the vast majority of movement work in many of the categories of what are today called “Food Movement” work. There are also other “farm” movement sectors that oppose work on “farm justice.”

The farm-side of the Farm and Food Movement, (of which my family has been a part since long before I was born,) has often called for food-side help, (for example here, in 1985, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2UY2jXvYfM&index=4&list=PLA1E706EFA90D1767] where I used the term “food” in my title, to get people’s attention, even though it was almost entirely a “farm” movement that did the activism). We didn’t really see much food-side help showing up over the long decades of the recent phase of our fight (i.e. since the 1950s). Most farmers had been run out of business by the 1990s through distributive farm injustice, without any kind of significant “Food Justice Movement” showing up. Now, as we enter the 3^rd decade of the 21^st century, however, a huge food-side movement. To farmers, it might seem like a miracle. Unfortunately, so far, the food-side of the movement doesn’t seem to know much about it’s farm-side history, policy, economics, sociology, etc.

The term “farm” and the term agriculture, like the word “food,” are also used in compound terms, such as “farming system,” “farm industry,” “farm interests,” and “farm lobby.” Some of these “farm” terms are used in misleading ways by agribusiness interests, by mainstream media, and, I influenced by them, by the new Food Movement. For example, what are called the “farm interests” or the interests of the “farming industry” of the United States are often not in the authentic interests of farmers at all.(https://zcomm.org/zblogs/smashing-the-illusion-farmer-clout-a-white-paper/) Nor does the “farm lobby” support the authentic interests of farmers.

This is especially true for issues like “farm subsidies” and “farm trade,” which are said, (by both agribusiness apologists and the Food Movement,) to be wanted by farmers. This is false. (https://zcomm.org/zblogs/why-u-s-farmers-oppose-free-trade/) The majority of farmers have long supported fair price floor and supply management programs, with no subsidies. We find, then, that, in the Food Movement and mainstream media, farmers are thought to be politically powerful and allied with agribusiness, neither of which is true. Most often this is simply implied, through the terms that lump the two together. The farm movement (Family Farm [or Farm Justice] Movement) that represents authentic “farm” or “farmer” interests has almost always lost the political fights on the big farm bill and trade issues. In our day, these losses have become increasingly mystifying, as the new Food Movement, has opposed agribusiness in its rhetoric, but (unknowingly) supported it in it’s policy proposals, which have almost always maintained the agribusiness status quo, by leaving out advocacy for adequate price floors and supply management.

These misunderstandings have been reinforced by the presence of farmer front groups. These include, for example, the National Corn Growers Association, (which opposes fair prices for corn growers,) the National Pork Producers Council, which opposes the policies needed for hog farmers to stay in business, and similar groups for soybeans, wheat, cotton, etc. (https://znetwork.org/zblogs/farmer-front-groups-and-the-agribusiness-bribe/) The failure of the urban Food Movement then easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. If Family Farm (Farm Justice) Movement activists point out that Food Movement positions are wrong, it’s often believed that they represent an agribusiness perspective, as the actual history of farm activism remains unknown. (https://familyfarmjustice.me/2022/09/15/family-farm-justice-movement-literacy-test/)

Finally, the full definition of “farm” (or better “agriculture,”) needs to be supplemented by the work of agrarians like Wendell Berry, for example in The Unsettling of America, where he discusses the larger meaning of things agricultural to human society. Related to this is the negative use of terms like “farm” and “agriculture” in some new historical work on the origins of agriculture (i.e. Evan Fraser & Andres Rimas in Empires of Food; Richard Manning in Against the Grain). Paradoxically, they lump the “agricultural revolution” (peasants in villages) in with the “urban revolution” (cities, civilization, the power complex, empires). These then are criticisms “farming,” where the agricultural revolution is blamed for the failures of the urban revolution, (cities, states, empires, the power complex). (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04T23houM4s, and see my comments there.) The baby is thrown out with the bathwater.

In contrast Lewis Mumford defined the differences between early agriculture and the bronze age quite well, in The Transformations of Man, in The Myth of the Machine: v. 1: Technics and Human Development, and in The City in History. In general, see also Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America. This contrast, between “plowshares” and “swords” is also seen in the Bible, over and over, from start to finish. There religions of empires are repeatedly criticized in favor of “the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 5:6)

Amazingly, then, this simple question of the lexicons of “food” and “farm” are quite complex, quite contentious and quite mystifying. This has led, then, to a loss of power for those working against the status quo on farm and food issues. It is an intellectual failure, leading in turn to a political failure.

EWG Black Farmer Timeline: Some Great Stuff, but with Major Flaws

February 18, 2023February 18, 2023 / brad4farmjustice / Leave a comment

Introduction

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has created a timeline on the impact of USDA on black farmers. Here:

Jared Hayes, “Timeline: Black farmers and the USDA, 1920 to present,” Environmental Working Group, 2/1/21https://www.ewg.org/research/timeline-black-farmers-and-usda-1920-present.

There is a lot of great information that has been collected in this timeline, including sources of major reports on this relationship. This is a great go-to source for USDA and writing on black farmer issues, for example. Other major reports are included as well.

There are a number of academic problems with the over all narrative here, however, and these problems seem to be shared by virtually every recent writer on black land loss. (I have a paper coming that surveys a number of these recent articles.) The problems in no way mean that there haven’t been major problems of discrimination at USDA, however. That part is well documented. The land loss issue is hugely tragic. What’s missing are important elements of the larger context and the activities of certain earlier periods of history.

Discrimination at USDA

The topic here is said to be, first, “Black Farmers and the USDA,” and secondarily, discrimination at USDA. It’s mainly on the first part, on the topic of USDA’s role other than discrimination, where the problems show up. Here the original farm bill itself is briefly mentioned, but only as being bad for black farmers, which is false. It had both positive and negative impacts.

The project is a collaboration of EWG with the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) and the Black Belt Justice Center (BBJC). While these groups have been active recently, none of them seem to have long term histories of working on the core USDA issues affecting black (and white) farmers, (i.e. market management and credit,) or on black farmer issues generally. One secondary issue that both EWG and NBFA have worked on is farm subsidies. In 2007, for example, eleven years after market management was ended for the major crops, Ken Cook of EWG and John Boyd of NBFA worked with a group called the “Left-Right Coalition,” weighing in on farm subsidy programs while ignoring the absence of the main programs. (“‘Left-Right’ Coalition Opposes Subsidy Lobby Bill: Supports Kind-Flake Fairness Amendment,” I can no longer find it online, but see a similar article here: .https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=07-P13-00030&segmentID=1. For a corrective see: https://familyfarmjustice.me/2022/07/31/you-cant-fix-sustainability-without-justice/) This was a fake, right-wing, anti-farmer, anti-environment, pro-agribusiness solution that progressive groups were supporting because of the major farm subsidy myths and their lack of knowledge of the major farm programs and their history. They were also ignoring what the evidence clearly suggested was the major cause of black land loss since 1952.

Over the long haul, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives – Land Assistance Fund, (FSC-LAF) with offices in a number of southern states, has been the main organization working on black farmer issues, and they’ve been big supporters of price floors and supply management, and, (like all the major white farm organizations,) opponents of subsidy programs. They have a long history of collaboration with white farmers on the major issues of market management and credit, as well as on issues of discrimination. In a 2007 survey of black farmers across the South, they found that the issue of farm subsidies, so widely misunderstood in the 21^st century, was understood by most black farmers within this larger, more accurate context of market management. (https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/ensure-that-farmers-receive-a-fair-living-wage-by-jerry-pennick-heather-gray/) While activities of the NBFA are featured on the timeline, those of the FSC-LAF are not, (or at least they are not specifically identified as participants in the activism shown).

Over all, a number of items in the timeline feature farm activism, but only for the more recent years. The major events from earlier years that involved the black farm activists of the, like farmer-led presidential debates, (including FSC-LAP’s Ben Burkett asking questions, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P_u_3tvGyM&list=PL7K_XwGI3jVS4AMDeEdFfHALIOYnoWg53&index=14) and the United Farmer and Rancher Congress of 1986, (where black farmers and organizations took on major leadership roles, ) are not included. There’s also no mention of the Minority Farmers Act of 1990 (“Minority Farmers Act Introduced,” Des Moines, Iowa: PrairieFire Rural Action: Prairie Journal, Summer 1990). For 1997 one item is “Congressional Black Caucus holds first-ever forum on discrimination against Black farmers.” Their involvement was also a big deal in earlier decades, however. (Devorah Lanner, “A Farm Bill by and for Farmers,” The Nation, July 6, 1985, https://www.questia.com/read/1G1-3848389/a-farm-bill-by-and-for-farmers. “Among the co-sponsors … Representative John Conyers Jr., … has pledged the support of all nineteen members of the Congressional Black Caucus.” Cf. Keith Schneider, “Farm Groups Seen Affecting 1986 Elections,” New York Times, 1/5/86, Section 1, p. 16. https://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/05/us/farmer-groups-seen-affecting-1986-elections.html. “Last year, for instance, all 21 members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted to support a measure Senator Harkin introduced to alter national farm policy,” a proposal to restore the parity farm programs criticized earlier in the timeline, and supported by FSC-LAP.) They surely also were involved in the Minority Farmers Act of 1990. Also not mentioned is the presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, (https://familyfarmjustice.me/2022/08/11/jesse-jackson-and-rural-america-together-we-all-win/ and https://familyfarmjustice.me/2022/08/11/jesse-jackson-a-new-direction-in-farm-policy/) who opened his campaign in a farm town, with farm justice advocates as key team leaders and farm advisors, and who is also seen in the farmer led presidential debate linked above. More broadly, the North American Farm Alliance, and later, the National Family Farm Coalition, was a multi-racial organization that worked upon the main black farmer issues, as well as the parity issues. Iowa’s PrairieFire Rural Action was similar, doing a lot of work on racism, bringing churches into black farmer and all farmer issues, and including black farmers from the South on its board. These organizations did lots of work and wrote numerous articles, sometimes by black farmers and other race leaders, on specific black farmer issues, (in addition to their work on the related issues of farm credit and farm price floors). Of course, knowledge of this earlier history would also change the nature of such a timeline.

