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Our Disappearing Farmers, Dollars, and Future Like the water in the well that goes dry, you don’t miss it until it’s gone and then it is just too late. In a society where our supermarkets overflow with food of every description, the notion that America is forcing its already small population of farmers, ranchers, and dairymen to quit must seem odd. I was reminded of this by a recent Business Week cover story, "Can Anyone Steer This Economy?" by Michael Mandel. He began by noting that sometime next year the U.S. will hit a milestone. "For the first time in recent memory, the cost of imported goods and services will exceed federal revenues. In other words, Americans will soon pay more to foreigners than they do to their national government." If you like imported oil, said some sage, you will love imported food. The price of imported food involves more than one might imagine. Among the cost will be the loss of America’s wheat-growing farms, once known as the breadbasket for the world. That’s because the cost of growing wheat is exceeding the price it can get. Unless a farm bill wandering around Congress looking for a vote insures that farmers can receive a rational target price and the farmers an appropriate direct payment, they will be out of business. As Jerry Snyder, president of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, says, if the situation remains as it is, "all wheat growers have a chance of becoming dinosaurs. We will cease to exist." Right now "farmers are selling out, going broke, or leaving farming altogether." Why should we worry about some wheat farmers? Well, for one thing, when you start to import food there is no guarantee it has been grown under the same standards as here in the U.S. It simply will not be as safe to eat as homegrown food. For another, with all the wailing about being "energy independent", what happens when Americans become dependent on other nations for our food supply? Think about this, for the first time since the 1930s, "we have a situation where gas was more than the price for a bushel of wheat."
If Congress wasn’t a perpetual drag on solving these problems, it is also the place where some truly awful "environmental" legislation was ginned up, one of the worst being the Endangered Species Act. Not merely just a gigantic failure in its own right, the ESA damn near drove the farmers in the Klamath River Basin in southwest Oregon and northwest California out of business back in 2001. That was when the Bureau of Reclamation shut off water to 210,000 irrigated acres and 1,400 farmers just as they began spring planting. This was done in the name of saving some useless fish specie. It took the intercession of the National Academy of Sciences to point out how idiotic the ruling was, but would you believe that the same thing is being reenacted in Idaho’s Snake River Basin thanks to a lone federal judge who has decided that salmon need the water more than the farmers. You can thank some zealous environmental organizations for this kind of calamity because, in the end, they care far less about farmers than fish. The dairy industry has been subject to the weirdness afflicting others producing food. As Lynne Finnerty of the American Farm Bureau’s news service points out, "While the price of most things has gone up, the price of milk has come down. The average price of a gallon of milk is $3 today. It was $1.03 in 1967, but that’s $6.24 in today’s dollars. The price was 36 cents a gallon in 1915, or $7.22 in 2006 dollars." That’s the kind of arithmetic that puts dairymen out of business. Finnerty notes that, "The number of farms has shrunk dramatically. There were 6.5 million farms in 1915. Today, we’re down to 2.1 million." As the farmer’s share of each dollar spent for food continues to shrink, the cost of producing it increases. This is happening despite larger-scale farming and modern agricultural equipment, as well as the introduction of hybrid seeds and biotechnology. Today’s shrinking farm population produces more food on fewer farms today than in 1915. And who has been the most vocal foe of biotechnology? The environmentalists. Despite or maybe because of the Earth’s huge human population, everywhere biotechnology with its genetically modified crops has promised to feed the billions who share the Earth, the environmentalists have fought the introduction of this innovation. Finally, this is happening as the push is on to turn a food product, corn, into a gas additive in the form of ethanol. The U.S. could have more oil if it would just permit producers to get at it, but the new fad of biofuels is going to drive up the cost of corn-based food products. It is another "perfect storm" as more American farmers face the decision to quit farming and more Americans become dependent on imported foods. When they are gone, the sons and daughters of the shrinking farm population will not want to replace them, even as food prices begin to soar. In a nation that has plenty of native timberland, we are importing timber. In a nation with hundreds of years of coal reserves, we are making it nearly impossible to build coal-fired utilities to provide for our growing need for electricity. In a nation where ample reserves of oil and natural gas exist, we will be importing more and more of it. And sometime in 2007, more American dollars will go overseas than the U.S. government collects to meet our national security and other needs. Does any of this make any sense to you? It doesn’t to me. Alan Caruba’s new book, "Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy", would make a great gift. Order yours today. Click here or visit the online book venues. A friend of mine and fellow pundit recently asked, "How many wars can you lose and still be a superpower?"
