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Small Kansas farms falling by wayside; other news
(Wednesday, June 29, 2005 -- CropChoice news) -- 1. Small Kansas farms falling by wayside 1. Small Kansas farms falling by wayside LJWorld.com, Wednesday, June 22, 2005 Kansas farms are disappearing. Thirty-five years ago, there were 87,000. Today, there are 62,000. Fewer farms mean fewer farmers. So more than two-thirds of the state's
counties lost population between 1980 and 2000. Four counties - Jewell, Graham, Rawlins, Osborne - suffered 20-year
population losses topping 25 percent. "It's not good," said George Pyle, a native Kansan and author of the book
"Raising Less Corn, More Hell: The Case for the Independent Farm and Against
Industrial Food." "Communities all across the state that once supported - and were supported
by - farmers are drying up and blowing away," he said. More and more, Pyle said, family farms are giving way to bigger family farms
or giant corporations that need fewer people to work more land, raise more
cattle, feed more hogs. "We're told all the time that this is inevitable, that it's a consequence of
the free and open market," he said. "But the market is neither free nor open
- it's built on subsidies that make no sense at all, that force the big to
get bigger and the small to get out." Pyle, 48, knows Kansas. After growing up in Hutchinson, he spent 23 years
writing for the daily newspapers in Garden City, Ottawa, Olathe, Chanute and
Salina. Now an editorial writer at the Salt Lake Tribune, he was a Pulitzer Prize
finalist for editorial writing in 1998. The market, he argued, is controlled by a handful of corporations that have
finagled a trade: Cheap food in exchange for the federal government looking
the other way on enforcement of the nation's environmental, work place
safety and anti-trust laws. "We're helping the bear," Pyle said, referring to the joke about the man who
skipped church to go hunting. Later treed by a hungry bear, the man quickly
prayed: "Lord, I know you can't help me because I wasn't in church today,
but, please, whatever you do, don't help the bear." "Our government and the ag lobbies have bought into the notion that if
something is bigger, faster, more efficient - it has to be better," Pyle
said. "Well, that's what (Russian dictator) Uncle Joe Stalin thought. He was
wrong, too." "Raising Less Corn, More Hell" arrived in bookstores last week. Already, it
has struck a chord with Dan Nagangast, a Lawrence organic farmer and
executive director of the Kansas Rural Center. "What this book does is take all the different issues that affect
agriculture - world trade, commodity production, the environment, the fate
of the family farmer - and ties them all together," Nagangast said. "I know
that sounds simple, but I can't think of anybody else who's done it." Aging farmers At Kansas Farm Bureau headquarters in Manhattan, spokesman Mike Matson said
the association does not dispute the demographic changes brought on by
bigger-is-better agriculture. "The average age of the Kansas Farm Bureau member is 58 to 59 years old,"
Matson said. "Play that forward a generation, and you'll see that the
numbers of people producing raw commodities are clearly on a downward trend. "And look at what's happening to the land - it's no longer a given that the
son or daughter will come back to take over the farm," Matson said. "As a
result, we're seeing fourth-generation farms divvied up and sold in ways the
original landowners never would have imagined." Rather than fighting the changes, Matson said, Farm Bureau is looking for
ways to help its members adjust and survive. "The train is on the track," he said. "I don't think anyone is going to say
if we stood in front of it, we'd stop it." That's true, Pyle said, but only because farmers are small pawns in a big
game. "If things are going to change, the public is going to have to understand
that farmers are too few in number to be politically powerful. The power in
agriculture lies in the corporations that have made it the way it is," Pyle
said. "They're not going to change." But grocery shoppers, he said, can make a difference. "Instead of buying whatever's cheap, they need to look a little harder and
pay more for whatever's organic or locally grown," Pyle said, "whatever
makes it possible for producers who aren't in the industrial chain to make a
living."
