Rich Republicans decry the government dole, except when it comes their way…

Those Republicans who are so adamant and vociferous about getting government out of our lives and not being dependent upon it and for goodness sake keeping its hands off business in the best laissez-faire tradition are often quite the hypocrites, don’t ya know?

My California State Assemblyman, Republican Doug LaMalfa, belongs to a rice-growing family. That family received $4.7 million in federal subsidies over the past 15 years in connection with their farming, I read in my local Record-Searchlight newspaper online site . So let me get this straight Mr. LaMalfa, it’s okay for the government to fork over money to rich farmers but not to help poor people. Of course, as all of those rich people on the government dole would argue, they deserve it for their efforts are and it helps the economy.

Well there is something to the it-helps-the-economy argument. The rice-growing industry in Northern California creates a lot of jobs, to include those who work for farmers and those who supply and provide various services to the farmers and all the related businesses that go with it, to include all the retail outlets that benefit from the turn over of dollars in the local communities.

In fact, I hauled at least one load of rice in the early days of my trucking career. Another driver and I team drove a semi loaded with bagged rice from Richvale, where the LaMalfa headquarters are (maybe it was theirs), and went across the United States, some 3,000 miles, to Connecticut with it. So there you have it. I gained from the federally-subsidized rice business.

But that is just it. The Republicans are complaining about the Obama stimulus program, weak that it has been overall, and are saying free enterprise needs to get government out of its way and stand on its own. And Mr. LaMalfa is as hard-right Republican as you can get.

He’s running for the U.S. Congress now. Cut aid to poor families, but save it for his family, he’ll probably argue.

(Right now, LaMalfa is actually facing political attack over his family’s windfall from the feds from his Republican opponents. His Democratic contender indicates he is just holding back until maybe LaMalfa starts railing against federal stimulus or something.)

Government subsidized farming is a mixed bag (of rice — just could not resist that). It does provide stability in an economic activity that is highly volatile when it comes to prices. And it is hard to switch from one kind of production to another when so much of the equipment one must use is specialized. And it is probably hard to get crop loans when the lenders cannot be sure that there is some protection against wide price swings and natural disaster.

But how can the likes of LaMalfa and other Republicans argue against economic stimulus when they get so much themselves?

The story I referred to can be seen via this link:

http://www.redding.com/news/2012/feb/18/lamalfas-47-million-in-farm-subsidies-draw/?partner=popular

The U.S. domestic rice-growing industry, at least in Northern California, also depends upon federally-subsidized water; it is a water intensive crop. Some argue that other crops could be grown and the water put to better use. There are other regions on the planet more suited to growing rice with natural conditions.

If you want government out of your business Republicans, or anyone else, you cannot at the same time have your hand out for it largesse (that’s just the way it works).

P.s.

Today I haul a lot of agricultural products, so indirectly I likely benefit from federal farm programs, that include direct payments, as well as insurance, and various services. There no doubt is a major benefit to government involvement in agriculture, to include stability in the food supply and economic system. But I think rich farmers and corporate farmers utilize the image of poor farmers, of which there were many in the past, and still are, to get support for farm subsidy payments. It seems that the majority of help from the federal government goes to those who need it the least. One of my late uncles was a small farmer, 60 acres, and he used to complain that the farm advisors with the state University system were far more eager to work with the big farmers than him.

Traditional agricultural pursuits are not always welcome out in the country…

A story in the Washington Post about a couple who ran afoul of their neighborhood association for running a winery in a horsy set rural area in Virginia reminded me of what my dad and I ran into when I tried to go into the hog business after my mom and dad had rented a house on an acreage out in the country.

But let’s back up a little:

Back in the earlier 20^th Century, maybe especially before 1930, a large part of the population of the United States lived out on the farms in what some, like by dad, reminisced about as a bucolic paradise — whether it always was or not is another story.

But anyway, back in the day it was not uncommon for country folk to be rather self-sufficient and no matter what their cash crop might be they probably had chickens running around the barnyard and probably had a pen or so of pigs.

Now livestock tend to put off an odor, especially pigs, that is not always pleasant to human beings. But farms tended to be well separated from each other and people with any sense would put the livestock downwind from the main house most likely. Besides not everyone agrees on what is a good or bad odor.

But the country was the country and you could pretty well do what you pleased.

With that in mind, when I was a freshman in high school we had just rented a house some eight miles south of town, a rural farm town at that, and I was interested in going into farming and had signed up for agricultural classes at the high school and had joined the Future Farmers of America chapter at the school.

I was fortunate enough to get what was called a Sears Project pig, and it was free (and you know? No one ever explained what Sears had to do with it or why. But the long and the short of it was that I got a female pig absolutely free. The only stipulation being that I would give back a female from the pig’s first litter). It was pretty exciting. I was getting into the hog business for nothing.

My dad, an old farm boy, was pretty hyped about the whole thing too. In fact, I confess, he probably did as much or, let’s be honest, more work than I did. Out of some scrap lumber and odd pieces of wood he constructed a pig pen. But he did not make the sides high enough and that little sucker jumped right out and ran down along the creek and through the orchard and we were afraid we would never see it again. But we did catch it and made the sides higher.

