No Farms, No Food: Buy Local While You Still Can
The government is hell bent on destroying the family farm.
When I retired, I bought a ten acre piece of land that we turned into a small heirloom fruit and herb farm. For twelve years we took our produce to farmers markets. One particular market manager labeled our stuff as “locally grown”. We were fifty miles from that market location, and, we of course told our customers where our farm was located so they could decide if we were local.
Is fifty miles local?
The pandemic caused us to quit going to market, thus quit farming for market. We grow our own food now and that’s it. But in those twelve years, I learned a-lot.
I now see food system issues with a more informed point of view.
This from a recent New York Post story, where they interviewed five upstate New York small family farms who fear they are the last generation of “buy local” farmers:
“Within the next few months, the United States is projected to import more agricultural products than it exports for the first time in history — a worrisome development for America’s family farmers, who say government meddling threatens their livelihoods and the nation’s food security.”
Government Meddling
Whenever I read anything about “climate change” or “green new deal” or “climate smart agriculture”, I cringe.
Policies being made by people who have never grown a thing.
The arrogance of the attitude that humans can change the course of what mother nature plans for us.
Mother Nature will bitch-slap you any chance she gets and then do it again for being stupid about whatever it is you’re trying to do.
Ask any farmer.
Between 1966 and 1976 China went through the “Cultural Revolution”, it was the slow death of China as a great country. The Cultural Revolution brought oppression. School teachers were persecuted, “enemies” of the state were killed, news was controlled, families were controlled and food was controlled.
The sad thing about the Cultural Revolution was it came after what was called “The Great Leap Forward” (1958-1962), a movement in China led by the Communist Party of China. The purpose was to transform the country from an agrarian (relating to cultivated land or the cultivation of land) economy to an industrialist (relating to industry) Communist society.
What ultimately happened was that thirty million people died from starvation because of the governmental controls placed on the agricultural outputs of the country.
Influenced by the ideals of the Cultural Revolution in China, Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s Communist regime implemented similar policies. It is estimated that one to two million people died from starvation, overwork or execution under his regime (1975-1979). The Khmer Rouge was one of the most brutal Communist regimes in the 20th Century.
The same sort of thing is happening in Venezuela under the Socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro, food is scarce because six million hectares (one hectare is equal to 2.5 acres) was taken from private farmers and placed into the hands of the state so it could control what was grown. Venezuela’s food production fell seventy five percent, which has led to food shortages there currently.
Today, we have similar things going on in many places, under the guise of protecting the planet.
“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.” George Orwell
A recent Dutch climate proposal would close up to thirty percent of their farms and force farmers to kill off livestock in order to comply with European Union (EU) environmental rules. When the plan was announced, farmers were given three options: Comply; Relocate; or Shutdown. The Netherlands is the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world, the largest exporter of meat among all EU nations, and the third largest dairy exporter in the world.
Canadian farmers are worried Prime Minister Trudeau’s nitrogen reduction proposal will significantly cut yields to canola, corn, and wheat.
South Africa, the world’s second largest exporter of fresh citrus, filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization last month after the European Union introduced new plant and health safety requirements that orange farmers say threaten their survival. The measures came into force in July as ships were already at sea carrying hundreds of containers full of South African citrus to Europe, resulting in them being held up on arrival. Oranges are perishable.
The Irish government made climate standards more stringent, one farmer described that it “made whole classes of farms unviable.” Ireland exports barley, beef, butter and cheese.
Sri Lanka embraced this “green approach” when the government banned the use of chemical fertilizers to “protect the soil and biodiversity.” As a result, crop production fell thirty to fifty percent, and presently the country is in disarray. The Sri Lankan people are starving, the economy is collapsing.
Germany will be facing meat shortages this winter. Why? The decrease in meat supply is due to Berlin insisting on reducing the numbers of livestock by 50% to reduce global warming emissions (cow farts). Experts are warning this policy will result in mass shutdown of meat-producing companies, and that will produce a 40% rise in the price of meat.
