Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] WHY DON'T WE WANT PEOPLE TO FARM?

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] WHY DON'T WE WANT PEOPLE TO FARM?
  • Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:01:51 -0700


WHY DON'T WE WANT PEOPLE TO FARM?
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=01&year=2009&base
_name=why_dont_we_want_people_to_far


In a policy paper almost custom-designed to catch this blog's eye, the
Access Project has released an issue brief on the intersection of farming
and health care coverage. And the news isn't good. Health policy types tend
to assume a household is experiencing financial hardship from medical costs
if they spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care. That's
true for 54 percent of folks who report their primary occupation as farming
or ranching. Add in part-time farmers (which is common given that farming
is often seasonal) and it's 44 percent. That's high. And high is bad.

Small farmers get their health insurance on the individual market. They are
not protected by an employer's bargaining power. They do not get to deduct
their insurance costs, as employers do. And the individual market is bad,
pricey place to get your health insurance. The median amount that farmers
on the individual market get paid out-of-pocket for health insurance was
$11,200. Those who got their insurance from an employer paid $5,600 out of
pocket (they of course paid more out of potential wages redirected to
health care, but that's a different sort of burden).

So why does this matter? As Steph Larsen, a rural policy organizer for the
Center for Rural Affairs observes, when you're talking about building a
more environmentally sustainable, local food production system, you're
talking about having a lot of farms. As Larsen puts it, that requires
small-scale farming to be not only environmentally sustainable, but
economically viable. Small-scale farming is hard to make a living at and
harder to make a regular living at. Crop prices go up and down. Droughts
descend. Tastes change. Subsidies shift. If you can't keep your health care
amidst these fluctuations, you can't keep farming. It's irresponsible. And
so many don't. As Larsen concludes, health reform is an important part of
farm policy not only for the farmer who needs health care, but the office
worker who'd like to farm. In this, it's much like the rest of health care
policy.

The fact that our health system specifically advantages stable jobs at
large employers reduces entrepreneurship in all forms. Fewer people can
start small businesses, move home to take over their family farm, or spend
a couple years trying to make it as a rock band. Economic creativity is
reduced across the board. Scraping by on low wages for a few years is one
thing. Going without health care, particularly if you're older or have a
family, is rather another. It's as true for the young innovator who wants
to leave Bell Labs* and start his own company as for the tired office
worker who'd prefer to return to Nebraska and reinvigorate the farm he grew
up on. We have decided to discourage them as a matter of national policy.
We have decided to make it easier for ConAgra and harder for family farms.
The question is why.


*Yes, they still exist.






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page