We did not live in pig country — this was not the corn fields of Illinois or even Iowa or Kansas and Toto too. This was walnut orchard country in northern California‘s Sacramento Valley, relatively flat land with hundreds of acres of walnuts — we lived on an eight-acre plot that had been subdivided from a larger one — planted in straight rows so you could not really see the countryside — you could not see the forest for the trees, so to speak. We did, however, live on the beautiful Sacramento River and could see it, plus a creek that flowed into it. The pig pen was just up from the creek and well back of the house — I don‘t recall any pig odors coming down to the house — but who knows? Maybe they did.

We also raised a vegetable garden. I was quite active in that.

Like I say, my folks just rented the place. The rent was relatively cheap, even for those days (the mid 1960s — would you believe $75 per month?).

I think dad, who worked as the editor of the local newspaper, loved coming home and reliving his days as a farm boy.

What I have not mentioned yet is that to get to our house you had to use what was essentially the driveway of these two rich retired folks from the Bay Area. They were business people. Not farmers. But they loved their rural paradise on the river and had a nice house with giant picture windows.

They were friendly enough. But occasionally they would run out and yell at visitors to our house to slow down through their driveway. It was unfortunate that our house did not have a separate driveway — they did not own our house. It was two separate properties.

The old retired city folks never said anything bad when they saw I had a pig out back. They thought it was like one of those 4-H market hog projects where you fatten up a pig and sell it at a junior livestock auction and that is it — no more pig.

I think they were happy, though, when they saw my grown pig — now a mature sow — leave in the back of a pickup truck. What they did not realize, though, was that she was off to visit the boar (male sire) at the high school farm. Once that was done, they were shocked to see her return.

Dad, and I, were getting excited about the expanding hog business — soon there would be a litter. We’d need more room for them all to forage. Dad and I, but I want to stress dad, for he seemed to do the bulk of the work, cut small trees down by the creek and made fence posts and began to construct the perimeter of a large, natural pig pasture that would run down by the creek (I don’t think the EPA was in existence yet).

That’s when we got a visit from the old retired city guy. He threatened to sue if we went whole hog, so to speak, into the pig business.

And that is when I learned that just because you live in the country does not mean you can be in the pig business. Actually our landlord said it was okay with him, but my dad did not want to spoil good relations with the neighbors, so we moved the pig operations elsewhere.

Strangely, we noticed our neighbors never had any qualms about the tons of poison spray the local orchardists applied and we all had to breathe. They were of the moneyed class and respected what one must do to make the big money — and walnuts are a high-value crop.

Ironically, we were not the first to raise pigs in a walnut orchard. A well-known orchardist in our general area had raised them for years and fed them on cull walnuts. And in fact, after we moved the operation I did that too. It’s fun to watch those hogs eat walnuts. They break open the shells with their teeth and get the meats inside.

But what I get out of this is that out in the country means different things to different people and if you want to do what you want to do on your own or your own rented land, it is always nice to have a rather large buffer between yourself and the neighbors and of course zoning and property covenants and such play an important role.

The story that made me remember all of this was:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-fight-over-a-winery-crushes-a-family-and-divides-a-neighborhood/2011/10/27/gIQAEP1ySM_story_1.html

If the supply of illegal farm labor dries up, go to Plan B…

Well here we go again: farmers worried their source of cheap harvest labor might be drying up due to what is said to be the toughest state immigration law yet in Georgia, due to go into effect in July.

It seems that berry farmers there are having a hard time finding enough pickers and they think the reason may be that the new immigration law is scaring off some would-be Mexican or Latino workers, who may not be in the U.S. legally.

I’m getting this from a story to which I will provide a link in a second here. But first some observations:

It is difficult to impossible to get legal domestic labor (and read that white people — and no racism intended here, truly) for harvest work because the pay is relatively low, it is hard work that many are not used to or acclimated to (although they could get that way with  a little effort), it is only temporary and not a career (generally), and existing social welfare programs provide a disincentive to do this kind of work — although, paradoxically, existing social programs and laws subsidize the work to some extent too for those who do it, to include illegal aliens (they get medical treatment and education for themselves and  their children through tax dollars).

As I have often noted before, there was a time when non-Hispanics and people other than black people (often referred to as “white people” — again I am only describing, not trying to be racist) did back-breaking and low paying manual labor field work (and a few still do). But I think the Great Society programs of the 60s largely spelled an end to that.

I could go on and on about this subject, but I would rather not, really.

As long as there is a supply of relatively cheap labor, you cannot blame farmers, really, for using it. It makes good business sense. But if that source of labor was to dry up I don’t think the world would end. The farmers would go to Plan B.

In fact, in the afore-mentioned story, to which I still am going to provide a link, it notes that one type of berries can be picked mechanically, but some (much) of the product is lost in the process.

But that is the way things go. Where manual labor has become too expensive or impractical or impossible to find, mechanization tends to take over and it will continue to do that.

