In reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, I am more fascinated by the convoluting, economically nonsensical and environmentally disastrous policy of industrial farm supports. Yes, that is an opinionated statement. And a sound policy-debate does not start off with such accusations. I understand--all policies are viewed, and defensible, through a perspective. From the industrialist perspective or the US superpower perspective, farm supports uphold a billion dollar food industry. Food security is a good thing, right? But from my perspective, that holds many of the same viewpoints as Pollan’s, farm supports uphold little more than massive corporate profits for a select few at the cost of the small and middle size family farm.
During college, a combination of classes sparked my interest in American farm policy and its effect on agrarian communities internationally. First, there is the economic consideration of property rights and the positive correlation between legally-enforceable land ownership and farm output. This principal is significant in global south development, making the argument for improved legal systems to empower rural farmers, decrease poverty levels. Secondly, enforceable property rights systems include the recognition of indigenous land ownership to prevent squatting, deforestation and environmental degradation. In economic courses, I also studied the effect of farm size on productivity levels. In some cases, such as Vietnam and parts of Northern Africa, communal land plots increase output levels and policymakers argue to recognize these larger cooperative holdings rather than individual land plots when designing a property rights system. Contrastingly, in much of Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, small farms and single-owner land titles are more productive than communal plots. The factors distinguishing these productivity levels are complex and lie in social, historical, and environmental influences.
Pollan makes the argument that, when measured by amount of food produced per acre, small-scale farming can actually be more productive per acre than big farms (161). If Pollan is only considering the US, I do not dismiss this argument after reading about the massive environmental costs of our industrial food system and the amount of tax payer money that supports it. Vendana Shiva contributes a refreshingly simple expose to the American food systems measure of productivity, revealing it is quite embarrassingly unproductive when considering all costs. But the question of productivity, all inputs and costs included, is key in designing a functioning and enforceable property rights systems in this market-driven world.
“The industrial values of specialization, economies of scale, and mechanization wind up crowding out ecological values such as diversity, complexity, and symbiosis” p. 161 “ Joel believes transparency is a more powerful disinfectant than any regulation or technology. It is a compelling idea.” P. 235 I believe that these critiques of our food system have such profound application to issues confronting our society at large, and the sacrifices that a globalized, high-speed, highly-integrated, market-driven system must make in the way of locality, environmental consciousness economic equality. In a capitalist world, there is no such thing as a free lunch. On a well managed farm, there is such a thing as a free lunch… and breakfast, and dinner.
Other IPE classes, including one focusing on the WTO, sparked my interest in the weight of the industrial food industry in the NAFTA Agreement—and the windfall of the agreement in crippling rural Mexican corn farms due to the wave of cheap, subsidized American corn. Passed in 2000, the NAFTA trade flows of subsidized corn from the US have forced Mexican farmers to migrate to urban centers ripe with crime, drugs and little opportunity. The economic disparity faced by many of these populations has exacerbated the drug wars currently devastating the Juarez region of Mexico. ** Source**
While the NAFTA agreement has been screwing over Mexican farmers since the 2000, Pollan argues that the farm support policies have similarly deteriorated the economic well-being of the American farming communities since the late 1970s, though at a more slower and economically convoluted pace.** For a historical account of US farm policies, see Omnivore’s Dilemma page 44-55.
Farming families are often portrayed as the principal beneficiaries of farm subsidies. Attacking farm subsidies has become politically un-American, synonymous to attacking the people that heroically harvest those amber waves of grain. Pollan introduces an alternative viewpoint; that the farm supports negatively convolute the market for corn by forcing prices lower and production levels higher. In effect, exploiting the farmer by systemically cheapening his commodity. ‘Deficiency payments’ handed out to farmers encourage them to produce as much corn as they can, driving the price of corn in the market even lower. Although the price for corn is plummeting, the only possible way for the farmer to retain the same income level is to grow more corn, flooding the market with more surplus. The margin of profit receivable to the farmer decreases, despite the additional subsidy payments from the government, while the corn coffers of some of the world’s largest food buyers (ADM and Cargill, Cargill=the biggest privately held corporation in the world) are flush with tradable commodities. The American farmer is exploited by these policies, not supported.
In writing this, I feel somewhat guilty of ranting like a conspiracy theorist. How can the story be that simple? Big capitalist took growing food from Farm Belt, turned it into a massive industry that is single handedly responsible for the Mexican Drug Wars, America’s obesity problem, global warming, and complacency and corporate money in politics. Pollan’s book sheds light on another deleterious side of the farm supports previously unknown to me—its screwing over of American farmers for corporate profit.
“But since the hey day of corn prices in the early seventies, farm income has steadily declined along with corn prices, forcing millions of farmers deeper into debt and thousands of them into bankruptcy every week.” P. 53
Quote from an Iowan corn farmer, George Naylor, interviewed by Pollan, “The market is telling me to grow corn and soybeans, period.” As is the government, which calculated his various subsidy payments based on the yield of corn.
This economic policy of paying American corn farmers deficiency payments has created this massive ‘mountain of cheap corn” and economy, society and the environment have adjusted to consume it. P. 62
“Taken together these federal payments account for nearly half the income of the average Iowa corn farmer and represent roughly a quarter of the 19$ billion U.S. tax payers spend each year on payments to farmers.” P. 61
** Here, a point should be made about complacency over time, and its centrality in numbing human aversion to change. Pollan has a great section on this point regarding the slaughter of chickens (p.233). This same notion can be used to describe the reason many of us continue to eat factory-farmed beef. Over time, and when everyone is doing it, the system is habituated and accepted as routine. The usurpation of the American food system to an industrial-complex requires this complacency of the public.
“I wasn’t at it long enough for slaughtering chickens to become routine, but the work did begin to feel mechanical, and that feeling, perhaps more than any other, was disconcerting: how quickly you can get used to anything, especially when the people around you think nothing of it. In a way, the most troubling thing about killing chickens is that after a while it is no longer troubling.”
To be honest, this is why our society will never enact an impactful Climate Change Bill and global warming will be cause the end of humanity on earth. Sorry, dismal. Guess I’m a realist.
In light of Pollan’s account of historical Farm Belt politics, the geographic regionalization of partisan politics today becomes even more transparent. Historically, the Farm Belt of America was the most Republican, most traditional, rural populist core of the country. At the turn of the century, the adversary to the small-scale American farmer was Wall Street, who attempted to drive market efficiency and increase production at the expense of the number of family farms the land could support. As documented by Pollan, Wall Street and the policies of Earl Butz in the post Nixon era succeeded in driving up production levels and forcing farmers off their land. Agribusiness became the new method of production and the American small-scale farmer all but disappeared. This demographic shift cannot be ignored when we consider poverty rates in this country, declining middle class and increasing disparities between the rich and poor. The white, previously middle class farmer has undergone an external systemic shock that has curtailed his ability to produce without massive capital investments in large fertilizers, machinery and acreage. According to Naylor, the farm supports policy since the 1970s has stripped American farm families from their source of income. Whole communities have left the Farm Belt for the big city, office jobs, and economic opportunity. High School counselors advise students with good grades to work hard to get a college education, their ticket out of the economically depressed regions. This leaves only the unmotivated, dim-witted children behind to manage the farm. The miny brain drain oscillating right there within the Mid-West. Motivation for Tea Party activism anyone? And why Tea Party activist come across as so dumb-sounding to left-wing liberals.. because it is all the farmers still stuck in the rural, devote Republican regions of the country that did not succeed in leaving over these past thirty years? P.51
No comments:
Post a Comment