There are, then, influences in the timeline that come from these limitations and differing backgrounds. One of these is the issue of farm subsidies, the USDA program issue about which there are surely more myths floating around than any other issue. EWG, which manages a “Farm Subsidy Database,” (https://farm.ewg.org,) is a leading presenter of some of the major myths as facts, (or in disguises that lead to this impression).

One feature of the timeline is to give snapshots of statistics at various points in time. For example, for 1920, the number of black farmers is listed, 14% of all U.S. farmers, with a link to an over all report. They return to this in 1964 when only 5.8% of farmers were black, with a link to Census of Agriculture data for that year. Another report is cited for 1982, with a 2% figure. More census data is cited for 1997, at 0.9%, then a census document is linked for 2002, when the share “rises to 1.3%.”

The focus of the timeline is USDA, of course, and mainly discrimination at USDA. As in most recent writing on the subject, the impression is that the huge reductions in numbers of black farmers have come mainly from discrimination at USDA, (not other areas of discrimination,) in the implementation of programs.

Farm Program Impacts on Black Farmers

There are also a few references to farm programs. The original farm programs of 1933 are cited as hurting black farmers because supplies were reduced. About three quarters of black farmers were full tenants, and they often had to bear the burden of reductions. No references are made to the farm crisis of the 1920s or the fact that 1933 was also almost the rock bottom of the Great Depression. Later, during the “parity years,” black farm ownership increased by 12%, (1940-50, Census of Ag., white farmers by 13%), the only increase between 1920 and the 1990s, (by which time almost all black farmers had been lost,) but no mention is made of this. It was a time of greatly increased farm prices and incomes from the very farm programs criticized for 1933.

Also missing from the timeline is any reference to the reduction in these core, market management farm programs, which started in the early 1950s, with price floors decreasing, more and more, until 1996, when the programs were ended for everything except sugar crops. There were massive losses of black (and white) farmers over these decades, losses of both tenants and owners, (much greater percentage losses than in the earlier decades, such as the early farm bill years of the Great Depression).

After 1933, the next timeline reference to farm policy is in 1996, in a downloadable report that “Black farmers do not get a fair share of subsidies, disaster payments or loans.” The report is not always conclusive, however. For example, the “program” or “historical” yields of a farm are figured by USDA and then figure into the amount of farm subsidies. The report found that it’s difficult to determine if, or to what extent, black farmers are given unfairly lower yield numbers. Farm subsidies show up again in 2002, with the statistic that “Black farmers receive $21.2 million in farm subsidies; white farmers receive $8.9 billion.” (The linked document from the Census of Agriculture shows total government payments, not just “commodity” subsidies, [the main subsidized crops,] of $18,477,000 for black farmers and $6,485,650,000 for white farmers, plus various kinds of other information.) So black farmers received only 24/100ths of 1% of the subsidies of whites. On the other hand, there were hardly any black farmers in 2002, and the value of their crop sales was only 25/100ths of 1% of the value of crop sales for whites. The black farmer group was also 43% less likely to be classified as doing “Oilseed and grain farming,” but more than 3 times as likely to be classified as doing “Vegetable and melon farming” (NAICS). Vegetables and melons, (measured with no subsidies,) are consistently more profitable than grains and oilseeds, (measured with subsidies). See my data on this here, (https://www.slideshare.net/bradwilson581525/subsidized-crops-vs-vegetables-pt-i) and here, (https://www.slideshare.net/bradwilson581525/subsidized-crops-vs-fruits-pt-2). The amount of discrimination, then is not, then, a 1 to 420 ratio, (as sometimes implied in much of the recent writing,) but something much closer to 1 to 1. Again, a distorted story emerges from the timeline.

Beyond that, however, since the determination of subsidies is tied to farm production and sales, the smaller subsidies per farm for blacks arises in part from the racism of slavery and Jim Crow, which led to their smaller farm sizes on poorer quality land, and then to less advanced production methods, and then to subsidies. (For example, measured as historic yield x acres in the programs x 85% [Congressional reduction] x the particular, shared subsidy rate per unit; such as 120 bushels per acre x 200 acres x 85% x 22¢ per bushel = $4,488 for corn). So slavery and Jim Crow, for example, should be part of the timeline story of USDA benefits.

Conclusion

Note that, (besides the 2 points just above,) the timeline repeatedly switches between the topic of discrimination by USDA and the number of black farmers, the loss of black farmers. This suggests that the loss of black farms was primarily caused by discrimination at USDA. That’s surely not true, as there were a various other major causes, including multi trillion dollar farm bill reductions, (also devastating white farmers,) and other racism than USDA, (i.e. racism at local elevators buying grain, and machinery sales and repair service, and a long history of slavery and then Jim Crow, leading black farmers to mainly be tenants, often share croppers, and with smaller, poorer quality farms). While this emphasis is good for putting pressure on USDA, it points people away from other major problems that led to black land loss and that must be addressed. For one thing, it lets Congress off the hook for reducing farm income by trillions of dollars through farm bill reductions, leading to massive losses of black (and white) farmers. It’s a mistake to ignore these factors while trying to successfully bring black and other minority farmers onto the land today. At present, farming is a mainly place to lose wealth, not to gain wealth, and that’s the opposite of what most minorities need.

In the end, this timeline grabs the bull of black farm loss by only one horn. True solutions will only come when the various myths are successfully debunked, and the remaining dilemmas are competently managed.

Inflation Talking Points

October 24, 2022 / brad4farmjustice / Leave a comment

INTRODUCTION

Mainstream media is demonstrating its conservative bias in how it’s been talking about inflation. There are short term and long term factors, and the obvious cost side, but also the income side, where things are harder to afford. The key issues discussed here include.

• The Pandemic, and the Denial of it that Prolonged it and made it worse.

• Damage from Climate Change, and Denial of it which made it worse.

• The conservative philosophy of Comparative Advantage, which put our supply chains at risk.

• Support for the Industrial Power Complex and the super rich at the expense of the bottom 98%.

• Lowering the Minimum Wage to the lowest level since 1949.

• Food Costs, Farm Bill: ending maximum Price Ceilings and Reserve Supplies.

• Farming Costs: loss of “Livestock Crop” diversity, making farmers more dependent upon giant input sellers.

• “Externalization” (denial) of a list of major Costs of damage to the economy, with damage costing us money while reducing value creation.

• Opposition to Stimulus Money that provided better income in light of massive damage from the prolonged pandemic.

Each of these ignored factors behind the problem of inflation comes from conservative policies and programs, and is supported politically by Republicans and Democrats who vote like Republicans.

REPUBLICAN CAUSES OF INFLATION

Republican causes of inflation are both short term and long term, and involve both the income side, (the ability to tolerate inflation,) and the cost side. In both cases, Democrats have better grabbed the bull of inflation by BOTH horns.

Denial of the Pandemic and criticism of measures to prevent it: social distancing, masks, vaccination. The Pandemic killed more than 1,000,000 in the U.S. and more than 10,000 in Iowa, (more than World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam combined, and in a shorter period of time). Republican denial prolonged it, and made it worse. (& more died in Republican areas.)

Short Term. This caused massive damage to the economy, with huge health care costs. It killed and straining health care workers, with shortages filled at greater costs. Many lost their employer health care, but the Democratic Affordable Healthcare programs helped many.

Long Term. Health costs, including insurance, will likely stay higher long into the future.

Denial of Climate Change & opposition to measures to reverse it.

Short Term. We’ve had massive storms, and droughts with unprecedented forest fires, causing massive damage, reducing the personal income of many, and inflating the costs of building supplies and many other items. The Iowa Derecho storm damaged large numbers of grain bins, machine sheds and other facilities over hundreds of miles and was the “most costly thunderstorm disaster in U.S. history.”

Long Term. This will continue and become more and more expensive. In supporting giant oil companies, Republicans have blocked the change to alternative energy, making us more dependent upon fossil fuels, with more damage from climate change. Democrats: as with the pandemic, “an ounce of prevention” would have been “worth a pound of cure.” Among the many long term cost increases will be insurance costs for residents, farmers, and businesses.

Philosophy of “Comparative Advantage“

Conservative economic philosophy, (corporate globalization,) has had us send our industrial jobs over seas, to be produced with sweat shop labor, lowering wages here and there, and greatly reducing the buying power of the world’s consumers. Transportation costs and climate damage are increased.

Short Term. Supply chain issues were greatly magnified, such as building supplies, computer chips for cars & etc., raising costs.

Long Term. This has been going on a long time, and fixing it will not be easy.

Support for the Industrial Power Complex & the super rich

Corporate domination shows up in many of the issues listed here. It greatly inflates health care costs in the U.S. It’s all made worse by Republican opposition to the rich and the giant corporations paying a fair share of the taxes. “In 2019…, before the pandemic, corporate behemoths hauled in roughly a trillion dollars in profit. In 2021, during the pandemic, they grabbed more than $1.7 trillion. This huge profit jump accounts for 60% of the inflation now slapping US families!” Jim Hightower, https://hightowerlowdown.org/podcast/the-inflation-blame-game/.