For those things that just cannot be done mechanically then hand labor will be found — if the price is right. Labor does and should have value.

The threat from the agriculture community, its form of blackmail, is that if they have to pay more, things will cost more for the consumer. Well, what else is new? Anyway, we can survive without blackberries or we can go to one of those pick-it-yourself fruit stands or we can go to a farmers market where a small-time grower has harvested it him- (or her) self — and this goes for almost all food commodities.

(I should note too that in some cases crops may not be raised anymore in certain areas if labor cannot be found, but if there is a demand for them, they will be grown somewhere else — yes where the labor is cheaper, no doubt.)

I’m really getting tired of hearing the whining about the shortage of cheap labor.

I do realize, though, that even if the wages were upped, it would still be hard to find people to do manual labor, often paid by the piece rate (out of understandable practicality). That is where you have to face reality and look at that Plan B (or perhaps Plan C, just quit) .

Maybe if we were not so liberal in our social welfare programs (and I am referring to everything from Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Social Security Disability — sometimes/often granted for questionable disabilities –such as an allergic reaction to work — just kidding, kind of — to extended unemployment and so on) we would have a larger pool of labor for the less desirable jobs.

But do we want to encourage or force whole groups of people to make a career out of nowhere employment that requires government subsidy in order for the people to have shelter and medical care?

It seems to me that in agriculture the real small farmers can do a lot of their own work — employ family members — and in the larger outfits, they just have to face the reality of the supply and demand of the domestic labor market. I do not think we should have to rely on the illegal alien labor market that eats up tax dollars with the social service demands (even though some amount of tax money may be derived from it), and the pull down of wages it creates for potential domestic workers (and yes, the domestic labor force will work if that is the only way to make a living), along with the criminals that sneak in with legitimate, albeit illegal workers.

Sometimes people looking for extra money, to include young people, have done harvest work and will do it.

Yes, please read the story I mentioned and view the accompanying video (if I do this correctly), I found it interesting.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-newlatinosouth-farmworkers-story,0,3768292.htmlstory

P.s.

And my contention continues to be that almost all harvest labor could be near totally or totally mechanized and will be once the supply of hand labor disappears.

P.s. P.s.

Associations representing farmers (or purporting to do so, such as Farm Bureau) spend a lot of time lobbying for cheap labor and for federal officials to look the other way when it comes to hiring illegal aliens. They would do better to come up with a way to devise some type of program that would make farm labor available, such as temporary guest workers and so on. They could tax themselves for this. They might even do it essentially outside of government (of course with legal permission).

Premature categorical statements by health officials can be devastating…

It seems like a tragedy to me that German health officials mistakenly blamed the world’s worst E. coli outbreak on cucumbers from Spain and now have found out the likely culprit is bean and other sprouts from one farm in Germany. Meanwhile one report I heard on NPR radio indicated Spain’s produce industry or at least one distributor ( interviewed in the report) has been put out of business for the time being with all of its workers left idle.

So far, 22 deaths have been reported and 2,200 cases of people becoming ill in the latest E. coli outbreak that one report I read termed the worst ever reported.

————

UPDATE:

And even before I can finish this post I read now that German officials are still not sure where the contamination has come from and are still warning the public to be wary of vegetables, imported and domestic, I guess. And apparently it was not just cucumbers, but lettuce and other vegetables that had been or are suspected.

————-

With foods being imported and exported all over the world it is a difficult situation health officials face when a contamination incident surfaces. They of course feel obligated to warn the public for that is their whole mission. And the public would be rightly outraged if they withheld vital information and people suffered or died as the result.

Unfortunately, food contamination turns out to be difficult to pinpoint many times, what with all the distances and stops it makes along the way and the possibilities of cross contamination and the fact that food stuffs may become just ingredients mixed in with other items in processed foods.

But this current incident has shades of Alar in Apples, eventually found to not be much of a threat or no threat at all but quite devastating to the Washington State apple industry many years ago after negative reports about it (no Alar, a chemical growth regulator, is produced or used anymore, as I understand it — and you know? That is probably a good thing).

More recently, a couple of years or more ago, tomatoes sold in the U.S. (some imported from Mexico and elsewhere) were suspected to be a source of contamination. Much of the year’s crop was put to waste over the scare, as I recall. Finally it turned out that the contamination was linked to one farm growing peppers in Mexico, as I recall.

All this kind of hits home with me. I’m not a farmer but I make my living largely from the produce business. I haul it over the road.

Coincidentally, I suffered food poisoning that might or might not have been linked to those contaminated peppers I mentioned. I was not driving at the time — I was recovering from a cancer treatment and was on my way to a hospital in San Francisco for tests when I ate an omelet at a restaurant along the way. I think that is where I got the food poisoning.

I think health officials are in a bind. On the one hand they have a duty to warn the public as soon as possible and on the other hand they can do grave damage to whole industries, not to mention individual producers or even employees whose livelihoods depend upon working in the industry when their reports are erroneous.

I would say their best bet would be to always qualify their warnings and not make categorical statements unless they are really sure.

