Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The relentless drive for profit by agribusiness has had long-lasting and negative effects on all aspects
of society. Public health has been sacrificed on a diet of heavily advertised processed foods that are high
in calories and low in nutrients, resulting in consumers who are overweight and poorly nourished. Obesity
affects 35 percent of adults and 17 percent of children in the United States, and causes a range of health
problems from heart disease to diabetes. And while many Americans are overfed and dieting, one in six
Americans frequently goes hungry.
No segment of society has been more affected by agribusiness and its allies in government over the
past sixty years than farmers. After World War II, farmers became the target of subtle but ruthless policies
aimed at reducing their numbers, thereby creating a large and cheap labor pool. In more recent times, fed-
eral policy has been focused on reducing the number of farms as labor has been replaced by capital and
technology. In 1935, 54 percent of the population lived on 6.8 million farms; between 1950 and 1970, farm
populations declined by more than one-half. Today under a million farms produce the bulk of the food pro-
duced in the United States, and farmers are less than 1 percent of the nation's population.
The struggle to eke out a living has intensified each decade since 1950, because farmers have been
locked into a system of low crop prices, borrowed capital, large debt, high land prices, and a weak safety
net. Unchecked corporate mergers and acquisitions have increased the economic pressure, since fewer
firms are competing to sell the seeds, equipment, and supplies that farmers use every day. At the same time,
they have few choices where to sell their products. A handful of agribusiness and food industry multina-
tional corporations stand between the farmers who produce the food and the more than 300 million people
who consume it in the United States.
Consolidation at the top of the food chain has affected every segment below, including farming. Large-
scale industrial operations comprising only 12 percent of U.S. farms make up 88 percent of the value of
farm production. Family farming stands on the edge of extinction; most small and medium-size farms are
dependent on off-farm income for survival. Although crop prices have been higher since 2008, the in-
creased income has been gobbled up by higher costs for seeds, chemicals, fertilizers, fuel, and feed. 2
The loss of farms has caused a rural bloodletting, leaving rural towns and counties forlorn, boarded-up,
and in some cases completely gone. A Los Angeles Times analysis of census data from fourteen hundred
rural counties in the U.S. heartland, the region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains,
found that rural areas are sparsely populated and continuing to lose people. 3 When farms go out of busi-
ness, the local businesses that depend on them also disappear: the implement dealers and farm supply com-
panies and all of the stores and service providers. Hard times also mean that rural youth disappear to urban
areas in search of jobs—even those who would prefer to farm and live a rural lifestyle.
Farmers have fought back against the rural exodus that has stretched over more than a century. Activists
have long been engaged in a struggle with banks, railroads, and business interests over their inequitable
position within the economic system. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were marked by populist up-
risings against the unfair economic policies that threatened farm family livelihoods. They banded together
to form organizations: as part of the Grange, the Farm Alliance, and the National Farmers Union, they or-
ganized, ran candidates, and joined with progressive allies in labor and social justice movements. Most of
this story has been erased from public consciousness, especially the history of the post-World War II farm
movement. Farmers were still a large and vital political force that had to be reckoned with in the 1950s.
And they were willing to take militant action to protect their families and communities.
The National Farmers Organization (NFO) organized in 1955 to protest a move to reduce crop prices
that was being perpetrated by President Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture, Ezra Benson. Benson was
set on destroying the New Deal program for agriculture—measures that had been designed to ensure fair
farm prices. The large and powerful grain-trading, food-processing, banking, and industrial giants had been
conspiring to cut the cost of grains and to drastically reduce the number of farm families. Farmers were
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