Lowering the Minimum Wage

Republicans have opposed raising the Minimum Wage to keep up with the inflation that occurs every year. The inflation rate is only one side of the problem. Whatever the rate of inflation, when incomes go down, inflation becomes a bigger problem. In 2009, the federal Minimum Wage floor was raised to $7.25 per hour (not adjusted for inflation). If we adjust for inflation in 2009 dollars, (CPI,) then we see that, in real terms, the Minimum Wage floor dropped from 7.25 in 2009 to just $5.40 in 2022. $5.40 is the lowest the Minimum Wage Floor has been since 1949!

Food Costs: Reducing and ending Farm Bill Supply Management programs.

Republicans led in ending top side Price Ceilings & Reserve Supplies, such as those now needed in light of the Ukraine war. It’s similar to the 1970s, when Republican Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz emptied out the grains reserves, (lowering farm prices). This was followed by the huge, secret, (cheap/below cost,) Soviet grain purchases, which, (with no reserves to put on the market,) raised farm prices far above parity levels, causing a global hunger crisis, and causing inflation. On the bottom side, in lowering farm income, Republicans made it harder for farmers to cope with inflation, damaging the rural economy, running farmers out of business, depopulating rural areas, and putting downward pressure on wages, as the U.S. lost money on farm exports (vs. full costs) for decades.

Farming Costs: Opposition to Sustainable Agriculture

The cheap farm prices, (section above,) forced farmers to subsidize agribusiness/CAFOs, leading to the loss of value added livestock & poultry, from most farms across the crop growing regions, leading to a loss of pastures, hay and oats, lowering wealth, damaging the rate of wealth creation, damaging rural communities in multipole ways, damaging public health and the environment. With lower income, farmers have increasingly had to get off farm jobs to survive, reducing their labor availability for farming while increasing their off-farm capital, further damaging diversity. All of this reduced the infrastructure for diversity on farms, in rural communities, and across farming regions. More specifically, with the loss of sustainable diversity, farmers lost the economic possibility of utilizing resource conserving crop rotations to reduce input costs, instead of relying on inputs purchased from giant corporations who can easily inflate what they charge.

“Externalization” of the Costs of Damage to the Economy

In the conservative economic paradigm, damage to the environment, public health, communities/ neighborhoods, etc., (all of which damages the economy, and even the rate of wealth creation, as in the previous section,) is given little attention as mere “externalities.” In this way, these many, (often highly inflationary,) damages are left out of economic calculations. (See other sections, including climate change and agriculture.)

Support for the Corporate Power Complex and Corporate Concentration

Republicans have opposed the antitrust measures needed to block unnecessary inflation. They’ve supported the giant corporations who fund their campaigns, and who lobby against campaign finance reform, greatly increasing the costs of getting elected, at the same time that they block serious discussions of our most important issues, (as simplistic negative ads that grab the bull by only one horn dominate). One massive, Republican-led spending spree over decades has been in support of the Military Industrial Complex, where the spending creates little wealth, but rather results in the stockpiling of weapons.

Opposition to Stimulus Money to Provide Better Income and Strengthen the Economy.

In light of the massive economic hit that the U.S. took from the pandemic, Democrats are criticized for strengthening the economy too much, including money to help citizens’ ability to survive all of the economic damage. Republicans generally have emphasized stimulus money that subsidizes the rich and giant corporations. Benefits to the income side were opposed and are denied by Republicans. The Democrats “Inflation Reduction Act” includes money to fight climate change, to prevent further damage to our economy. Again, an ounce of short term prevention is worth a pound of long term cure.

CONCLUSION: NEGATIVE POLITICAL ADS OMIT THE DEEP CAUSES OF INFLATION

Part of the political problem is the lack of Campaign Finance Reform. As the party most supportive of the corporate complex and the super rich, Republicans have long opposed these reforms, and relied on more corporate money to fund their campaigns. As a result we’ve seen much more focus on negative political ads. In general, negative ads “grab the bull by only one horn.” They provide false solutions to the real dilemmas behind inflation. A better metaphor is “the mariner’s dilemma,” of avoiding both the obvious rock and the vague whirlpool. Negative ads scream out about the simplistic rocks, while ignoring the more complex whirlpools that need to be addressed.

For example, military responses to terrorism provide a simplistic solution, (rock,) but typically also create new terrorists, (whirlpool and grabbing the bull of terror by only one horn). Similarly immigration is an obvious crisis at our border, (rock,) but what’s happening in their home countries leading to why they are coming in the first place, such as atrocious conservative foreign policies regarding Central America. The Reagan administration’s support for corrupt dictatorships was a huge factor and Middle East foreign policy has had similar effects for Europe. Likewise, conservative farm policies of lowering minimum farm Price Floors to subsidize agribusiness donors led to the U.S. losing money (vs. full costs) on corn exports to Mexico, causing a farm crisis here and driving millions of farmers out of business there. Clearly, these and manly other problems can’t be solved by grabbing the bull by only one horn, when negative political ads show us only the simplistic “rocks,” and not the huge, more complex “whirlpools.”

Family Farm Justice Movement Literacy Test

September 15, 2022September 15, 2022 / brad4farmjustice / 1 Comment

This test covers the more recent history, since 1952. It was initially designed for 21st century audiences, such as that of the Food and Environmental Movements and related sectors, (especially those who work on Farm Bill related issues,) and more generally, the educated public. I’ll post some answers later.

[1.] What was the leading activist family farm organization of the 1960s, (& 50s, & 70s,) making big headlines? What was the name of a new national family farm organization that played prominent roles in the big family farm activist events of the 1970s. Can you name a key difference in the approaches of two different Family Farm organizations, or something different about their “corporate cultures,” (1952-1990)? Can you name a conflict within the Movement? Can you say something about a change in the style of the Family Farm Movement at a certain point in history? (When?) Which organization mobilized a million people to come out to meetings in 19 states within a six month period against cheap food? In what decade?) What are two family farm coalitions or alliances from prior to 1990?

[2.] Name three prominent leaders of the Family Farm Movement who played prominent roles between 1955 and 1980. How about during the 1980s? Today? Can you name three prominent women who were leaders in the Family Farm Movement prior to 1995? Can you name three blacks who were big leaders in the U.S. Family Farm Movement, (or in fighting for it’s issues, outside of movement organizations,) prior to 1990?

[3.] Name three important orators from the Family Farm Movement of 1953-1990. Can you name at least one from the 1960s, and one from the 1980s? Can you remember any lines from the speeches? Were you there? If not, and if you know these things, how did you learn them? How often and in what ways have you been exposed to information about this? What has had the greatest impact on you?

[4.] Name three songs from the Family Farm Movement. Name three singers. Do you know some occasions where they were sung? Were you there? If not, how do you know about them?

[5.] What’s the largest rally of the Family Farm Movement that you recall? (i.e. 40,000?) What’s another large rally that you recall, (indoors: 34,500? 10,000?) Where were they? Were you there? If not, how do you know about them?

[6.] What are two methods of activism, (i.e. kinds of demonstrations,) that have been more or less unique to the Family Farm Movement? Of the 1960s? Of the 1970s? 1980s? 1930s?

[7.] When in the past 60 years has the Family Farm Movement come head to head with a U.S. President? A Presidential advisor or cabinet member? On what issue(s)? How was it resolved? Which family farm organization was on who’s “blacklist” in what decade?) Who said something about exporting farmers? What was said? When? How about conflict with a governor (prior to 1990)?

[8.] What’s a major court case or decision related to issues of the Family Farm Movement? Prior to 1950? After 1970? What’s the name of one of the lawyers, and/or the organization that provided the lawyer(s)? How did you learn about this? (What major family farm organization fought a court case for about a decade [until about 1980]? Who won? What big case went from Clinton to Bush, and to what result? What kinds of issues is one of the current/recent dairy cases about?) Can you name someone in a family farm case prior to 2000 (i.e. _ vs. _)?

[9.] What’s a major federal law that was passed between 1953 and 1990 on Family Farm issues, (& that was not a farm bill)? Were they good or bad for the Movement? When were they passed (what decade)? What quantitative change happened to the Commodity Title of the Farm Bill in 1985 (what increased a lot, what decreased a lot)? What big things happened in the Farm Bill in 1953 and 1996? In 1961? Can you name a Farm Bill issue that Earl Butz got passed?

[10.] Have large corporations played a major role in opposing or supporting the Family Farm Movement? Businesses in general? What kinds of businesses? How? When?

[11.] Name three books from, representing, or about the Family Farm Movement (prior to 1995)? Can you name three authors? Have you ever read a historical (to you) novel about family farms?

[12.] Name three films about Family Farm issues from prior to 1995. Do you know three about the Family Farm Movement itself? Fiction? Documentaries? Have you ever seen a historical Family Farm Movement documentary on PBS? How many? Do you recall ever seen historical footage (prior to 1990) of leaders from the Family Farm Movement on commercial TV? Public?

[13.] What are two Family Farm Movement organizations of today? What are the two major Family Farm Movement Farm Bill proposals of today that focus on the core, historical issues of the Family Farm Movement? How are these proposals treated in the Food courses, books, films and conferences today? Who is the leading academic who has supported these two proposals (with studies)? What academic group did similar work on Farm Bill proposals during the 1980s? Can you name a media source that has mentioned either of these proposals? Can you name a media source that has called for subsidy reforms?

[14.] Have you ever taken a food course, attended a food conference, or read a food curriculum that featured sections teaching about the historical issues of Farm Justice Illiteracy along the lines described above (i.e. organizations, law, politics, songs, leaders, media, race, women, etc.)? What did you learn?

[15.] What are two (or more) main things you learned about the Family Farm Movement or your knowledge of, or relation to it, by taking/reading this test? How would you describe your general reaction?