The Biden administration is also pushing “climate smart agriculture”. One definition: Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) (also not to be confused with Community Supported Agriculture) may be defined as an approach for transforming and reorienting agricultural development under the new realities of climate change.
See the pattern?
Governments are hell bent on destroying the family farm.
But it’s not just climate policies that are harming family farms. It is also urban sprawl.
American Farmland Trust (AFT) reports:
“From 2001–2016, eleven million acres of agricultural land were paved over, fragmented, or converted to uses that jeopardize agriculture. New AFT research indicates that the U.S. is projected to lose an additional 18.4 million acres by 2040”.
But climate policies and urban sprawl aren’t the only problems.
Did you know the average age of an American farmer is fifty-eight? That’s us Boomers in case you haven’t worked the math. The average age for an organic farmer is fifty-two (more Boomers) and the average age of a beginning farmer is forty-seven.
We’re retiring. The pandemic made many farmers my age decide to retire.
One third of America’s 3.4 million farmers are over the age of sixty five, and nearly a million more of them are within a decade of that milestone, according to USDA (US Department of Agriculture) Census of Agriculture data (2017). The average age of new and beginning farmers is 46.3 years, says the 2017 census while young producers, age thirty five or younger, account for nine percent of farmers.
But wait there’s more.
The Farm Bill
The Farm bill, which gets negotiated every five years, is currently being discussed in Congress. It impacts farmers, low income families, rural communities and the bill influences trade, public health and much more.
Why does a Farm bill include low income families, rural communities and influence trade and public health?
The Farm bill originated with the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s(D) (1933-1945) New Deal.
The “New Deal” was a massive set of domestic programs designed to bring the country out of the American the Great Depression (between 1929 and 1939) and make reforms in industry, agriculture, finance, labor, housing and infrastructure.
Since then, they’ve never untangled the domestic programs from the agriculture portions of this bill.
Have you ever thought about why they’ve never untangled the domestic programs from the agriculture portions of this bill?
It’s a great disguise for hiding the size of the welfare state.
Passed approximately every five years by the United States Congress, the Farm bill is an approximate $500 billion piece of legislation addressing nutrition, agriculture and other policy issues under the purview of the USDA.
The bill changes and adjusts parts of existing permanent law; reauthorizes, changes or repeals pieces of previous farm bills; and advances new policies and new programs.
The farm bill is made up of about a dozen sections, called “titles,” covering aspects of the food system from farm to fork:
TITLE I. Commodities: Covers payment and loan programs for farmers who grow commodity crops like corn, wheat, rice and soybeans. Direct and counter-cyclical payments to farmers have been eliminated. Farmers must incur crop losses or damage in order to receive government payments.
TITLE II. Conservation: Pays for conservation programs that provide financial incentives, training and technical assistance to farmers to encourage them to protect waterways, soil, habitats, wild animals and environmentally sensitive lands.
TITLE III. Trade: Financially funds programs that focus on providing international food aid to developing countries. This they say is used as a key tool of American diplomacy and foreign policy but it also helps with commodity crop exports. It also provides funding for programs that offer technical support to farmers, food education and child nutrition programs across the globe.
TITLE IV. Nutrition: Historically, the biggest ticket item in the farm bill is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This title also includes other related nutrition and education programs, as well as grant programs that the emergency food system relies on to operate food banks and soup kitchens.
TITLE V. Credit: Contains programs to extend loans and credit to farmers. It also offers a grant matching program for states offering last resort loans to farmers unable to obtain money from other lenders.
TITLE VI. Rural Development: Includes community development, economic and infrastructure development programs. These programs provide investment and loans for development of cooperatives and small businesses in struggling rural areas. They also provide programs intended to combat rural health crises such as substance abuse. The title also supports rural utilities, water and waste management and other infrastructure.
TITLE VII. Research and Extension: Authorizes USDA to conduct agricultural research and provide support for cooperative extension programs and other state-level agricultural higher education programs.
TITLE VIII. Forestry: Includes programs to protect forests by incentivizing rural communities to be stewards in conservation.