2. Farm support's deep roots The Economist, June 22, 2005 A new report from the OECD indicates that progress on reducing
agricultural subsidies in the rich world has been glacial. Unless
governments get tough with their powerful farming lobbies and cut their
supports, farm subsidies could stymie further progress on world trade
liberalisation. LITERATURE about farming often gushes about living in harmony with the
eternal rhythms of nature. "Eternal" certainly seems the right word to
describe the generous subsidies that rich-world farmers enjoy. For a
group whose population is rapidly shrinking, and whose products have
been declining in value for centuries, farmers wield an astonishing
amount of political power. Though farm subsidies are the bane of liberal
and conservative economists alike, farmers have survived decades of
trade liberalisation almost unscathed, and may well emerge from the
current Doha round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations with
little alteration to their pampered existence. A new report, released by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and
Development (OECD) on Tuesday June 21st, shows just how little progress
has been made on liberalising agriculture over the past two decades.
While the value of farm protection in OECD countries has fallen from 37%
of farm receipts in 1986-88 to 30% in 2002-04, progress has faltered
since the late 1990s. The OECD estimates that the value of support to
its producers was a staggering $279 billion in 2004. There is, though, wide variation between OECD members. Producer support
is worth less than 5% of farm receipts in New Zealand and Australia, but
amounts to roughly 20% throughout North America, 34% in the European
Union, and a whopping 60% in Japan. And while the overall value of
support has fallen from 2.3% of GDP in 1986-88 to 1.2% now, the
reductions have been uneven (see chart above). Canada and Mexico have
made deep cuts in their farm supports, for instance, while Turkey has
actually increased its supports. While progress on reducing support levels may be painfully slow, most
governments have managed to reduce the more distorting kinds of
protections. Instead of subsidies tied to production levels, which were
responsible for the infamous mountains of butter and lakes of wine that
used to plague European agriculture officials, countries are slowly
moving towards compensation based on acreage or historical support
levels. In 1986-88, the majority of OECD countries had 90% or more of
their support programmes linked to either current outputs or inputs;
that number has now fallen below 75% in most of Europe, though it
remains above 90% in Japan and South Korea. But agricultural policies in rich countries still distort markets at
home and abroad. Worse, they hurt the poor. Price-support mechanisms
make domestic consumers pay more for their food, hitting low-income
families the hardest. And for farmers in poor countries, OECD
agricultural policies are disastrous. If those farmers aren't being kept
out of export markets by quotas or tariffs, they are being undercut in
domestic markets by heavily subsidised produce from the developed world.
While some have argued that rich-world subsidies are a net boon to poor
countries because they provide cheap food to the masses, in those
countries the poorest are often rural farmers, whose lives would be
improved by higher prices for their products. Even where distortions have been reduced, legislators have passed up the
opportunity to tailor supports to specific beneficiaries or policy
goals, such as environmental protection. Instead, new programmes have
mostly been drawn along broad lines, the better to maintain the
political support of farmers. Payments for acres of land or head of
cattle may be better than compensation based on bushels of wheat or
gallons of milk, but they still distort the economy, and give farmers
incentive to cultivate marginal land. FARM POWER Europe, in particular, is struggling with its cosseted and deeply
entrenched farm lobby. France has historically been the biggest obstacle
to reform; almost half its area is farmland, and its farmers defend
their subsidies vigorously. Thanks to such obstructionism, the EU's
common agricultural policy (CAP) accounts for nearly half of its overall
budget, even though only 4% of its population still works the land.