[16] Who else do you know in the United States who is working on these historical issues of the Family Farm Movement, in the sense of academic Farm Studies Illiteracy?

[17] Can you answer these questions for other social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement? (Try it!)

Jesse Jackson and Rural America: Together We All Win

August 11, 2022 / brad4farmjustice / 2 Comments

As Democrats gather in convention at Atlanta, among them will be rural delegates drawn into the party processes for the first time by Jesse Jackson’s populist message. Jackson’s proven commitment to economic justice has won the hearts and minds of thousands of rural people, motivating many who had never before been active to vote and attend caucuses.

Reverent Jackson carried Vermont, the nation’ most rural state. In Kansas, Jackson supporters took Sheridan, Gove, and Graham Counties. In Iowa, rural Adair County. IN Wisconsin, Polk County, and more than twenty counties in Alabama – scores more across the South.

Rural people voted for Jesse Jackson because he put rural America on the national agenda, sending a clear message by opening his first state office in Greenfield, Iowa, surrounded by farmers and townspeople. Rural people voted for him because they know he cares. He stayed in their homes, stood on their farms, and learned about the current crisis first hand. Jackson appreciates the land as a source of life and knows the importance of the farm economy to our nation’s economic security. He understands the urgency of a crisis which has driven over 600,000 farmers off their farms since 1980. He reminds all Americans that if you eat, you’re involved in agriculture.

At the 20^th Anniversary March on Washington in 1983, he met with a farm delegation led by Merle Hansen of the North American Farm Alliance to bond his relationship to family farmers.

Reverend Jackson has consistently stood with farmers int heir struggle to stay on the land. He knows that farmers cannot win alone, that it will take a mighty coalition to reverse our nation’s priorities on behalf of the nation’s working people.

Since that time, he has traveled across the country to help save farms at sheriff sales or speak at rallies and draw attention to the crisis in the countryside.

Jackson’s commitment to rural families is more than just rhetoric. Ask Darrell Ringer and the Bates family in Great Bend, Kansas; ask Jim Langmann in Western Minnesota; Perry Wilson, Sr. and Marvin Porter in Western Missouri; Dorthy and Verne Lau in Nebraska. Reverend Jackson was there. When he was called to help Iverline Payne, a 62 year old widow in Dublin, Georgia, he was there. When Chillocothe, Missouri farmers fighting the abusive tactics of the Farmers Home Administration called, he was there. When invited to farm rallies in Omaha, Nebraska or South and North Carolina, Reverent Jackson spoke of the need to join together, displaces worker and farmer, urban poor and peace activist, and so to build a coalition for jobs, farms, and justice.

When Carlos Welty and other midwest farmers needed assistance in developing urban markets, Jackson was there, offering access in Chicago. When cucumber farmers in Alabama needed help in developing a cooperatively owned pickle processing plant, he was there to help secure the needed purchase commitments.

As testimony to his work, over 400 farmers traveled to Washington, D. C. to attending the Founding Convention of the National Rainbow Coalition. At a “Save the Family Farm” Breakfast, he brought Congressional, Labor, and Farm leaders together with an overflow crowd to talk about the need to work together on our common agenda of economic justice and peace.

Jackson was there when farmers needed political clout. Reverend Jackson brought a group of Chillicothe farmers to visit with Secretary of Agriculture Lyng, where they presented the Secretary with petitions to Save the Family Farm. Secretary Lyng agreed to respond when Reverend Jackson presented him with cases where USDA violates it’s own policies. The Secretary agreed to visit North Carolina and investigate the situation faced by black farmers, who are threatened with total obliteration by the end of the decade.

Jackson went to Wilmington, North Carolina when red tide fungus threatened to destroy the livelihood of fishermen. Jackson relayed to the Small Business Administration the importance of the fishermen’s work to the whole community. He convinced the SBA to provide immediate relief, enabling the fishermen to survive the crisis.

In Wisconsin in 1988, Jackson drew attention to the irrationality of farm and food policies which simultaneously refrain from buying food products from farmers while cutting food distribution to hungry people. As a result of heightened attention to this issue, the Wisconsin state legislature authorized $2 ½ million to ensure proper federal food distribution.

In 1986, Reverend Jackson joined Willie Nelson and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower in Austin for the Farm Aid II Concert. A few months later, national farm leaders invited him to be one of 3 keynote speakers at the United Farmer and Rancher Congress in St. Louis, along with Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Commissioner Hightower. While in St. Louis, Reverend Jackson also delivered a speech to the International Agriculture Summit entitled “World Trade Peace Begins with Justice for the Farmer.”

Now in 1988, Jim Hightower endorsed Reverend Jackson and said, “If he was standing for my principles, why was I not standing for him? Frankly it had not occurred to most populist leaders like me that our movement might become black-led, reaching out to whites, but there it is… He has put himself on the line for the work-a-day majority of this country. He has earned our respect for the strength and tone of his campaign, and he is strumming a cord that American’s want to hear. Today, I join Jesse Jackson on that line, because it is the right place to be.”

The doors that Jesse Jackson has opened for rural activists, the bridges across racial lines, and the hope that he has brought has created the momentum for a powerful movement in rural America. Reverend Jackson stands for integrity, for quality, for principle, for justice, and for peace, and the urban and the rural coalition united behind these principles continues to grow.

MORE INFORMATION 2017

Rev. Jesse Jackson, “A New Direction in Farm Policy,” https://familyfarmjustice.me/2022/08/11/jesse-jackson-a-new-direction-in-farm-policy/.

“1988 Presidential forum on Agriculture and Rural Life,” YouTube, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P_u_3tvGyM&index=26&list=PLA1E706EFA90D1767

See video of Jackson and other materials at The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa Women’s Achives, Carol Hodne Papers, http://collguides.lib.uiowa.edu/?IWA0488 .

“Jesse Jackson ’88 Iowa Campaign Headquarters records, 1987-1988,” from Jesse Jackson ’88 Iowa Campaign Headquarters (Greenfield, Iowa) 1987, in Des Moines Historical Library Manuscripts (MS2014.7 ).

Jesse Jackson: A New Direction in Farm Policy

August 11, 2022August 11, 2022 / brad4farmjustice / 1 Comment

In Iowa and across the Midwest, the hopes and dreams of thousands of family farmers are now on the auction block. Iowa has lost 10,000 farms since the Reagan administration came into office. A crisis of proportions unseen since the thirties is stalking the countryside, leaving in its wake, poverty, despair, broken homes, and broken hearts.

Farming is a science and an at. Farmers are professionals who spend their entire lives honing their skills and passing their knowledge on to their children. To separate these professionals from their professions by economic force should be considered nothing short of criminal.

Every Iowan understands the role that agriculture plays in the broader scheme of things. It is part of the foundation this country was built on. Weaken that foundation and the entire building is in danger of crumbling. The crisis engulfing rural Iowa is coming home to roost in our towns and cities. Between 1979 and 1985, 55– small town businesses closed their doors. In 1985 and 1986, twenty-one Iowa banks failed, and the rate is the same for this year.

Farm Foreclosures lead to plant closures. We can’t afford the luxury of fighting among ourselves, or hunting for scapegoats. Town and country, rural and urban, one can’t do without one another. Famers need a fair price just as workers need a living wage. Both must join hands and walk forward together. Our very survival is at stake.

We reap what we sow. No one plants corn and harvests wheat, it’s just not possible. The same is the case with the Reagan farm policy, which promotes the concentration of the food industry into fewer and fewer hands. From it grew a harvest of despair.

Farmers want parity, not charity. A fair price is a price that meets the cost of production. When farmers don’t receive a fair price the countryside becomes submerged into a sea of debt.

We need a working system of supply management. This would eliminate the need to store runaway commodity surpluses, while making the welfare subsidy program unnecessary. It is critical that measures called for in the Family Farm Act are put into practice. This would bring the surplus under control, while giving the producers themselves say over how this should be done. The Act includes safeguards for low income consumers, which would offset any possible rise in food prices.

Some are against effective supply management. It’s not popular with the grain speculators of the Chicago Board of Trade. It will cut into the profit margins of farm chemical and oil companies that produce fertilizers and pesticides. The multi-national food corporations that have been growing fat on farm subsidies are lining up against it.[1]

Government policy shouldn’t assist those who are out to farm the farmer. Profits for food processing companies increased 13% in 1986;[2] most farm prices fell 6-9%. This year 76 cents out of every food dollar will go to middlemen. The grocer gets more for the coupon on the box of Rice Krispies than the farmer gets for the rice in the product.

If managing supplies means consumers pay a few pennies more in the short run, preserving the family farm will save us all dollars in the long run. Monopoly agriculture will give a handful of huge food corporations undue influence over the prices that consumers would pay.

Farm policy needs more than a cosmetic change, it needs a new direction. Supply can’t control American agriculture. Agriculture must take control of supply. We need to restructure farm debt. We must add a temporary moratorium on foreclosures to our country’s political agenda.

The Farmers Home Administration has taken over 5000 farms – a total of 1.5 million acres. The Farm Credit System is holding 2.2 million acres. The FmHA and the FCS are selling off the land at firesale prices to speculators and agri-business. The men and women who worked the land, giving so much of themselves, must have the right to buy back or lease their land at today’s lower interest rates. Packages o sell inventoried land to corporate America must instead be prepared for beginning, restructuring, and minority farmers.

The world is full of hunger. The Iowa farmer is one of the most efficient food producers in the world. It is not rational that farms in Iowa are going under because too much has been produced. Nor does the Reagan administration’s refrain, “produce more for exports” make sense, it only results in other governments increasing their farm subsidies to stay in competitive and adds to the surplus in the international market.[3] Third word countries end up exporting more cash crops to get badly needed foreign exchange, while at the same time weakening their ability to feed their own people. We must correlate production with hungry people.