And now, the Agricultural Communicator of the Year…

A lot of times farming is really all about weather.

Back in the mid 1970s I got my first newspaper job. I was a photographer, a reporter, and the farm editor. I put together a weekly farm news section for the newspaper, composed of various hand-out stories, plus news I gathered myself, and usually a feature I wrote about some local farmer or agricultural experimental project.

I did not grow up on a farm, but I had done some limited amount of farm work as a teenager and then as a young man out of the Army, to include irrigation and some tractor driving. I had been a member of the Future Farmers of America in high school and had raised some pigs and cows and done some vegetable gardening.

I put a lot of effort into the farm news section, probably more than had been done by some of my predecessors.

So it was not a surprise when my editor informed me that I, we, had been invited to the local Farm Bureau’s annual meeting where they were to give out the Agricultural Communicator of the Year Award.

Being as I was the only agricultural news reporter in the county, I was a shoe-in to get it.

I didn’t write an acceptance speech, but I had the words in my head. Heck I loved speech class in high school and could give a talk at the drop of a hat — no notes needed,

Now if the farm news guy to the county south of me was in the competition I might have had to worry, but we were out of his coverage area. I knew that old guy personally. He had majored in agriculture at college, but spent his years as a newspaperman.

My editor picked me up in his old green pickup truck with the cracked windshield he never did get around to repairing as far as I ever knew. He was not a farm boy himself, but he did grow up in the mountains where his dad owned a saw mill. He was all dressed up for the dinner in his workman-like jacket and tie. I don’t think he owned as much as a sport coat. I was dressed up in a sport coat and tie and slacks, looking like the professional newsman I aspired to be.

We ate the dinner and listened to the requisite business meeting and then it was time for the award. I was thinking of what I would say when they called me up. My editor was proud of me.

The Farm Bureau president made the announcement.

The award went to the TV weather guy.

Farmers value weather news.

Why should farmers or anyone else have a right to cheap labor?

I’ve plowed this ground before, so to speak, but I have to ask the question: why do farmers feel they are entitled to a source of cheap labor? And maybe, for that matter, it is only fair to ask at the same time, why does the U.S. consumer feel entitled to groceries based on cheap labor?

Consumers would howl in protest if illegal aliens took their jobs, but they would also likely complain, more than they already do, about any rise in the cost of groceries attributed to a shortage of cheap labor, primarily from Mexico.

And I know that farmers would have you believe that it is not so much the need for cheap labor as it is the need for labor period, because — we all know the standard argument — Americans will not do stoop labor or climb up ladders to pick fruit and so on.

Actually, there is some truth to that argument. Although once upon a time U.S. citizens, to include, pardon the expression , white people, did all kinds of field labor, along with Mexican immigrants and of course non-whites, for the most part those days are in the past.

In the 1960s there were television documentaries and at least one book about the abuses inflicted upon migrant workers and then under President Johnson’s Great Society programs people were able to get out of migrant labor, even if the result was that new generations would come along and not only not do migrant work, but not do much of anything.

Now partly in response to a shortage of field labor much of agriculture that had not already been mechanized has become so.

Some examples that I am aware of first hand: plums (or prunes as we call them in the area where they are grown in California, even when they are fresh on the tree before they are dried) began to be harvested by machines rather than pickers crawling around in the dirt under the trees (or hand picking them off the tree as was done for some varieties). Same thing with walnuts and almonds.

Even wine grapes can now be harvested by a machine.

But many things, such as many fresh fruits and some vegetables, still defy complete mechanization.

If employers were required to pay higher wages and offer better working conditions and if welfare and unemployment benefit regulations were really enforced, there might not be such a shortage of domestic labor.

And in some cases we might just have to get along without some things — I think I posted this one before, but you know, we could probably get along without iceberg lettuce. We might find it more practical to grow other types of crops that lend themselves more to mechanization.

The demand for hard physical and often stoop labor continues strong, particularly in big agriculture — which is not ma and pa on the farm feeding the chickens and slopping the hogs and milking the cow and hoeing the beans.

During World War II, what with so much of the labor force off to fight overseas, there was the Bracero program in which Mexican men came to work the fields. Many of them were cheated out of their wages.

That program ended in 1964. But Mexicans and others, most of them illegal, have streamed across the border to meet the farm labor demand (and of course the demand for other labor as well).

The agricultural industry got used to using workers without proper authorization, illegal aliens.

Think I mentioned this in one of my previous posts, but I remember an old eccentric woman who ran a kind of a rag of a small town newspaper back in the 70s. She did not mince words. She said right on her front page that her little city’s (area’s) economy depended upon illegal aliens to pick the local olive crop.

At the time, most people, particularly growers, did not admit that in public.

But I see we’ve come a long way. In the April 22 edition of the Wall Street Journal via a letter to the editor, the president of Western Growers, of Irvine, Ca., calls for the support of proposed federal legislation, the so-called agJOBS bill, that would allow farmers to hire illegals, who under certain conditions could eventually get their citizenship.

