Auctioning our Future

For too long we have romanticized the family farm. We have romanticized farmers and their rural American lifestyles. And now, when the family farm is nearing extinction, farm families are suffering immeasurable pain and loss, and rural America is going the way of many a mining-turned-ghost town, many Americans are unable to see the suffering.

But there has never been anything romantic about getting up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows. There is nothing romantic about watching a long-nurtured crop be destroyed by drought. And, melodramatic movies and televised benefit concerts aside, there is nothing romantic, nothing at all inspiring, about a four-generation farm family struggling desperately against the political, financial, and corporate powers-that-be--and losing. There is certainly nothing romantic about suicide prompted by despair and financial desperation.

There is a profound crisis in American agriculture, and the time has come to stop romanticizing it, to stop ignoring it, to stop thinking that next year's crop will take care of it. American farmers are reaping a harvest of debt and pain that threatens to destroy not only their families and their livelihoods but an entire way of life. And, as always, what happens on the farm will be felt in the cities.

The foreclosure of American farms portends the erosion of basic social and moral values, the further monopolization of our economic and social institutions, and the greater abuse of our environment. Sitting on the auction block, offered for sale by corporate America to the most "efficient" bidder, is nothing less than the economic future of our country.

The bankers, the government, and the corporate giants would have us believe that struggling farmers have been irresponsible. But it is time to acknowledge that our short-sighted farm policies have long manipulated farmers for the sake of trade balances, diplomatic leverage, and profits for the few.

The policy-makers and farm loan agencies would have us believe that they have been subsidizing the farmers and that their budgets can no longer afford such soft-hearted inefficiencies. In fact, every meal we eat has been subsidized by family farmers, who earn not what it costs them to grow our food but what government -and corporation-dominated "market forces" have determined is proper.

The auctioneers tell us that bigger is better and that more technology means better food, but we have already had enough of regulation-size, hard, tasteless tomatoes and meats laden with chemicals. Elected officials tell us that, while they would like to support struggling farmers, the issues are really very complicated--too complicated for farmers or their supporters to understand--and require painful remedies.

It is time to reject the myth that low-cost, low-quality, "efficient" food production is more important than justice for the people who grow the food and preservation of the rural lifestyle. The time has come to stop begging for the crumbs of federal aid that might keep a farm family on its land for one more year. We must now begin demanding the fundamental reform of our systems of agriculture and land ownership.

In the words of E.F. Schumacher:

What is the meaning of democracy, freedom, human dignity, standard of living, self-realization, fulfillment? Is it a matter of goods, or of people? Of course it is a matter of people....If economic thinking ...cannot get beyond its vast abstractions, the national income, the rate of growth, capital/output ratio, input-output analysis, labor mobility, capital accumulation; if it cannot get beyond all this and make contact with the human realities of poverty, frustration, alienation, despair, breakdown, crime, escapism, stress, congestion, ugliness, and spiritual death, then let us scrap economics and start afresh.

Are there not indeed enough "signs of the times" to indicate that a new start is needed?

Indeed there are.

Vicki Kemper was new editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.