{"id":1561,"date":"2018-08-04T16:52:47","date_gmt":"2018-08-04T21:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2018-08-04T16:52:47","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T21:52:47","slug":"trumps-12-billion-pr-stunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/?p=1561","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s $12 Billion PR Stunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instead of posturing to look like he supports farmers, the president should be pushing for reforms in agricultural programs that would actually help the little guy<\/strong><\/p>\n

By: Jim Goodman, President, National Family Farm Coalition (Wonewoc, WI)<\/p>\n

Published by the Daily Yonder, Aug. 2nd, 2018<\/p>\n

Despite strong\u00a0continued support for President Trump in rural America, farmers fear they will bear the brunt of the retaliatory tariffs from the president\u2019s trade war.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Farm country can ill afford it: In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicted 2018 crop profits would hit a 12 year low. Dairy farmers\u2019 prices have fallen 30% in two years, while pork producers have seen a price drop of roughly $20 per head. Overall farm incomes are down nearly 50% from 2013. Long before the trade war began, I and many other farmers feared we were in a farm crisis as bad as that of the 1980s. Now we know it will be even worse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While the president has said he could \u201cstand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody\u201d and not lose support, he also knows who butters his\u00a0bread. And so, we have a new $12 billion emergency aid package for farmers to ease the sting of the tariffs, clearly designed to keep his rural base firmly behind him. But will it actually solve farmers\u2019 problems? I doubt it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Twelve billion dollars is a\u00a0lot of money, but spread across all the major agricultural commodities, it will be a drop in the bucket. Details on how the money will be dispersed are still hazy, but I suspect most of it will not find its way into the pockets of struggling farmers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The\u00a0proposed scheme divides the funds into three pots. One will be used for direct incremental payments to producers of soybeans, sorghum, corn, wheat, cotton, dairy and hogs, for losses sustained from the tariffs. A second will use USDA Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) authority to purchase commodities of fruits, nuts, rice, legumes, beef, pork and milk and distribute them to food banks. The third will use CCC funds to partner with the private sector to develop new export markets for agricultural commodities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So what\u2019s wrong with that? Well, plenty. First, direct payments will supposedly replace projected income lost due to the tariffs \u2013 as if everything was going along fine in farm country before the president\u2019s little trade war. The whole plan ignores the\u00a0full-blown farm crisis \u2013 complete with farmers struggling to pay their electric bills and buy food, forced to sell their farms, and in some cases taking their own lives \u2013 that has been quietly growing in the countryside for years, with virtually no recognition or corrective action from Washington. But now they\u2019re playing politics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, after the bailout gives an unknown share of $12 billion to make up for farmers\u2019 low prices and feed the working poor through a donation program, it hands the rest to big\u00a0agribusiness for export market development. Farmers are already forced to pay a tax on every animal or bushel of grain we sell. This checkoff goes to agribusiness trade groups for product promotion and market development. But apparently that\u2019s not enough,\u00a0so this deal gives them another pound of flesh \u2013 this time from the taxpayers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The real problem facing farm country is not international tariffs. It is that we produce too much. Farmers are told that to survive, we must produce every possible bushel, every gallon of milk or pound of meat, no matter what it costs to buy the inputs, no matter the toll on the environment. When prices are low, we must produce more \u2013 and of course that means even lower prices and a never-ending death spiral.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The small\u00a0farms go first in hard times; the land merged into bigger operations, and the small dairy herds, like mine, sold off. My state of Wisconsin is losing 1.5 dairy farms every day \u2013 that\u2019s 1.5 farmers out of a job. We can only guess at the economic impact the\u00a0loss of these small farms will have on the businesses in their rural communities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is another way: not a bailout, but a minimum wage. For many years, federal farm policy included a grain reserve. The government bought grain in times of low prices, sold it back into the market when supplies were low, and ensured farmers a floor price to keep them farming at a profit rather than producing below their cost of production. This stabilized the food supply and food prices, and farmers were required to maintain good environmental practices \u2013 no fence-row to fence-row planting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We could do the same for livestock producers. Rather than forever chasing new export markets, we could, like Canada, simply keep our production in line with domestic consumption. Canada\u2019s supply management program guarantees farmers a fair price and guarantees consumers adequate food supplies grown locally \u2013 with no taxpayer subsidies required. We could still export excess production where there was demand, but US farmers would no longer\u00a0compete with every farmer in the world over who can produce the cheapest product. Farmers, like everyone else, do better with a fair price for their work rather than emergency handouts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s trade war will cause irreparable damage to the farm sector,\u00a0but we were bleeding long before he took to Twitter. If the president really wants to help farmers \u2013 and consumers, the environment, and taxpayers \u2013 he would lobby for a U.S. supply management program, not a $12 billion PR stunt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Instead of posturing to look like he supports farmers, the president should be pushing for reforms in agricultural programs that would actually help the little guy By: Jim Goodman, President, National Family Farm Coalition (Wonewoc, WI) Published by the Daily … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}