America has come to the fork in the road and new leadership is needed to take us in the right direction. Construction is better than destruction. Our national priorities must place farms ahead of arms, if we are to live in a secure world. Food to the hungry will do more to promote peace, than weapons to the contras. Dollars which are now pouring into defense boondogles must be shifted into nutritional programs for our nation’s children. A nation which neglects its young is a nation at risk.

Creative solutions are needed to solve the problems of rural America. I have called for an international conference that would bring together the feeders and the eaters, the producers and the consumers. We need trade that’s aimed at meeting need. We must bring food to those who are hungry, while assuring that farmers get their due. If we work to meet need while curbing greed, our dreams can be realized.

BRAD’S NOTES

[1] This sentence may be misleading, in that it sounds close to a technical error even as it expresses the essence of the problem. Free markets are the economic cause of cheap market prices which subsidize these corporations, and the weakening (and later elimination) of market management provisions in the farm bill is the political cause. So this system of lower and lower minimum farm price floors, is the policy cause of the cheap prices that subsidize the food corporations. They get (from farmers,) something like 8 times more than the subsidies the government pays back to farmers. The (inadequate) farm subsidies are correlated with the cheap prices, but do not cause the cheap prices. Bottom line: the “farm subsidies” that the corporations get are paid by farmers, (are from farmers,) when farmers sell to them at cheap, below cost, market prices.

[2] 1986, right after passage of the 1985 Reagan farm bill, which made the farm crisis even worse.

[3] The Reagan administration and it’s friends in Congress, (and similar voices earlier and later,) promised that the cheaper market prices would lead to great increases in international sales, and later, higher prices, but we now know that neither one came true. See: Daryll E. Ray, Agricultural Policy Research Center: “Exports: Does Lowering the Price to Capture Market Share Work in the Grain Markets?”8/4/00, http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/005.html ; “Allowing Grain Prices to Fall Does Not Stave Off Loss of Export Market Share,” 8/11/00, http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/006.html ; “Corn exports: A case of unrealized expectations and farm policies that did not deliver,” http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/684.html ; “Are “things different now” so that low prices will cure low prices?” http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/839.html , etc.

MORE INFORMATION 2017

“Jesse Jackson and Rural America: Together We All Win,” Jesse Jackson Campaign 1988, (see archive below,) https://familyfarmjustice.me/2022/08/11/jesse-jackson-and-rural-america-together-we-all-win/.

“1988 Presidential forum on Agriculture and Rural Life,” YouTube, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P_u_3tvGyM&index=26&list=PLA1E706EFA90D1767

You Can’t Fix Sustainability Without Justice

July 31, 2022 / brad4farmjustice / Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This paper presents background material in support of my slide show series on “The Decline of Agriculture” in 42 counties in Iowa, (with summaries of these counties for each Congressional District, and with a survey of all of Iowa). County level data from the Census of Agriculture is used to show how cheaper and cheaper farm prices, leading to reductions in the farm economy have forced farmers to subsidize animal factories, (Confined Animal Feeding Operations, CAFOs,) with cheap, below cost feed ingredients. This farmer-paid subsidization has then led to the further penalty where most farmers have lost all value-added livestock and poultry. Without livestock, most farmers have then lost the sustainable “livestock crops,” grass pastures, alfalfa and clover hay, and the nurse crops for these, like oats. These “Environmental Impacts” are the focus of Part 1 of my surveys. 25 additional state summary surveys are also being developed. These are the core, systemic policy issues for agriculture and the environment.

In the map above, the darker counties are the ones surveyed. Links to the slide shows are found farther below. A preliminary survey for Wisconsin is found here. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3719393414781721&type=3. Part 2 slide shows focus on “Farmer Impacts” (see below).

Understanding the Core Environmental Policies for Agriculture

From the crisis of the Great Depression, the Farm Bill was invented and implemented, fairly slowly, during the 1930s to 1941. At it’s core, it was a market management solution to at least six decades of prior crisis caused by cheap farm prices. Minimum farm price floors, (similar in principle to minimum wage,) were implemented and backed up by supply reductions, as needed, to balance supply and demand. For consumers and industry, price ceilings were used, to trigger the release of reserve supplies during times of drought and shortage.

The second national crisis of World War II led Congress to raise minimum farm price floors to “living wage” levels, 85% or 90% of parity with a goal of prices at 100% of parity. This was seen as a government managed, private sector economic stimulus, (not a government spending stimulus,) and was passed, in part, through the banking committees.

The farm program worked well, raising farm prices to “living wage” levels, and at minimal or no cost, even making money for the government through 1948. Agriculture as a whole achieved 100% of parity every year, 1942-52.

The agribusiness buying corporations were forced to pay farmers $1.2 trillion more, (1942-52 vs. averages from 1920-32).

For 1933-1960, an estimated 99% of the impact was from minimum farm price floors, and only 1% from farm subsidies.

Congress then lowered minimum farm price floors, more and more, 1953-1995, and then ended them, (1996-2023). This had devastating impacts on farmers, rural communities and the rural environment. Over time it forced farmers to massively subsidize the loss of their value added livestock to CAFOs, with cheap feed ingredients, (below full cost levels most of the time at least since 1981). With cheaper and cheaper prices, net farm income fell low and stayed low, even with higher yields and with implementation of the major farm subsidy programs. These started in 1961 for corn, wheat and sorghum, 1962 for barley, 1964 for cotton, 1976 for rice, 1982 for oats, and 1998 for soybeans. The evidence is very clear that farmers were penalized toward these changes, not rewarded toward them.

Iowa, though it has had some of the very biggest subsidies, also seems to be the state with the biggest reductions, resulting in the biggest net reductions over the long haul (net = market reductions below parity standards + subsidies). Iowa is the biggest farm bill loser, as is the cornbelt region.

Nationally the reductions since 1953 add up to trillions of dollars, so these are huge issues affecting agriculture, and affecting agriculture’s impact on climate.

US net farm income in 2016, (adjusted for inflation and including farm subsidies,) was less than 50% of what it had been during the parity years of 1942-52. Net Farm Income for Iowa in 2016 was less than 35% of what it had been for 1949-1952, (the earliest years for which data is available).

That’s in spite of much increased yields for crops like corn and soybeans.

Nearly 60% of farmers were run out of business during the massive reductions in farm income. Losses of farms livestock and poultry poultry occurred at an even faster rate, especially for hogs, dairy and poultry. According to data from the Census of Agriculture, between 1950 and 2017, Iowa lost 97% of its farms with hogs land pigs, 98% of it’s farms selling poultry products, and 99% of its farms with milk cows. It also lost 86% of its farms with cattle and calves and 88% of its farms with sheep.

Losing livestock from farms was very damaging to the environment, leading to our poor water quality, contributing to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and to climate change. That’s because, without farms with livestock, we also lost farms with the sustainable “livestock crops” like grass pastures, alfalfa and clover hay, and nurse crops like oats and barley. Farms with these sustainable crops were also lost at a much faster rate than the loss of farmers and the loss of crop farmers. For example, according to Census of Agriculture Data, between 1950 and 2017, Iowa lost 82% of it’s farms with hay, 96% of its farms with pasture on cropland, and 99% of its farms with oats.

As a result of these losses, farmers have lost much of the economic viability for these sustainable crops and diverse crop rotations, which are especially needed on hills and near streams. These areas have been increasingly planted to corn and soybeans. We’ve then seen increasing destruction of the infrastructure for sustainability on farms, in small towns, and across rural regions.

A related factor is that, while 92% of Iowa farm operators reported farming as their primary occupation in 1950, by 1997 only 61% of the remaining farmers did, and for some counties, less than half. And while only 7% of Iowa farm operators worked 200 or more days off the farm in 1950, by 2017 31% of the surviving farm operators did. These changes were reflected in farming’s share of total farm household income. While in the early 1960s, when USDA’s data series on this begins the farm portion of total farm household income was nearly 50%, this figure fell to just 12% by the 1990s and 11% for 2000-2009, even with the start of the biofuels boom. Those temporarily higher prices continued for corn, soybeans and rice through 2013, and the farm share of farm household income rose for 2010-2019, but only to 20%.

I’ve documented many these changes away from sustainability for Iowa, for 42 counties in Iowa, and with summaries of this data for each of the 4 Congressional districts in Iowa, (9+9+12+12=42 county summaries + 4 District summaries).

(See data charts here, organized by the new Congressional Districts: The Decline of Farming in 9 Counties of Iowa’s 1st Congressional District: Environmental Impacts [10 slide shows]: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11Ii_bwimdYxDjC-pyuYKm3mYLVGJfsXF; The Decline of Farming in 9 Counties of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District: Environmental Impacts [10 slide shows]: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WUkjXENDtc0XimXxzDA47adZ-6KqHXxc; The Decline of Farming in 12 Counties of Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District: Environmental Impacts [13 slide shows]: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1a_muA-EeV8nX_mjqzCIfjowjcGLr3PkL; The Decline of Farming in 12 Counties of Iowa’s 4th Congressional District: Environmental Impacts [13 slide shows]: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/185K4Wiu43x_rmWmhXPY6EGItYJHqay0b. For all of Iowa [99 counties,] seehttps://www.slideshare.net/bradwilson581525/the-decline-of-farming-in-iowa-pt-1pdf. See Iowa charts below.)

Examination of the acreages for these crops shows more clearly how they affect crop rotations. Without the diversity of the sustainable livestock crops, most of Iowa has been reduced to a simple corn-soybeans rotation, (corn-following-soybeans,) leading to damage to the environment, especially on hills and near streams. The slide shows compare the changes in these acreages, shown in pie charts, to various crop rotations, (including acreages for soybeans and “other,”) jumping from 1950 to 1969 to 1992 to 2017.