Though there has been some modest progress on reform in recent years,
disputes over the CAP are still acrimonious. A row over its funding was
the main reason for the collapse of the EU summit in Brussels last week. America's agricultural mollycoddling is less egregious, but egregious it
still is, and the farm lobby is just as determined to keep the money
flowing. In 1996, Bill Clinton signed a farm bill that was supposed to
lead to the gradual elimination of agricultural protections. Mr Clinton
is long gone, but the protections aren't--indeed, the 2002 farm package
signed into law by George Bush nearly doubled the level of federal
subsidy. This has not bought Mr Bush peace with the farm lobbies, however. Sugar
growers are currently working overtime to derail the Central American
Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which the president is trying to get
through Congress before the July 4th holiday. Though other agricultural
producers are actually supporting the agreement, the sugar lobby has a
good chance of picking off enough Republican legislators to defeat it. CAFTA is too small to make much difference to the American economy one
way or the other, though passing it would give a huge boost to the other
countries in the agreement. But politically, failing to pass CAFTA would
be a deep blow to the Bush administration. And if the administration
cannot manage to pass a small regional trade pact, prospects will look a
lot dimmer for securing a substantial new agreement in the Doha round. Nonetheless, the OECD is looking to the WTO for further progress on
subsidies. A hopeful sign is that agricultural protections are beginning
to be disputed at the WTO. Since last year Brazil has won WTO challenges
against American cotton subsidies and EU sugar protections, on the
ground that they far exceed established limits. This week the EU
announced plans to cut its sugar subsidies by 39%, despite stiff
resistance from uncompetitive European producers. Now that the Uruguay
round's "peace clause", which protected farm subsidies from challenge
provided they did not exceed 1992 levels, has expired, rich-world
subsidies are vulnerable to further onslaught. But a successful challenge at the WTO does not guarantee the rapid
dismantling of farm supports. More than a year after being told to scrap
its cotton subsidies, the Bush administration still hasn't put forward a
plan palatable to both its own producers and those in Brazil, which is
threatening to retaliate by removing patent and copyright protection for
American products. Perhaps farmers can be forgiven for thinking that
they have eternity on their side. See this article with graphics and related items at http://
www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4100673
3. Farm and Food: Prepare for big ethanol imports under free-trade agreements By ALAN GUEBERT/Farm and Food Columnist The harder anyone scratches the Central American Free Trade Agreement pushed
by the White House, the worse the smell in American agriculture gets. First, it was the creeping expansion of sugar exports to the U.S. Next, it was the time - years, even decades - before U.S. farmers receive
duty-free, total access to the tiny, poor Central American countries
included in the agreement. Now it's a threat to American agriculture's shiny, new star, ethanol. According to a June 22 report issued by the Institute of Agriculture and
Trade Policy, the Central American agreement virtually guarantees a rising
tide of duty-free ethanol exports from Caribbean and South American nations
to the U.S. A whiff of that plan arrived a year ago when Cargill, Inc., the $63 billion
agbiz giant, announced plans to use a little-noticed clause in the
Caribbean Basin Initiative to ship sugar-based, Brazilian ethanol into El
Salvador for dehydration, then export to the U.S. Under that initiative, up to 7 percent of total annual U.S. ethanol
production - made from a "foreign feedstock, i.e. sugar from another,
non-CBI country," notes the instittute's report - can be exported to the
U.S. duty-free if it is produced in any of the 24 nations covered by the
Caribbean Basin Initiative. Years ago that 7 percent was a drop in the ethanol bucket. Now, however, with the ethanol market booming in the U.S. - and Congress
likely to require the use of 8 billion gallons annually, or more than double
today's production, by 2012 - the bucket will overflow. Under the Caribbean initiative, almost 240 million gallons of
Caribbean-sourced ethanol can enter the U.S. tariff-free in 2005; 560
million gallons in 2012 if the pending energy bill includes the
8-billion-gallon mandate. Then, according to the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, once that
threshold is hit, the Caribbean initiative allows "an additional 35 million
gallons (to) be imported into the U.S. duty-free, provided that at least 30
percent of the ethanol is derived from 'local,' or Caribbean region,
feedstocks." Yep, sugar. After those two targets are hit, more Caribbean ethanol can be imported.