In a separate letter which I read on the web, California U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, a sponsor of the bill, says farmers are going out of business and can’t compete with the rest of the world for the lack of labor.

(And while I was writing this I heard an item on the news that Stockton, California’s Asparagus Festival is being held amid a vast reduction in asparagus plantings which has resulted from competition from imports.   Add1: It occurs to me that the smaller scale — less or no outside labor required – locally-grown sustainable farming method could replace some of that lost market. )

Hey, I don’t want to see anyone go out of business and I know when farmers cut back it has a drastic impact on the economy because of all the related jobs that go with agriculture, and I don’t want my groceries to cost any more than they do. But I don’t feel good about saving money by importing cheap labor. And why should the agricultural industry get a special privilege to import cheap labor? Actually I guess even high tech and other industries import relatively cheap or cheaper labor through special emergency visa programs.

I’d rather see employers be forced to pay decent wages. When they are not, the public has to step in and pay the extra costs through social welfare programs that provide for the poor working class, to include legal and illegal aliens.

And in this day and age, working men are not as willing — and nor should they be — to leave their families behind to be part of guest worker programs.

Letting employers import cheaper labor depresses the wages for everyone and brings the national standard of living down.

The argument, even outside the farm labor issue, always seems to be we can’t afford to pay decent wages, which is another way of saying we can’t afford to let other people live as well as we do (even though we expect their labor).

What’s old could be new in Silicon Valley — farming anyone?

Add 1: I didn’t even realize today was (is) Earth Day when I originally posted this. But what follows is more than just a gripe or cynical comment by me. It’s a hope or a wish that we all could appreciate Mother Earth better than we do and quit trying to pave over every inch of it and quit polluting it in the name of progress. I know where I live the goal by many a landowner and outside developer is to turn one of the most beautiful places in the world into a concrete ghetto. The people that do it usually take the dollars and go elsewhere or at least vacation elsewhere. Even agriculture in the way we have practiced it over the past century can be destructive. This post does not really address all that, but it was on my mind and I may go further into that in the future.

——————————–

The article said it was only posted 4 minutes ago when I read it and it took me about that long, or less,  to read it, but this item on the New York Times website said that the newest thing out of Silicon Valley in California (computer land, formerly beautiful farm land) is investors being sold on something called “sustainable agriculture”.

Two quick thoughts here:

One, too bad they could not have thought about that a few decades ago when they bulldozed over some of the prettiest and probably most productive farmland (orchards and crops) in the world and put up a parking lot. The Santa Clara Valley of California was like a Garden of Eden and developers turned it into what has to be one of the ugliest places you would want to see, rivaled probably only by greater LA.

I will be interested in reading more about this “sustainable ag” movement in the Silicon Valley.

And two, I hope it is more than just a passing fad.

But if you want to throw some money around, I might be able to line you up with some folks who would sell you a jojoba farm in southern Arizona (that was all the rage back in the late 70s, early 80s).

Don’t get me wrong on this sustainable ag thing, though. I’m all for locally grown and natural fertilizers versus chemical fertilizers and I like the idea of natural pest control and such, versus spraying poisons into the atmosphere and all over our food.

Agricultural subsidies and food aid can harm at times…

So I blogged about how I thought we ought to in some cases subsidize our own home-grown industry to get our economy moving and that it is unfair that other nations whom we trade with subsidize their own industries and sometimes flood our markets.

Then I read something I already knew about, but did not mention in that blog post. We do the same, especially with agricultural products in some cases.

Seems we’re undercutting Haitian rice farmers with our aid shipments of rice to that nation, which suffered a terrible earthquake last month.

——————–

And that makes me think — we get one heck of a lot of produce from Chile, which just suffered a devastating earthquake itself, and I haul a lot of it in my job (truck driver). Wonder what effect if any the quake will have on that market? But of course my main concern is for the people of Chile. And it reminds all of us that we are just “an act of God” away from disaster ourselves. And I wonder if Pat Robertson thinks Chileans sinned or made a pact with the Devil to bring on their woes (like he suggested was the case in Haiti. That man is a nut case — and to think he once ran for president. Then again, to think George W. ran twice and won twice and there’s even talk of Sarah Palin running — I digress).

——————————

But back to flooding the market with our own government-purchased commodities. We do this to African nations too, thus hurting their own agricultural economies. Some say our aid efforts would be better spent on teaching farmers in poor countries modern agricultural methods. I know we do this to some extent — the Peace Corps, an example, I think (at least we used to). Back in the 70s when I was a reporter for a local newspaper a county to the south of where I live now, I interviewed a couple of men from the small African kingdom of Lesotho. They were observing and learning about our modern irrigation techniques. Now that is not a bad idea.

———————-

And in my last post I mentioned something about the All-American Levi’s brand moving its production outside of the U. S. borders, and in looking up Lesotho on Wikipedia (to see if still exists) I read that Levi’s has a production facility there. Sure wish we could still make them here in the good old USA. We raise the cotton here, people need work, local governments need the tax money.

—————————-

But back to helping folks learn how to raise their own food — What is that saying? Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; show him how to fish and he feeds himself for life.