TITLE IX. Energy: Pays for the development and promotion of the production of renewable energy from biofuels and agricultural products. It includes grant programs for farmers and rural businesses to incentivize renewable energy and energy efficiency technology installations and improvements, biofuel research.
TITLE X. Horticulture: Includes programs to support fruit and vegetable production (known as “specialty crops”), as well as organic and local foods. The title also includes funding for the innovative programs that small and sustainable farmers and community-based organizations depend on.
TITLE XI. Crop Insurance: Crop insurance is now the primary safety net program for farmers. Insurance contracts, which are made on a crop-by-crop and county-by-county basis offer some protection against losses due to market price drops, bad weather or other categories of crop damage.
TITLE XII. Miscellaneous: The last title in the 2018 Farm Bill contained a mix of different programs that didn’t quite fit into the other titles of the bill.
2018 financial breakdown of the $428 billion total:
Nutrition assistance 76.1%
Crop insurance 8.9%
Commodities 7.3%
Conservation 6.8%
Trade .5%
Other .3% (Includes titles: Credit, rural development, forestry, energy, research extension, horticulture and misc.
Common Sense
“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.” Henry Kissinger
Policies are being made by people who have never grown a thing.
Policies are being made by people who think they know what’s best for you.
The government is hell bent on destroying the family farm.
All of the policies and issues mentioned above make the family farm unprofitable. An unprofitable farm causes younger generations to seek other means to provide for their families.
Unprofitable smaller farms prevent new generations from being able to enter the profession because entry level costs are prohibitive (excessively high).
Let it all make you angry.
It should.
What will be left are the huge corporate farms (think Driscol’s, Ocean Mist, Dole) and the “hobby farm”, which is what we were.
Huge corporate farms grow tasteless blackberries, melons, raspberries and strawberries by the way. It’s why we started our farm. We wanted good fruit that tasted like it was supposed to, so did the “local” community.
Will people even know what a good blackberry, melon, raspberry or strawberry tastes like in the future?
There is’t any good common sense news I can provide the reader because the big picture really is out of your hands.
People generally don’t focus on all of the issues I pulled together here.
But they should.
What I can say is that urban and suburban living will be quite difficult if there are ever food shortages.
You can’t grow the food you need with a balcony garden, a small backyard garden, or even in a community garden.
What I can offer is, in being informed, you can make the important decisions surrounding these issues for yourself and your family.
Books:
The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year by Spring Warren (Author), Jesse Pruet (Illustrator).
Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham.
Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System, 2nd Edition by Mary Appelhof (Author), Mary Frances Fenton (Illustrator).
Let It Rot!: The Gardener's Guide to Composting (Third Edition) by Stu Campbell.
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1: Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape, 2nd Edition by Brad Lancaster.
There's so many layers here to tease apart. The New Deal was one of the worst death blows for small farmers where it became more profitable to get paid to NOT farm. Great book on the topic is:
New Deal or Raw Deal
Another topic full of factory farm shenanigans is about the water wars and irrigation catastrophes out west called
Cadillac Desert.
I'm currently apply Drylands Water Harvesting techniques in my property on Arizona and working to rebuild native grasses for grazing and water retention to grow fruit trees. That book is fantastic.
And lastly, the entire concept burning it all to the ground over climate change ignores something very important. All of these restrictions are based on an arbitrarily determined temperature and CO2 level. I say this because plant life is optimized for 1000-1200ppm of CO2. CO2 is a fertilizer for plants, not a pollutant. More on that here:
https://polymathicbeing.substack.com/p/the-climate-is-changing
Thank you for your excellent, albeit depressing, article. It reminds me of the NJ single-use plastic bag ban which I felt was long overdue. However, the gov't failed to take into consideration the number of shoppers that pick up their groceries that have already been packed by store employees in re-usable bags that can not be returned for a second use, and will certainly be piling up in landfills. This is a popular convenience where we live. I may check out the composting book that you suggest. We have been composting for years, but not that efficiently.