"Anything above the additional 35 million gallons is duty-free if at least
50 percent of the ethanol is derived from local feedstocks," the report
explains. Gee, more imported sugar, er, ethanol. And that's exactly will happen under the Central American Free Trade
Agreement, explains the institute's report (at http://www.iatp.org ), because "CAFTA adopts the CBI language for
ethanol"... and "makes the CBI allowances on ethanol exports to the U.S.
permanent." As smelly as that will be for the farmers who grew the 1.26 billion bushels
of corn used to make 3.4 billion gallons of American ethanol in 2004 - and
who now own 40 percent of the domestic ethanol production capacity - it may
get worse. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Portman calls the Central American
agreement a "gateway" that opens the door to the Bush Administration's
bigger, hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas. In effect, the CBI-to-CAFTA-to-FTAA triple play would open the U.S.
biofuels market to ethanol giant Brazil which, in 2003, produced 3.6 billion
gallons of ethanol from sugar. It's a maneuver that free-trading
agribusiness masters like Cargill appear to be banking on. In May 2004, Cargill announced a $10 million partnership to build a 63
million gallon ethanol dehydration plant in El Salvador to export Brazilian
sugar-based ethanol into the U.S. duty-free under the Caribeean Basin
Initiative. In Dec. 2004, Cargill and Brazilian commodities trader Coimex struck a deal
to drop another $10 million in a Jamaican ethanol plant to, again, dehydrate
Brazilian ethanol. On May 19, 2005, Cargill announced it would invest in one of Brazil's
biggest sugar processors, a producer of about 50 million gallons of ethanol. The Renewable Fuels Assoc., ethanol's Washington, D.C. lobby, objects to the
Institute of Agricultural and Trade Policy's assertion that the Central
American agreement means greater ethanol imports. "They're allowed under
(the Caribbean initiative) already," says spokesman Monte Shaw. OK, so why institutionalize what could be a flood of imported ethanol with
the Central American agreement and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. On second thought, ask your local National Corn Grower Association director,
your county Farm Bureau president or the American Soybean Association - all
supporters of the Central American agreement and the Free Trade Agreement of
the Americas - why America needs to import any ethanol at all. Alan Guebert is a freelance agricultural journalist. He can be reached at
4. American Corn Growers
Reaffirm Opposition to CAFTA: New Study Confirms CAFTA
locks in ethanol imports to U.S. WASHINGTON- June 23, 2005 - Larry Mitchell, American Corn Growers
Association (ACGA) Chief Executive Officer, today reaffirmed his
organization's opposition to the U.S. ratification of the Central
American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and cited more evidence of the
problems with the pending trade pact from a new report by the Institute
for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) titled "CAFTA's Impact on U.S.
Ethanol Market." "We have stated our concerns about increased ethanol imports which will
be allowed under CAFTA before, but the new IATP report documents and
quantifies the reasons for our concerns," said Mitchell. "U.S. farmers
have worked too hard and too long to build our domestic ethanol industry
and we do not plan to allow this critical industry to be outsourced." According to the IATP report, issued this week, CAFTA locks in
tariff-free access to the U.S. market for foreign ethanol. It also makes
permanent provisions in the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), which
allows 7 percent of total U.S. ethanol production that is produced by
foreign feedstock (outside CBI countries) to be imported into the U.S.
tariff-free. The foreign feedstock must be processed in a CBI country. In a case that has received a lot of attention, high water content
Brazilian ethanol would be dehydrated and turned into fuel in an El
Salvador plant, and then exported into the U.S. Moreover, the CBI also
allows unlimited amounts of ethanol above the 7 percent cap to enter the
U.S. without a tariff, provided it is produced with at least 50 percent
Caribbean Basin country feedstock. "The IATP report clearly shows the pending exposure to the farmer-owned
ethanol industry in the U.S.," added Mitchell. "We recognize that beef,
dairy, and other livestock and other agricultural sectors will meet the
same fate that the U.S. textile industry has met if the proposed free
trade agreements pass, and the continuing attrition among American
vegetable and fruit producers caused by already existing free trade
agreements will only accelerate. That alone is more than enough reason
to oppose the agreement, but now comes the evidence of the perils that
will befall the U.S. corn producers. ACGA cannot support such an
agreement and we question how any U.S. farm organization can. "We stand ready, willing and able to support an agreement to help all
farmers, but CAFTA falls well short of that goal," concluded Mitchell.