And I think it was in the book “the Ugly American” where I read about how we would go into nations, such as in Southeast Asia, and push big capitalist projects on them that lined the pockets of western investors. In the fictional book (based on truth) an American aid worker (Peace Corps?) develops a bicycle-powered irrigation system for some villagers (bicycles is something they had on hand), but his efforts were shunned by the big wigs at the American Embassy in favor of setting up a dried milk factory run by some American investor from Oklahoma.

If my history is correct, Vietnam was self sufficient in rice production before western intervention and war changed that, and now, decades later, they are once more self sufficient.

I took a class called environmental geography in college. The professor claimed that industrialization of developing nations has brought small farmers out of the countryside to the urban centers with the promise of a better life. But the end result has sometimes been that the nations can no longer feed themselves, even with “modern” agricultural methods.

Starting about one county south of where I live in Northern California, rice is a major crop — thanks to subsidized federal water and federal price support programs. Of course it helps the local economy — and I think that is a good thing — but much of that rice goes overseas where once small farmers fed themselves and their fellow countrymen.

So there is a quandary as what is the proper thing to do here, help ourselves by subsidizing our own agriculture, but do harm to others in the process, or don’t subsidize our agriculture and endanger our own economy and stable food supply. I don’t have an answer, except that I tend to disfavor farm subsidies, but at the same time understand the need for a stable food supply and support of our own economy.

And in a related subject, I often read or hear talk about corporate farming versus family farming or big farmers versus small farmers or something in that order.

The fact is that the agricultural lobby (not really a single entity necessarily) often plays on the popular notion of ma and pa out on the farm, chickens at their heels, making a living out of the good earth. That does exist, but for the most part, commercial farming, as opposed to hobby farming, is run more like corporate farming (on a big scale) even when the operations are family owned. But to the general public and congress, helping out ma and pa on the farm sells better.

Nonetheless, I think family farming is the most efficient method. With modern equipment, one man (or woman) can till a lot more acres than back in the horse and mule days. I have heard, though, that the efficiency breaks down at a certain point when things get too big.

A corporate farm manager once told me that an independent farmer tends to make better decisions about his own crops than can be made by corporate employees or boards or corporate policy. And we know collectives don’t work — not much incentive there.

To sum up, I think industry, whether it be widget making or farming, is most efficient when it stands on its own, but sometimes it needs encouragement.

Right now we are all affected by an economic system gone awry. Too many people wanted to make money without producing anything. The system works better when we trade those tokens we call money based on a good produced or service rendered rather than speculation on some imaginary value.

P.s.

And to anyone who might misunderstand my ramble here, I am for emergency food aid in true emergencies.

An unclear picture of what down on the farm means…

How are things down on the farm? Well, I don’t know. I don’t live down on the farm. But I ask this because something caught my ear while hearing part of an interview with Willie Nelson who is going to put on another Farm Aid concert.

Willie says the folks are “hurtin’” down on the farm.

The first problem is that “the farm” or “farmers” is a kind of generic term that conjures up some type of bucolic existence with a hay barn, cows and pigs, and maybe some sheep and goats, and chickens running around in the yard, and maybe a garden plot.

But farming in the real world includes everything from giant corporate-run institutions with much heavy equipment and probably no chickens running around in the yard, to large family operations with again a lot of heavy equipment and run much like a corporation, to what I described in the previous paragraph.

And these days some people farm as only a supplement to a regular job or visa versa and some people do it for hobby only.

But I’ll get back to that later.

What caught my ear was that farmers are “hurtin’”.

Just a year or so ago many farmers, such as mid western corn farmers, had hit a bonanza with rising prices due to export demand and the ethanol market.

But the economic downturn has hit nearly everyone, farmers included, and now price projections are not so good in many sectors.

The dairy industry has been hit hard because of the recession and again the drop off of the milk export market, but at the same time rising feed and fertilizer and other production costs.

But farmers are not a homogenous group. There are all kinds of farms and farmers involved in raising all types of crops and animals and there are all kinds of business arrangements.

In addition, a large part of the nation’s farm economy is subsidized in various manners by the government through farm programs usually included in something that is passed from time to time called the omnibus farm bill.

I’m not an expert in all of this but I know that as an example mid western corn farmers take advantage or can take advantage of things such as federally-subsidized crop insurance (get paid if your crop is ruined in a hail storm or something like that), subsidized loans, and price supports. In many cases the government will buy a crop from the farmer if market prices are not high enough.

Nelson’s Farm Aid concert thing began back in the late 1970s. What had happened is that the farm economy in general was flush in the early 70s and the government was urging farmers to plant as much as they could and banks were falling all over themselves to loan money. Farmers did plant all they could and new people or corporations entered the market.

Well, of course that created a surplus, and the market went south, so to speak. A lot of farmers could not pay off their loans and lost their farms.

There is good logic to having government farm programs in that they are supposedly designed to create stability in the production of food and fiber. Farm commodity prices are so volatile that it would be difficult for the average farmer to invest year to year in land and equipment and seed and fertilizer and so forth without some backup that farm programs provide.