Compare the two-year, corn-soybeans rotation, above, with the five-year rotation shown below, which has been popular among organic farmers in Iowa.

Compare that with the acreage results for the state of Iowa in 1950 and 2017, below.

Iowa’s diverse pie pieces have shrunk! Iowa has lost the possibility for sustainable crop rotations.

The increasing role of off-farm jobs and income for those farm operators who have survived, and as the percentage of young farmers declined and the percentage of old farmers rose has also affected the environmental impacts of Iowa agriculture. These statistics mean that farmers had less availability of labor on farms and relatively more capital from off-farm sources. The quite old farmers of today want to do less labor and they have more capital than young farmers do. These changes during the period of declining farm prices and income has fostered systems of “tax loss farming,” favoring those with higher off-farm incomes and those in higher tax brackets. They got bigger tax write-off subsidies per acre, (assuming identical farms,) than farmers with lower total incomes. This also magnified the loss of diversity and sustainability on farms, and increased the use of purchased inputs, like fertilizers, pesticides, and larger machinery.

Slide shows on these farmer impacts for each the 42 counties (and 4 Congressional districts) are not complete yet, but the one for all of Iowa is available here: https://www.slideshare.net/bradwilson581525/the-decline-of-farming-in-iowa-part-2-farmer-impacts.

In general, with much lower net incomes per acre, and with the loss of several kinds of value-added livestock/poultry from a large majority of farms, farms have had to get much bigger in acres to stay the same economic size, which is another systemic factor working against diversity and sustainability.

To address a wide range of issues, including those of rural economic and community health, rural environmental decline, and agriculture’s impacts on climate, changes are needed in the federal farm bill to restore programs of market management for economic justice. Iowa farmers need the kinds of Democratic Party Price Floor and Supply Management programs that we had in the past. Proposals to do this have been available for decades, and there have been many econometric studies showing this approach is much better than each of the increasingly Republican farm bills we’ve seen from 1980 to 2014. These proposals have come from the organizations of the Family Farm (Farm Justice) Movement, including support from the National Farmers Organization, the American Agriculture Movement, the North American Farm Alliance, the National Family Farm Coalition, the National Farmers Union, and the Texas Farmers Union. Many of them address the dairy portion of the farm bill, which has been hurt so much by the cheap prices that have forced farmers to subsidize CAFOs. These proposals were much cheaper than each of the Farm Bills, (farm bill baselines,) that they were compared with. They each would have significantly reduced the huge CAFO and junk food subsidies of these farm bills, and would also have reduced the export dumping of these decades, where the United States has been losing money on farm exports, subsidizing foreign countries while damaging the economy, the environment, public health, and rural community life here.

One of the most comprehensive of these studies was the FAPRI, (Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute,) study of the 1987 Family Farm Act, (Harkin-Gephardt proposal). (https://familyfarmjustice.me/2016/12/09/family-farm-act-of-1987/). FAPRI found that the Harkin-Gephardt proposal would have greatly increased Net Farm Income and income from farm exports, as in the charts below. (The charts below are adjusted for inflation in 2019 dollars, and therefore different than those at the link above.)

At the same time, Harkin-Gephardt would have greatly reduced the costs of these core farm programs to government and taxpayers.

For the 8 major crops studied, the programs would have reduced acreages below the inadequate levels of the 1985 Republican Farm Bill.

This would have resulted in reduced production of the 8 crops, to prevent oversupply and cheap prices, as seen in the chart below of 6 of the crops where production can be measured in bushels.

The value of the 8 crops would then be much higher, however, under Harkin-Gephardt than under the 1985 Farm Bill.

A similar pattern would have been seen for exports. The quantity exported under Harkin-Gephardt would have been significantly smaller, as seen in the chart below featuring 6 crops measured in bushels. Similar patterns were found for cotton and rice.

On the other hand, income from exports was found to be much higher with Harkin-Gephardt.

If USDA-ERS “full cost”* figures are applied to the FAPRI data, we also see that the Harkin-Gephardt proposal would result in exports above zero, while the 1985 Farm Bill that President Reagan signed would have farmers losing money on their investments. (*Here USDA “full costs” include a wage equivalent for the farmer, plus a portion of general farm overhead and other factors. So the resulting figures are a return to a farmers’ investments in land, machinery and facilities.)

Because the Harkin-Gephardt farm bill proposal would significantly raise the costs of grain for feeding livestock, ending CAFO subsidies, it was found to affect farming systems in ways that would help the environment. For example, there would be more forage, (grass, alfalfa, clover,) and less feeding of grain in CAFOs and feedlots. According to the study, (https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsfaprsr/244143.htm):

“a major shift in the type of meat produced would occur concurrently with the shift toward less production.”

“As feed costs increase toward an 80% parity level, producers shift away from grain-fed animals and utilize available forage to add weight to beef.”

“… the higher costs of beef production associated with parity crop pricing would likely push the industry toward an animal which matures (finishes) at a lighter weight and could be forage-fed for a substantial part of the weight-gaining process.”

“Such an adjustment would be costly to current feedlot operators.”

Our macro, systemic conclusion is clear. We can’t fix sustainability for agriculture without restoring economic distributive farm justice.

Church Statements on the Rural Crisis

July 15, 2022 / brad4farmjustice / Leave a comment

PrairieFire Rural Action – NCCC

(Iowa Family Farm organization) – (National Council of Churches of Christ)

ECUMENICAL AND INTERFAITH STATEMENTS and POLICY STATEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN THE U.S.A.

In recent years, ecumenical bodies at the state and national level have taken an increasingly active and public role on rural crisis issues and state and federal farm policy.

The first document in this Section is “A Resolution by Religious and Ecumenical leaders of the United States,” passed by an ecumenical and interfaith gathering of religious leaders in Kansas City, Missouri, in November, 1986. The Resolution stands in clear support of the principles of the Family Farm Act.

Also included here is a “Declaration on Rural Crisis” adopted by the National Interreligious Conference on Rural Life, held in Chicago in February, 1987. This Conference of Christians and Jews marked a major step in the development of strong interfaith policy positions on rural issues and public policy development.

The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC) is comprised of thirty-one communions — Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican church bodies with a combined membership of 40 million Christians. It is the primary national expression of the ecumenical movement in the United States.

This special section includes the NCC’s basic Policy Statement adopted in 1958, “Ethical Goals for Agricultural Policy,” and six related Resolutions passed by the Governing Board since 1983:

1. On the Status of the Family Farm May 12, 1983

2. On the Status of Black-Owned Farm Land in the U.S. November 11, 1983

3. A Call for Justice and Action May 17, 1984

4. On the Exploitation of the Rural Crisis by Extremist Organizations November 8, 1985

5. Save The Family Farm Act of 1986 November 6, 1986

6. Resolution on the “Christian Identity” Movement November 6, 1986

Of special note is the Resolution passed unanimously by the Governing Board on November 62 19861 in support of the Save The Family Farm Act of 1986.

National Council of the Churches of Christ, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115

RESOLUTION ON THE STATUS OF THE FAMILY FARM

(Adopted by the Governing Board, May 12, 1983)

In order to restore some integrity to farm tax and credit policies which have increasingly favored high-income: expanding firms at the expense of small and modest sized family farms in the U.S., the Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. calls upon the Congress and the Administration to develop and implement policies which:

(1) restore the limited resource loan program of loans to low-equitv and low-income farmers and establish it as the principal loan program of the Farmers Home Administration;

(2) restructure eligibility guidelines for all other Farmers Home Administration farm loan programs so that larger-than-family farms are not eligible for this kind of assistance:

(3) provide proper servicing to borrowers who for no fault of their own are unable to meet scheduled loan payments but who show evidence of ability to pay when agricultural prices stabilize at levels which afford them the opportunity to do so; specifically, loan deferrals should be granted on a case-by-case basis under provisions which guarantee full and fair consideration of each applicant for a deferral and which safeguard the procedural rights of the borrower, including the right or administrative appeal; and

(4) eliminate the use of the investment tax credit for specialized farm buildings for the production of livestock and for the purchase of irrigation equipment which is used to irrigate land which is not considered to be irrigable within soil conservation standards.

The Governing Board further cells upon its member denominations, local congregations, end affiliate organizations to advocate for and support such measures.

Resolution on THE STATUS OF THE FAMILY FARM

Introduction

One of the most complex problems facing the United States government today is the financial crisis in agriculture. Partly the product of farmers’ success in improving productivity and partly the product of farm policies which have failed to stabilize farm income. this crisis threatens to erode the family farm base of American agriculture more than any development in our lifetimes.

Neither recent Congresses nor recent administrations have responded responsibly to this growing crisis. To the contrary, there has been a tendency on the part of public officials to avoid the issue by opening public credit programs to an ever-wider group of larger farms and offering tax concessions which encourage further expansion on the part of these farms. The result is more concentration in production, diminished economic opportunity for farms of modest means. and greater financial vulnerability for our food system as a whole. These trends undermine an owner-operated system of agriculture, which a substantial body of scientific literature has established as the most efficient unit of production.

Particularly grievous has been: (1) the steady deterioration in the services afforded small farmers with limited resources by the Farmers Home Administration and the corresponding shift in that agency’s emphasis to larger-than-family farms: and (2) the expansion of the investment tax credit, a superfluous subsidy to capital which invites unneeded investments by tax-motivated investors in areas of agriculture already sufficiently capitalized. These policies have tended to reward the rich at the expense of the poor, and to diminish economic justice.

