According to the National Family Farm Coalition, in its statement of agrarian populist concerns after the passage of the "Freedom to Farm" bill in 1995, the average price of corn per bushel in 1993 was $2.12 (1987 dollars) compared with $5.23 in 1975, while wheat was $2.61 per bushel compared to $7.30 in 1975. From 1982 to 1993, the coalition noted (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8569/Ames.Platform.html), the index of prices received by farmers rose only 7.5%, while the index of prices paid by farmers for inputs multiplied over threefold to 23%.
The big four US cereal manufacturers (Kellogg, General Mill, Philip Morris and Quaker Oats controlled 84% of the US ready-to-eat cereal market and 71.7% of the world ready-to-eat cereal market. Average yearly return on investment between 1990 and 1994 for those manufacturers was General Mills, 37.7%, Philip Morris, 34.4%; Kellogg, 32.9%, and Quaker Oats, 26 6%. Meanwhile, farmers averaged 3.4%.
Less than a million farmers survived Reaganomics, so their political influence is waning, even in states like Iowa, but I don't think that justifies an indifference regarding their decline and the surrendering of food policy to the ADMs, ConAgras and Tysons of the agribusiness world.
For more on small farmers vs. agribusiness, see "the Last Farm Crisis," by William Greider, in the Nov. 20 The Nation (also archived at http://www.competitivemarkets.com/news_and_events/GreiderTheNation.htm)
-- Jim Cullen
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>
>
>>There's no question but that small farmers have a hard time of it, struggle
>>uphill against very difficult economic circumstances, even with subsidies.
>>So why do they vote overwhelmingly Republican? Democrats are no less
>>assidious than Republicans about supporting the subsidies. It's not
>economic
>>interest: Republicans support big agribusiness and credit policies that
>have
>>contributed to their plight--so do Democrats, of course, but is there a
>>significant difference? It's possible that Democrats might be better.
>>Nathan, do you know what's what here? Is the triumph of ideology over
>>interest? Or maybe the difference is small enough that reactionary
>>ideologies trump any marginal differences in the way the parties would
>>promote the interests of small farmers.
Nathan Newman said:
>
>Well, the first thing to note is that farmers are not the majority of voters
>even in farm states. And for those that remain, farming has become an
>incredibly capital intensive-pesticide intensive industry. So slashing
>capital gains and gutting environmental controls can sound really attractive
>to a lot of those farmers. The farm subsidy system is so out of whack that
>poor farmers hardly benefit relative to the bigger ones- it's hard to make a
>big case on farm issues that the GOP is worse than the Dems; the GOP is
>quite socialist-oriented towards their farm constituency when it suits them,
>the temporary market ideological triumph of the Freedom to Farm Act a few
>years ago aside.
>
>It's not always clear what is progressive about farm subsidies, given that
>they increase the price of food for poor folks in the cities. Once upon a
>time, the cities and rural legislators had a deal where farm Congressmen
>supported welfare for the cities while city Congressmen supported subsidies
>for the farms. As suburban areas have grown, new coalitions have emerged of
>suburbs teaming up with votes from rural areas to kill spending on welfare,
>while to a lesser extent those same suburban votes have teamed up with city
>votes to undermine the farm subsidies for poorer farmers. And with more and
>more votes in farm states being those suburban votes teamed with richer
>farmers, the basis for the old progressive small farmer-city alliance has
>been largely undermined.
>
>The creation of Food Stamps, teaming Bob Dole and George McGovern with city
>legislators, was probably the last gasp of that older alliance. The current
>city-rural divide is the triumph of Southern conservatism in the GOP
>trumping the prairie progressivism of the past that would support city
>issues, just as neoliberalism in the Dems (even of a more liberal sort) lost
>sympathy for farm issues seen as irrational and marginal.
>
>If there is a resurgence of progressive voting in a lot of the plains
>states, it is not going to be a producerist alliance, since the number of
>rural "producers" is falling and probably fallening into big or little
>reactionary directions. But as agribusiness grows, from larger-scale farms
>to giant pig production, there is a growing working class in those sectors.
>Latinos are one of the fastest growing groups in many rural areas for this
>very reason. Now, many of them can't vote because they are not citizens,
>so this is not showing up in the political results of those counties. But
>if a real enfranchisement movement addresses the vast underbelly of the
>rural working class in these areas, there is plenty of basis for a
>progressive politics in those states.
>
>But not on the lines of the Farmer-Labor Party model. That's dead. Dead.
>Dead.
>
>-- Nathan Newman
-- ----------------------------------- JAMES M. CULLEN PO Box 150517, Austin TX 78715-0517 Email: jcullen at austin.rr.com -----------------------------------