Unfortunately there is much abuse, such as so-called farmers who operate out of the skyscrapers of New York and collect vast amounts of farm subsidies.

And on a much smaller scale you run into something like this: Once while working as a farm reporter I attended a meeting of a local Agriculture Stabilization and Conservation Committee – local farmers appointed via a federal agency. A farmer submitted a claim for crop damage. He had a field of what is called “volunteer oats”. That is the oats originated from a previously-planted crop and came up again from left over seed. So here is a field he did not plant. The oats came up on their own. But they were subsequently damaged, by rain at the wrong time, or hail or something, I don’t recall. The committee voted to pay his claim out of your federal tax dollars. Maybe there is some logic in that – I did not see it. But that claim was small potatoes when compared to the billions paid in subsidies to corporate farms and many family farmers who have large spreads and quite frankly do not need the help.

Personally, I am a big supporter of what is generically called the farm economy. And I have reason to believe that family farms or owner-operated farms are a more efficient and a better model for our society than corporate farms. Family farmers tend to be more dedicated to their land and are more likely to be conservation oriented. They also actually may operate their farms more efficiently. I had a corporate farm manager tell me once that family farmers have an advantage in decision making. He said he could, for example, eyeball a field and tell when it needs irrigation and how much. But in the corporate structure things such as irrigation schedules are worked out by a committee and have little flexibility and decisions cannot be made on the spot.

Family farmers also have a better chance of being diversified. Corporate farms tend to milk something (cows if they are into dairying) for all it’s worth and then move on.

And diversity is important when it can be done in agriculture. To use a farmy metaphor, putting all your eggs in one basket can lead to trouble.

And that may be part of the problem for the dairy industry. I know that in California, despite that ad campaign that shows happy cows living in pastoral paradise, the average dairy here is more like a factory with thousands of cows and shifts of workers, and the animals lying down in their own waste. In the typical California model milking cows are usually not pastured. They eat at the trough while they are being milked and then go back out into a pen. There are variations in this model.

If dairies were smaller and if the farmers were more diversified, raising other commodities, they might have an option when milk prices declined. As it is many of the big dairies are going out of business, as I understand it, and that even despite government price supports.

But I do not have it out for agriculture. I am a big supporter. When I think back on it, I have made much of my income over the years indirectly and almost directly from agriculture. As a teenager I worked as an irrigator and later I worked for a number of years as a farm reporter and I worked for many years as a truck driver hauling predominantly farm products. And I know it’s important because I eat food and wear clothes. Even if we don’t make much clothing in this country anymore, we still grow a lot of cotton, and do produce some wool.

Agriculture policy is a complex issue. I just have a suspicion that some use the image of the old woman and man and pitch fork, ala American Gothic, as a promotion for help down on the farm. Money is tight. A lot of people need help. I do believe in family farms. But let’s make sure who we are talking about when we support the various farm subsidies and make sure we are helping a good cause and not just serving as a cash cow for a farmer headquartered in a skyscraper in New York.

P.s.

Interestingly, virtually all nations subsidize their agriculture.

Mulling over the libertarian option…

(Copyright 2009)

During our recent presidential election we chose between the two major parties, but there was a third way, libertarianism. Maybe we should have elected Ron Paul president, but of course we would not have done that because as most libertarians he came across as kind of cranky and he has that kind of whiny and raspy voice and he’s totally out of the mainstream.

What made me think about this is an article I read a few hours ago by libertarian economist Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University.

I was also mulling over an opinion piece written by President Obama and published in the Washington Post. And I caught a few minutes of Republican right wing radio.

As we know, Obama wants to push through an ever-expanding “stimulus” bill – it started out at $800 billion the first time I heard about it and now the new reports put it at $900 Billion. It has been heavily criticized for containing all kinds of pet projects, often called “pork”, to include things that seemingly have nothing or nothing directly to do with immediately stimulating the economy, such as family planning and health care.

The Republicans are calling for more tax cuts, their idea being that the economy can be stimulated better by cutting taxes than increasing government spending. By a little legerdemain, Obama proposes to increase taxes and cut spending (by borrowing money).

Obama wrote in his opinion piece that cutting taxes alone as an approach to stimulate the economy is part of the “failed theories” from the previous administration that have been resoundingly rejected by the electorate.

My view of what the traditional Democrats and Republicans want is unchanged. Despite what they claim, they are basically both in support of huge, overbearing government because it is the status quo with which they are accustom.

The Democrats want that big government to use its resources to do all kinds of things for a wide range of people. The Republicans want to use the resources of government to help the business class (there may be somewhat of a split between Wall Street and Main Street).

So anyway, even though I mentioned Ron Paul, I’m really thinking of what Mr. Miron wrote.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of what he wrote, but I think he made some good points. So I thought I might list some of them and give my response:

REPEAL THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX: I’m rather sure the Republicans would agree with this one. Miron thinks this would free up more money for more corporate investment, thus stimulating the economy. Also some argue that corporate income taxes are double taxation since shareholders must also pay income taxes on their dividends. I think this is worth consideration (taxes do have to be collected somewhere, though, and corporations benefit from the services and protections government affords).