The general direction of these and other policies is therefore viewed as contrary to the Ethical Goals for Agricultural Policy adopted by the General Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. on June 4. 1958, which called for the development of “… programs which will enlarge the opportunities for low-income farm families to earn adequate incomes and achieve satis- factory levels of living…”

Background Considerations

Credit: Since the 1940’s, the Farmers Home Administration has provided credit as a last resort to farmers who could not get it elsewhere. Its purpose has been to help tenant farmers become owners and to help marginal farmers reach the point where they could operate through normal commercial credit.

In recent years, the government has reduced services to such farmers while expanding Farmers Home Administration credit to larger, more aggressive farmers. In 1978, Congress eliminated the interest subsidy from 80% of Farmers Home Administration’s “regular” loans. reserving the lower interest loans “limited resource” (LR) borrowers, vaguely defined as those who could not afford the regular interest rate. At the same time, Congress established an Economic Emergency (EB) loan program for larger-than-family-sized farmers including those who do not depend on farm income for a living. By 1979, the EEprogram was larger than the regular loan program, and limited-resource borrowers, the group for whom Farmers Home Administration was established, were getting less than 10% of the agency’s farm loans.

The present Administration has opposed re-authorization of the limited resource program and has opposed any appropriation for it. Last year, it spent only half the limited resource allocation, despite authorizing legislation requiring it to make the loans. Meantime, Congress, is considering legislation to strengthen the EE program by making it mandatory.

At the same time, the Administration has generally resisted efforts to take Farmers Home Administration procedures more open and fair for the borrower. This has been particularly true in the case of requests for deferrals, or one-year extensions of overdue loans in cases where the delinquency is for reasons beyond the borrower’s control. A U.S. District Court case (Curry 7. Block) requires the Administration to develop criteria for such deferrals, but Farmers Home Administration has appealed the case to the Circuit Court. Congress is considering legislation requiring implementation of the deferral policy. About 25% of Home Administration borrowers are delinquent, and that proportion is expected to increase.

Tax Policy: The general effect of U.S. income tax policy on the structure of American agriculture has been to encourage non-farm investment, concentration of production, and the separation of ownership from operation. Recent major studies by the United States Department of Agriculture and land-grant universitiesconfirm this.

The effect has been particularly strong in livestock production which h= become more capital-intensive and therefore more susceptible to tax-motivated investment. The University of Missouri reports that about 13% of the slaughter hogs in the U.S; now come from large operations, and in Nebraska, the Center for Rural Affairs has documented that 24% of the feeder-pig crop (an especially important crop for beginning farmers) now comes from corporate hog factories.A high-income investor in such a facility can receive as much as 50% of his her initial investment back in the first year of operation through reduced federal taxes, and over the life of the facility can receive as much as 80%. This subsidy is attracting investment capital into an area of agricultural production which is already sufficiently capitalized. United States Department of Agriculture reports that the U.S. hog industry presently has about double the productionfacilities necessary to meet production requirements.

Irrigation development is another example. New technologies (sophisticated sprinkler systems) have made it possible to irrigate marginal range land which is highly susceptible to erosion. A high-income developer and investor can recover about one-third of the purchase price of such land through federal and state tax breaks on the irrigation development, according to the Center for Rural Affairs. Ironically, the tax breaks work to encourage the selection first of those parcels which are most vulnerable to erosion (the higher the ratio of development costs to original purchase price of the land, the larger the tax breaks; the lover the purchase price, the more marginal the land). Most of the production from these developments is corn, a commodity already in surplus.

Theological Rationale

A Christian ethical approach to agriculture begins with the acknowledgment that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof…” God the Creator has given human beings a special position in the world, with specific responsibility for the fruits of tie earth and all living things. Thus the production of food and fiber — the primary task of farmers — becomes a service to God and humankind.

The Christian faith also attaches special significance to the family, where Christian love and forgiveness can be personally experienced. The family farm has provided, throughout our history, that type of rural environment most co to the growth of human personality, the stability and enrichment of family life, and the strength of the community and its institutions. This pattern of agriculture he also contributed notably to national strength and the preservation of democratic attitudes and practices.

Therefore, the preservation and extension of the efficient family-type farm as the predominant pattern of American agriculture has been affirmed as a conscious goal of national policy by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Furthermore, the Christian concept of justice demands that family farmers who produce efficiently and abundantly, where such production is in the national interest, should not suffer from this fact, but should receive economic rewards comparable with those received by persons operating larger-than-family-type farms or by persons of similar competence in other vocations.

Because of their ineffective bargaining position, farmers have rarely enjoyed true parity of income in the open market except during wartime periods of extreme demand. Yet sustained farm income is essential both as a requirement of justice for farmers – and of stability for the total economy. Therefore, programs designed in accordance with sound economic principles and equitably administered to protect the rights and interests of small as well as large farmers are a legitimate and necessary function of the federal government.

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1. A commonly accepted definition of the “family farm” is a farm operation in which the responsibility of ownership, management, financial risk and labor (except at peak seasons) is that of the family.

2. The economic literature on economies of scale and farm size are voluminous and conclusive. A farm which fully employs one or two persons achieves lowest costs and optimum efficiencies. The classics in this literature are: J. Patrick Madden, Economies of Size in Farming, AER Report #107, USDA, 1967, Warren R. Bailey, The One-Man Farm, ERS-519, USDA, 1973; and Thomas A. Miller, et al, Economies of Size in U.S. Field Crop Farming, AER Report #472, USDA, 1981. The entire issue was reexamined by USDA as part of the “structure of agriculture” project conducted by the agency in 1980. It confirmed previous findings that “most of the technical economies…are attained at relatively small sizes” and concluded that “we have passed the point where any net gain to society can be claimed from policies that encourage large farms to become larger”. (A Time to Choose, USDA, January 1981.)

3. Two of the Studies: A Time to Choose, January 1981, USDA Ch. 6, “Tax Policy” pg. 90-99. The Effects of Tax Policy on American Agriculture, Charles Davenport, Michael D. Boehlje, David B.H. Martin, USDA/ERS, Agricultural Economic Report #480. February 1982.

4. “Ethical Goals for Agricultural Policy”, Statement adopted by the General Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., June 4, 1958.

RESOLUTION ON THE STATUS OF BLACK OWNED FARM LAND IN THE UNITED STATES

Adopted by the Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, November 11, 1983

According to the Census in 1978, the rate of Black farmland loss was two and a half times greater than the loss rate for white farmers. Black farmers as a group, compared to other farmers, depend more heavily on farming for an income and have less off-farm income. The continuing loss of ownership and control of agricultural land by Black American farmers has reduced their ability to achieve economic viability and financial independence. This loss has been accelerated by the Black land owner’s lack of access to capital, technical information and legal resources needed to retain and develop agricultural land holdings into stable, income-producing self-sustaining operations.

Resolved: that the Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. calls upon the Congress, the Administration and in particular the United States Department of Agriculture to develop and implement a Federal program designed;

1) to prevent the loss of ownership of agricultural land by Black Americans;

2) to assist Black Americans to acquire such land or to expand present holdings; and

3) to achieve a significant increase in the participation of Black American owners of agricultural land in applicable Federally sponsored programs.

This program should:

1) identify, reduce and eliminate barriers which have resulted in reduced participation by Black farmers in, and reduced benefits from, Federally sponsored programs.

2) provide technical assistance to Black Americans who seek to develop or upgrade land for agricultural purposes,

3) identify Black Americans who may wish to acquire land for agricultural purposes and to target applicable existing Federal programs to assist in such acquisition, and

4) encourage the development of private-sector initiatives directed toward the achievement of these objectives.

The Governing Board,concerned about the increasing disappearance of American small farms, especially those owned and operated by American Blacks, urgently calls upon its-member denominations, local congregations and affiliate organizations to advocate and support these measures.

Policy Base: Ethical Goals for Agricultural Policy June 4, 1958

BACKGROUND STATEMENT REGARDING PROPOSED RESOLUTION ON BLACK OWNER FARM LAND

Psalm 24: The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, a the world and those who dwell therein.

Isaiah 58:6 Is not this what I require of you…to loose the fetters of injustice….

A Christian ethical approach to agriculture begins with the acknowledgment that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof…” God the Creator has given human beings a special position in the world, with specific responsibility for the fruits of the earth and all living things. Thus the production of food and fiber — the primary task of farmers — becomes a service to God and humankind.

Land development promotes community stabilization, creates opportunities for profitable investments and benefits local and national economies by strengthening the economic independence of farmers and creating profitable markets for goods and services.

During a ten-year period ending in 1978, Blacks lost 57 percent of their active farmland base — down from 133,000 operating farms comprised of 6.2 million acres in 1969 to 57,000 farms and 4.2 million acres in 1978. The two million acre loss over 10 years is conservatively valued at 1 billion dollars.

Farmland is included in the Census of Agriculture count every five years if it produces an income for its owner of at least $1,000 a year. The Census has an information base on only those Blacks who derive at least $1,000 in farm sales a year. They numbered 57,000 controlling 4.2 million acres in 1978.

The Emergency Land Fund, Atlanta,- Georgia, und r contract to the Farmer‘s Home Administration. U.S. Department of Agriculture, made a study of “The Impact of Heir Property on Black Rural Land Tenure in the Southeastern Region of the United States” in 1980 and developed the following data:

“In 1974, Blacks owned or had access to 9.5 million acres with as many as 1.6 million individual Black owners who were scattered throughout the United States with a land title in the rural Southeast. Therefore, over two-thirds of the Black farmland base, some 5 million acres, receive no policy attention, and most certainly none of the program resources available through public supported agricultural institutions. This category of “unaccounted for” Black rural land

is often idle, subject to absentee ownership, occupied by elderly individuals who are often on public assistance, who in many cases cannot read or write well, if at all, encumbered with clouded titles, lost in tax, partition and foreclosure sales and an easy prey for land speculators. According to the Census in 1978, the rate of Black farmland loss was two and a half times greater than the loss rate for white farmers.