A tad harsh you might say, but essentially the truth. I have meant to remind Lionel of our victory in Panama in which we deposed and then jailed Manuel Noriega. Clearly, we can dispatch irksome dictators in places like Grenada or Panama whenever we want. Ironically, the effort of the Reagan administration to keep Nicaragua’s leader of the Marxist Sandanistas, Daniel Ortega, from gaining power hasn’t turned out quite as planned. He just got elected president. I am beginning to lose count of how many South American nations have embraced a Marxist orientation. The only good thing I can think of about Cuba these days is that I will outlive Fidel Castro. I was a college student when he took over. A few years later I was in full battle gear getting ready to invade until Krushchev pulled the missiles out. A lot of our military ventures since WWII have not turned out as planned. There’s a big, five-sided building in Washington, D.C., filled with men trained at West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy or who have risen through our other Army and Navy institutes, studying the art of war. They are quite expert at destroying any target you can name anywhere on the face of the globe. Since WWII, however, the U.S. has engaged in the process of patching and filling the holes we made in order to insure we left behind democratic governments. On the whole, I think we’ve done well. One can cite the economic success stories of Japan, South Korea, along with Southeast Asia. We have afforded vital protection to Taiwan, another democracy and economic dynamo. After WWII, we protected Europe against the Soviets until their system fell apart in 1991, their satellite nations were freed, and Germany was reunited. The problem with Europe was that, by the time reunification occurred, the entire continent had adopted socialism, a softcore, but equally lethal version of communism. Today, its native-born populations are in decline and those who could or would not flee are now living in fear of the Muslim hordes in their midst. The United States will not rescue Europe or the United Kingdom from its Muslims. Ironically, it has engaged in any number of military operations, Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo intended to protect Muslims and, each time, our soldiers were either bombed, shot, or otherwise unappreciated. Congress in its infinite wisdom has put its collective finger in the wind and concluded that Americans want out of Iraq as fast as possible. As eager as we were to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, we are now just as eager to leave. Motivated by a desire to rid their land of occupation forces, they are fulfilling the strategic goal of al Qaeda. Either sooner or later, we will redeploy troops to other places in the region that are quite rationally afraid of Iran’s growing power even as we kiss off Iraq and leave it to their hegemony. We literally fought the war with Iraq that the Iranians were unable to win in the 1980s and we rid them of the menace of Saddam. They don’t seem too grateful for the favor. As this is written, we have a huge fleet of menacing war ships parked off the coast of Iran and it does not seem to be having the desired effect. Instead, Iran fired off an impressive array of missiles and its leader keeps talking about the nuclear bomb it expects to have in its arsenal any day now. Lionel Waxman has taken a look at the world and found a soon-to-be nuclear Iran, a nuclear China, a nuclear North Korea, and a still nuclear Russia. Japan’s prime minister is trying to get its constitution changed in order to order up some nukes of its own. India, as a counter-balance to Pakistan, is nuclear. Both England and France have nukes as well. Israel, too, it’s rumored. As Waxman put it, "And when nuclear Iran has disposed of Israel, they will use that Axis of Evil to form a crushing pincers movement against the United States. North Korea, eager to play with the big boys, and all their other comrades, Venezuela, Cuba, and smaller and smaller, they will all gang up on the U.S., whose people only want to be left alone. But we have rolled over on our back and they will dismember us." For now, as we did in Vietnam, though for different reasons, we are preparing roll over. Reluctant to use our military power, too politically correct to even want to put a name on our new global enemy, we seem likely to be either nibbled to death by little Commie duckies or blown to Kingdom Come by some Islamic madman. Editor’s Note: To enjoy Lionel Waxman on a daily basis, visit his website at http://www.waxmanmedia.com. If you value straight talk, then please help the Center continue to speak out on the issues of our time. Your donation is needed. If you prefer, you can send your check or money order to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you! |
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As Congress dawdles around about the farm bill, it also loses valuable time insuring that oil companies can drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and States resist permitting the exploration and extraction of oil and natural gas off our coastlines. Why is that important? For one thing, natural gas is an important component in the production of the fertilizers farmers use. For another, modern farming needs affordable gas and diesel fuel for its huge combines and other equipment.
Lionel Waxman has an inordinate fondness for reality. "The last war we unequivocally won was World War II, unless you want to count Grenada. We fought to a draw in Korea. We gave up in Vietnam. And now we are giving up in Iraq."