INCREASE CARBON TAXES WHILE LOWERING MARGINAL TAX RATES: Miron opines that upping carbon taxes would be a more efficient way of going green because it would give industry an incentive to clean up its act without risking the likely boondoggles of so-called government green programs. It would also reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. I like it.  As far as lowering tax rates, I don’t know. Everyone wants to have their own tax rate cut, but someone has to pay the bills. Perhaps a flat tax or a consumption tax is a better way to go. A lot of resources are wasted and and a lot of taxable income is hidden under the present hodgepodge.

MODERATE GROWTH OF ENTITLEMENTS: Our libertarian friend suggests raising the retirement age and putting a hold on increases in various social programs. For my part, I am sure those who have no need for the entitlements (and I don’t like that term) programs don’t mind cutting back. Social Security does need a stable and equitable funding system that is secure from raiding for other uses. Unlike libertarians and Republicans, I think government ought to be able to provide the citizenry with some protections as long as we all pay for it on an equitable basis. But it is true that while all industrialized nations provide social protections, they all face the problem of ever increasing costs. So entitlement spending does have to be kept in check. It could indeed bankrupt the nation. And I want to add that I don’t think raising the Social Security retirement age again is a good idea. We already have too big of a labor pool with too few jobs, and why do we want to work all of our life?

ELIMINATE WASTEFUL SPENDING: And who could argue with this? Problem is that one person’s wasteful spending is another’s much needed project. But included in Mr. Miron’s examples of wasteful spending are fixing levees in New Orleans, thus encouraging folks to live below sea level, farm subsidies, Amtrak, when, according to Miron, buses are more efficient, and the U.S. Postal Service when Fed Ex is more efficient (and I would add e-mail). I could actually write in defense of some farm subsidies because of the stability in agriculture that benefits all, but the problem is that a large portion of those subsidies unfairly go to the super rich (who are super rich due primarily to the subsidies) and also to people not involved in farming. As to the other examples, truly food for thought.

WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: And this is true libertarian doctrine. To my knowledge libertarians believe in using our military for direct defense of our country only. During the Cold War era, which included some hot wars (Korea and Vietnam, for example) we were locked into a military spending competition with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union finally and essentially went bankrupt. What we do about our present engagements in the Middle East is a question. But I for one would hope we resist being suckered into war here and there and everywhere. Our present military adventures are a major drain on our failing economy and threaten the immediate defense of our own country by stretching us too thin. And then there are the moral considerations.

LIMIT UNION POWER: The big issue nowadays is card check. It is a system that circumvents the secret ballots workers use to vote a union in. Under card check, union organizers can bully workers into signing cards (and there is no protection of secrecy) in order to push through a union. I am against card check. I am neutral on unions themselves. But workers should not be required to belong to unions. In some cases businesses might find it advantageous to employ workers who belong to unions that stress professionalism. In my own working experience I have witnessed both the good and bad of unionism. The good: excellent wages and benefits and job security (except possibly in this economy). The bad: Work slow downs, refusals to work at a related job when the help is needed, indifference to the needs of the employer. (My experience primarily is from working as a non-union truck driver, who at one point did nonetheless benefit from a wage scale related to union contracts).

People who are paid well indeed help the economy.

EXPANDING LEGAL IMMIGRATION: The libertarian here calls for making it even easier for employers to hire foreign workers with specialized skills. I am not against this if it can be proved that U.S. citizens with the needed skills are not available, but I am against companies using the special visa program to undercut wages, and I think it is highly unpatriotic for them to do so. If we do have a dearth of skilled workers, industry should sponsor education programs to rectify the situation. And needed skill training should get more attention in public education as well.

RENEW OUR COMMITMENT TO FREE TRADE: This is a tricky one. We know from experience that during the Great Depression (the last one) raising tariffs brought on reprisals from other countries and exacerbated the economic woes. Right now, like it or not, we are a consumer nation and our whole economy is structured around free trade. While I think it might not be a good idea to raise tariffs or otherwise officially discourage imports, I do think we need to expand or rebuild our own industry and become more competitive on the world market.

STOP BAILING OUT BUSINESSES THAT TOOK ON TOO MUCH RISK: Nothing more I can say on this other than I agree. As the bailout billions (to become trillions) multiply and the nation goes deeper and deeper into debt and as the economy spirals downwards it may become all too apparent that bankruptcy was the answer the whole time. Bailouts, which have been done in times past, send the message to the marketplace that risk can be hedged at the cost of the taxpayers – wrong message.

Separate from all of the preceding, and of libertarian thought, I personally suggest an expansion of or creation of federal job corps type programs that put people to work doing things that the private sector never gets around to doing but are needed nonetheless.

Also, reinstating the military draft could help relieve our stressed armed forces and provide relief in the ever-shrinking job sector. It would also make our presidents and the electorate itself become more circumspect in ordering or supporting military interventions. Just an idea.