"We must rethink U.S. agriculture and trade policy and change course to
secure farmer livelihoods worldwide" The American Corn Growers Association represents 14,000 members in 35
states. See http://www.acga.org .
-30-
ACGA Calls for Full Funding for Conservation Security Program For Immediate Release WASHINGTON June 21, 2005 The American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) has joined over 200 groups and organization, in signing a letter to leadership of the United States Senate urging full funding for the Conservation Security Program (CSP). "ACGA wholeheartedly supported the CSP as part of the Food Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 and now we call upon Congress to fully fund the program as it was intended," said ACGA President Keith Bolin. CSP, initiated under the 2002 Farm Bill, is a unique and valuable conservation program, which rewards farmers for implementing conservation measures that benefit the environment. The groups signing the letter represent a broad spectrum of farmer, environmental, wildlife, consumer and religious groups. The Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee is scheduled to write its funding bill this week, and CSP supporters are asking them to fully fund CSP. Last year, Congress took money from the CSP program to provide disaster relief, and the money has not yet been returned to the program. "CSP creates a win-win situation. It supports our farmers -- while they preserve our land and natural resources," said Deb Burd, Executive Director of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, which spearheaded the letter. Last year, farmers were allowed to apply for CSP in less than one percent of the nation’s watersheds. This year it was offered in only ten percent of watersheds still far below the nationwide scope that was intended in the 2002 Farm Bill. The groups urge the Senate to provide the funding needed to make this popular program available to significantly more farmers. To see the letter, please go to http://www.agmatters.net/Stewardship/CSP_SignOnLetter_Approps_June_13_Final.doc The American Corn Growers Association represents 14,000 members in 35 states. See www.acga.org .
6. CAFTA would squash "buy domestic" efforts . St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) By WILLIAM HAWKINS The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) debate is heating up in
Washington. But despite the blitz of publicity, one section of the pact has
not received the attention it deserves. Chapter Nine of CAFTA covers government procurement and establishes a rule
of "national treatment" in government purchasing. This means that under
CAFTA each participating nation must treat goods, services and suppliers
from the other CAFTA parties in a manner that is "no less favorable" than
domestic firms when awarding contracts. And so governments cannot treat
their own citizens better than foreigners, or use "buy domestic" policies to
support their economies. Governments have long used procurement to support domestic industry,
particularly public infrastructure, national defense and other strategic
sectors. It is both good politics and sound economics. Money taken out of the economy through taxes or borrowing needs to be plowed
back into the economy via procurement. Otherwise the economy is weakened. Such government spending is a vital stabilizer and stimulant during the
business cycle and has proven to be a much more effective tool for
stimulating the economy than monetary policy. Fiscal policy puts money to
work, but its impact is lessened if the work is done overseas. There are already rumblings against federal, state and local governments
that outsource U.S. work to foreign locales. Much of this has involved
security concerns over the sending of sensitive personal records to overseas
data processing centers. There has also been an ominous trend at all levels of government of letting
foreign firms bid against American firms for projects paid for with taxpayer
dollars. With the United States having run a $617 billion trade deficit last year
(heading toward $700 billion this year), American officials should not be
adding to the nation's economic woes by sending more funds -- and the jobs
and productive capacity they support -- out of the country. The lure of saving money on imports is a penny wise, pound foolish notion
when it slows the economy and shrinks the tax base. The only way to balance
budgets without excessive taxation is through growth of the domestic
economy. Unfortunately, the U.S. trade representative who negotiated CAFTA, Robert
Zoellick, has been hostile to all "Buy America" preferences. When the House Armed Services Committee tried to strengthen the domestic
production of critical weapons technology for American armed forces in its
2004 authorization legislation, Zoellick objected. Yet, the World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement allows
"the protection of essential security interests relating to the procurement
of arms, ammunition or war materials, or to procurement indispensable for
national security or for national defense purposes." It is an odd thing when
the WTO shows more concern for national interests than does the U.S. trade
representative. CAFTA may appear to be a minor agreement with small countries of no economic
importance. However, it contains controversial provisions that pose major
threats to the American economy should they establish precedents for future
agreements. The only way to change a failed trade policy and embark on fresh strategic
thinking is to lay CAFTA aside. William Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S.