“Black farmers as a group, compared to other farmers, depend more heavily on farming for an income and have less off-farm income. Additionally, the net farm and farm-related income earned per dollar value of land and building represents a 15% return on investment by the Black farmer compared to the 9% average for all farms. Blacks, therefore, are good farmers but continue to lose land because of a lack of farm financing and operating capital, and suffer also because of the lack of land utilization information. technical and management assistance and markets. There is also a host of legal. financial and discrimination problems that are contributing factors. Often these problems involve both public and private lending institutions, courts, legal representation and land speculators – both private and corporate.”

Secretary Block of the U. S. Department of Agriculture appointed a special Task Force on the “Decline of Blacks in Agriculture” in April 1983. The information in this resolution will support the Emergency Land Fund’s recommendations to that Task Force.

Based on NCCC Policy Statement: Ethical Goals for Agricultural Policy, June 4, 1958.

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l. The Emergency Land Fund was founded-in 1971 by Robert S. Browne, who is also the founder of the Black Economic Research Center and the Twenty-First Century Foundation. For the past eleven years, ELF has maintained a regional focus, working throughout the rural Southeast providing a variety of services and conducting special projects and programs aimed at the retention, acquisition and better utilization of farmland for the benefit of Blacks. ELF’s services include legal, financial, technical and management assistance. Additionally, ELF has maintained an extensive outreach and community education program. Emergency Land Fund, Joseph Brooks, President, 564 Lee Street, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30310 (404) 758-5506

A RESOLUTION

of the

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN THE U.S.A, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115

Resolution on the Exploitation of the Rural Crisis by Extremist Organizations

(Adopted by the Governing Board November 8, 1985)

The Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.:

Endorses as its own statement the resolution adopted on April 13, 1985, by the Iowa Inter-Church Agency for Peace and Justice, an agency of the Iowa Inter-Church Forum, and member of the Iowa Farm Unity Coalition:

“We deplore and reject the extremist philosophies and actions of those individuals and organizations that promote violence, anti-semitic, or racist responses to the Farm Crisis, and reaffirm and recommit our efforts and energies to building a constructive, progressive, non-violent farm movement that is committed to justice for all people of this nation and the world.”

(2) Urges the member communions to communicate this Resolution to their congregations along with materials which will inform them about this racist and anti-semitic campaign, and how to combat it.

Policy Bases: “Religious and Civil Liberties in the United States of America,” adopted by the General Board October 5, 1955. “Ethical Goals for Agricultural Policy,” adopted by the General Board June 4, 1958.

A RESOLUTION of the NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN THE U.S.A.

475 Riverside Drive New York, NY 10115

Resolution on the Save-the-Family-Farm Act of 1986

(adopted by the Governing Board, November 6, 1986)

The Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. endorses

(1) The objectives of the Save-the-Family-Farm Act of 1986, which incorporates a strong supply-management program; price supports that cover at least the cost of production; a producer referendum that will enable farmers and ranchers to determine their own future; and a minimization of the financial burden of federal farm programs on the taxpayer.

The Governing Board of the National Council of Churches instructs

(1) The General Secretary to ask Congress and the appropriate Committees of Congress to docket this proposed legislation for immediate consideration upon the convening of Congress in January 1987.

(2) The General Secretary is also instructed to inform the President of the United States and the Secretary of Agri- culture of this action by the National Council of Churches and our expectation for support from the administration.

Policy Base: Ethical Goals for Agricultural Policy, June 4, 1958.

For presentation to Document_________

NCC Governing Board

November 5-7, 1986

Resolution on the Save-the-Family—Farm Act of 1986

Since 1984 the Rural Crisis Issue Team, an ecumenical group of staff persons, responding to a directive from toe Governing Board of the National Council of Churches, has been advocating change in the legislation governing the farm economy. The directive from the Message, “Rural Crisis: A Call for Justice and Action”, states the following:

“to press for enlightened public policy that will preserve the diverse ownership of land and the continuation of the family farm system with its attendant values of stewardship, family, and community responsibility through education and organized action within the congregations of our member Communions.”

The Governing Board has put the National Council on record in Resolutions to support the status of the family farm as it relates to farm tax and credit policies, loss of Black-owned farm land, to warn against extremist organizing in the rural communities, and to respond to the economic development needs from the drought crisis on the farms in the southeastern states.

The Federal Office of Technology Assessment, Spring 1986, stated that “if present trends continue to the end of this century, the total number of farms will continue to decline from 2.2 million in 1982 to 1.2 million in 2000“.

Legislation to reopen the debate on the problems facing family farmers was introduced into the Senate and the House of Representatives on September 23, 1986. The Save-the-Family-Farm Act of 1986 challenges the Food Security Act of 1985, the most recent legislation on farm policy. The new legislation is supported by a broad-based coalition of farmers, consumers, laborers, church leaders, small businesses, bankers and community leaders. The Save-the-Family-Farm Act seeks to control overproduction of farm products while restoring supply/demand balance to the marketplace. It is designed to save dollars for the taxpayer and save America’s family farms and rural communities.

The Governing Board of the National Council of Churches endorses the objectives of the Save-the-Family Farm Act of 1986, which incorporates a strong supply-management program; price supports that cover at least the cost of production; a producer referendum that will enable farmers and ranchers to determine their own future; and a minimization of the financial burden of federal farm programs on the taxpayer.

The Governing Board of the National Council of Churches instructs the General Secretary to ask Congress and the appropriate Committees of Congress to docket this proposed legislation for immediate consideration upon the convening of Congress in January 1987.

The General Secretary is also instructed to inform the President of the United States and the Secretary of Agriculture of this action by the National Council of Churches and our expectation for support from the Administration.

Note accompanying analysis of Save-The-Family-Farm, Act of 1986.

RESOLUTION ON THE “CHRISTIAN IDENTITY” MOVEMENT

Since its beginnings, the National Council of Churches has voiced opposition to all forms of racism and anti-semitism. It has expressed concern about the recurring signs of Nazism and for the victims of Klu Klux Klan violence. In the Theological Statement of Racial Justice, the Governing Board reiterated this concern when it stated that:

“Racism is an expression of idolatry replacing faith in the God who made all people and who raised Jesus from the dead with the belief in the superiority of one race over another or in the universality of a particular form of culture.”

Because of the “Christian Identity” movement’s ideological under- girding for racist violence, it represents a threat to the Christian understanding of the Gospel. “Identity” doctrine is preached at rallies by the para-military White Patriot Party in North Carolina, at survivalist encampments in many sections of the Midwest, and in the halls of the Aryan Nation in the Pacific Northwest. “Christian Identity” played a major role in The Order, an armed criminal underground organization. In addition, Identity ideology has promoted a practical working unity among geographically disparate organizations and groups.

“Christian Identity” centers around the belief that the people of Northern Europe — white Anglo-Saxons — are the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Jews are considered to be the Children of Satan, and racial ethnic people are considered to be “pre-Adamic” — a lower species than people of European ancestry.

“Christian Identity” is neither a single organization nor a monolithic doctrine. Instead it is composed of hundreds of small groupings throughout the United States. It is not confined to any single region of the country, and small Identity churches exist in metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and in the rural hills of Arkansas. Some Identity groups are directly engaged in political action — often violent political action and others are content simply to pass their racist heritage on to their children. Therefore, the most helpful model with which to understand “Christian Identity” is to regard it as a movement rather than a denomination. The Identity movement is composed of interactive parts that continually develop and re-develop its ideological and organizational expression.

The development of para-military activity within the Identity movement is tue result of a convergence of the impulse towards armed violence within the general racist population and an impulse towards armed activity from within Identity ideology itself. Any analysis of para-military activity within the Identity movement must take both sources into account. “Christian Identity” has emerged as a primary religious and spiritual orientation of the Far Right. It incorporates the major neo-Nazi themes, while maintaining itself as an “American” phenomenon. Recently the U.S. has been undergoing a resurgence of bigotry under the guide of Christianity. This resurgence is a deep, ugly stain in American society.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Governing Board of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA:

Reaffirms its commitment to Racial Justice and its opposition to the ideology of the “Christian Identity” movement.

2. Condemn the Identity movement’s perversion of Christianity as a pretext for hatred, racism and anti-semitism.

3. Calls on its member communions to educate their constituencies about the nature and purpose of the “Christian Identity” movement.

4. Calls on the Division of Church and Society to keep the NCCC member communions informed about the “Christian Identity” movement.

Rural Crisis: A Call for Justice and Action

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Message adapted by the Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., May 17, 1984

THE CRISIS OF THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND

The Crisis of Values – The Need for the Faith Community

The Populists’ most dire warnings have gone unheeded. The crushing effects of “progress” have proceeded apace.

The people of the land demand that we be loyal to our faith and, in so doing, come to their assistance.

The Terms and Promise of God’s Covenant

THE CALL TO JUSTICE

We pledged ourselves to heed that call!

We call upon our brothers and sisters of good will:

This message is from the Conference “The Church Encounters the Rural Crisis,” Des Moines, Iowa, October 4-6, 1983

Sponsored by the Iowa Inter-Church Forum, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, Rural America, Rural Iowa and the NCCC/Division of Church and Society

This Message and the Rural Crisis Resource Kit are available* from:

Division of Church & Society, Domestic Hunger and Poverty

National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

475 Riverside Drive, Room 572

New York, N.Y. 10115

*as of 1983

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