THANK POLITICIANS FOR SOME FARM PROBLEMS Courier Journal 01-11-2000 The Dec. 24 article, "Technology Preserves Family’s Farm Tradition," talks about the Rulon family, which has gone from farming 200 acres to 5,000 acres over the last 100 years, thanks to the wonderful technology that is now available. This is not the first time I’ve seen a newspaper article holding the Rulon family up as today’s modern family farmers. The technology mentioned in your article might help the Rulons manage their 5,000 acre operation, but we should ask what caused them to want to get so big or allowed them to buy up so much farmland. Many farmers want to increase in size so they can spread their fixed costs, like the cost of a combine, over more acres. This gives them more bang for the buck. These days, farmers need all the bang they can get. The cost of corn and soybeans is well below the cost of production, forcing farmers to cut corners and become as "efficient" as possible. Thus, there is a need to expand. There is also the ability to expand. Many small farms are going out of business because of the low prices. This gives larger farms the opportunity to buy them up. The USDA is predicting that the average farming family will earn $4,676 this year from their farming operation. This is down from over $7,000 when the last farm bill was passed in 1996. Farms are becoming more specialized as well. Family farms used to raise both crops and livestock. It costs a farmer more to grow a bushel of corn now than it costs corporate agribusiness to buy it. So farmers who used to grow feed for their livestock cannot compete with a corporation that has vertically integrated and is feeding 10,000 head of hogs in a confined feeding operation, purchasing its grain cheaper than the farmer can grow it. Farmers end up selling out, or else stop raising livestock, plowing all their available acres to plant row crops. This leads to overproduction of corn and soybeans, further depressing prices and allowing for more vertical integration of livestock production. Livestock ends up being produced by factory farms, which have both health and environmental risks, not to mention the inhumane way animals are treated in these types of operations. Big farms get bigger striving to produce a cheaper product, while consumers and farmers get taken advantage of by corporations that give the farmer less and less for his product while charging the consumer more and more at the supermarket. We can thank our politicians who supported the last farm bill known as "Freedom to Farm," for a lot of these problems. By taking away production controls and phasing out price supports, this bill has led maximum production of grains and oilseeds, leading to a collapse in commodity prices. As far as small farmers are concerned, they might as well be "farming for free".
As far as the Rulon family is concerned, they’d make a lot more money farming 2,500 acres of land than they are farming 5,000 acres of corn was more than $4 a bushel rather than less than $2. Moreover, if we had a farm bill that gave farmers a fair price, the Rulons wouldn’t be able to farm 5,000 acres because their neighbors wouldn’t all be going broke and selling out. This would allow for many more families to preserve their farm tradition as well. JIM HOYER
Go to Family Farm Issues Index
| CAC Home Page
| Table of Contents | Issues Index |
|