Business and Industry Council in Washington.
7. Give populism a chance By Dan Nagengast The word "populist" has popped up in the recent European Union referendums as a dirty word, a stand-in for xenophobia and bigotry, the mark of a far right fearful of immigration. That message comes from the elite. It implies the powerful could never be xenophobic or racist or nationalist, or sexist or classist. And that governments and their leaders are invariably the counter to the forces of darkness. But populism is really a belief in the sense and virtue of common people. And we need more of it. French and EU leaders called France's 55 percent "no" vote on the new EU constitution an unholy alliance of the left and right. Indeed, the extreme right did oppose the charter. But so did 70 percent of farmers and 55 percent of people ages 18 to 25. And workers voted against it overwhelmingly. Dutch opposition was even higher, 62 percent. For the BBC World News, Michiel van Hulten of the Better Europe foundation identified the reasons: "The message from France and the Netherlands is that they are unhappy with the way Europe is being built. People are unhappy with the fact that Europe is a project of the elite, not the ordinary people." Great Britain quickly shelved its own EU referendum following the French and Dutch votes. Do you wonder what would happen if the United States had the courage to chance a popular vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or now the Central American Free Trade Agreement? Our leaders, both Republican and Democratic, push all these pacts. They talk of modernization and removing archaic trade barriers. They have an almost religious faith that this kind of free-market economics floats all boats, that there is unlimited potential for wealth creation, and that world trade, if freed from regulation, will somehow overcome the problem of finite natural resources. Truth is, these deals painted as win-win are big wins for a few, small wins for a few more and big losses for many people, rural communities and to the natural resource base on which our wealth is built. They aim to lower the cost of those resources and the cost of labor. They are a way to override conservationist restraint, and to push the environmental and social costs of business onto society and the natural world. Before the French and Dutch elections, I had hoped the EU, along with India and China, would challenge U.S.-led ordering of the world's political economy to suit our own elites. Granted, international financial interests are hardly attached to countries anymore. They're equal opportunity exploiters. Still, I hoped that another big economy -- a united Europe -- and more competition might give a marginally better deal to the farmers, laborers and rural communities of the world. Middle-class French and Dutch voters saw through this. They understood that the reordering was not based on their interests. U.S. leaders might take this as a lesson to never allow such a vote on how the world will be structured -- much better to incite a choice of politicians based on their views of gay marriage and what to do about a dying woman. By focusing our political debate on issues like these, our leaders divert voters from matters of greater import, such as the war in Iraq. There was a referendum of sorts in the Clinton administration's final days. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman let hog producers decide whether to keep the checkoff for hog promotion. The checkoff is a toll on every hog sold and helps fund hog producer associations. Many felt the money was being misused to promote big operations and run family farms out of business. So they voted to discontinue the checkoff, and Glickman obeyed. But a new agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman, came with the Bush administration and reinstated the checkoff. No discussion. No embarrassment. No sense of right or wrong. No symbolic bow to democracy. Just exercise of power. I think we need more referendums, and ones that stick. I think voters need a more direct voice. I think our democracy is becoming farcical, skewed by money, lobbyists and a fuzziness that lets politicians hide behind inflammatory issues to get elected, and then screw their constituents. I think we need a change. ### Dan Nagengast is a Lawrence, Kan., farmer and executive director of the Kansas Rural Center. He wrote this for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kan. | |
