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  • From: "Rick Williams" <mrfarm AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] OT Thought Provoking (or maybe justprovoking:)
  • Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 10:49:45 -0600

Jill Taylor Bussiere wrote:
> Rick, we agree on something!!!! About the exposing and eliminating it!
> Although, in the current scandals, that would be so many. It
> might be best
> to be sure that the law and political climate do not allow it in
> the future.
> Well, the law already didn't allow it.

I really do not accept the idea that most legislators are corrupt. There may
be certain practices that go on at times, but like you say, once you have a
law in place, it then depends upon the climate. We see this with many other
laws that are either not enforced, or more likely, selectively enforced,
which is standard police practice. If you arrested people for the slightest
infraction of rules and laws of which there are tens of thousands, all of us
would be in jail. As they say, "ignorance of the law is no excuse," but I do
not support that kind of thinking. Our society is on total overload on all
the possible rules infractions that can be broken on a minute by minute
basis.

And I will stress again, that there can be a serious chilling effect when
you have laws upon laws upon rules upon rules. This can be used at great
advantage to punish those who you want to "get," while most people get away
with it. A perfect example right now is to apprehend and punish all the
people who have purchased products through mail order and have not paid the
sales taxes due. That is likely to include most people:) But they are now
singling out certain people in Wisconsin for this "honor."

> The Democrat is indeed arrogant, and slimey, in my opinion - wanting power
> over all else. The Democratic illegal practices seem to be more
> concentrated in him. The Republicans, however, spread their illegal
> practices throughout their legislators. Read the Carey email memo to get
> just an idea of how pervasive the use of publicly paid staff for
> campaigning
> was. And this is only one memo!!!
> http://wispolitics.com/freeser/features/Scandal/RACC%2097/Carey.memo.pdf

I have to honest with you. I read the memo and would never have suspected
that anything in the memo could possibly point to any wrongdoing. Maybe some
of the rules are a bit much. I know that it is even illegal to call someone
that is related to campaigning from your own legislative office. When I
first heard that, it seemed impossible that we had gotten that extreme on
what is an illegal activity, but apparently they feel that there are abuses
by doing it ... phone use? I am not quite so draconian as that and consider
myself a liberal on such issues.

What I am concerned about though, was what is alleged with the Democrats'
actual shake-down of people for money for doing favors and voting a certain
way on a bill. Now that is clearly illegal and needs to be dealt with ... if
it is true or can be proved in a court of law. We will have to wait for that
to transpire.

> It is not the level playing field that I disagree with, it is
> that offering
> money to the larger farms which have much greater environmental
> impacts is a
> way to encourage their existence - this is environmentally
> destructive, and
> also destructive to a healthy economy.

Here is my take on this and the majority view of farmers in the U.S.: The
largest farms produce most all of the food and fiber in the U.S. They are
under a microscope that is not present on small farms. They should not be
penalized for being large unless largeness by itself is damaging to the
environement. The truth is that they are often less damaging to the
environement. They are not permitted the liberties of the small farms
practices that are causing degradation to the environment. I am speaking
from actual on-site personal knowledge here. Not some theory. You would
NEVER see a large farm get away with some of the run off into creeks that is
very common in our area on a daily basis. The combined run off is staggering
in some communities.

There have been some high profile cases with the large farms which always
seem to deal with one issue ... lagoon overflow. With the CAFO requirements,
the large farms have to meet stringent manure management plans. And they are
not always easy to meet. The small and medium size farms do NOT have to meet
these same requirements. Do those farms do improper management of nutrients?
Yes, it is very common. But even they will eventually have to meet similar
requirements. Right now it is NOT a level playing field as the large farms
have to meet the standard, the other farms do not. Should EQIP money be
withheld from the large farms? No. Would the small farms be a lot better off
in the long term to not have EQIP funding in the first place? Yes without a
doubt. But guess what ... the small farmers pushed hard, very hard, for a
requirement that if NMP's are put in place, then the funding had to
primarily come from the government. So it is no surprise that is what we now
have. There is no political will to change this. Go out and actually talk to
some farmers and you will know what I am talking about.

Whether you have one large farm with a nutrient management plan or 20 small
farms with similar plans, the net effect to the environment is the same. The
difference in economy of scale though is obvious. It simply is going to cost
a LOT more money to do 20 small plans rather than one large one. So in that
respect the NMP's for large farms are likely to be of lower cost per unit of
food and fiber produced. Again, benefitting the larger units of production.

> You and I have a basic
> disagreement
> about the health of our current food system - to people and to
> the earth and
> to the economy, so it is understandable that we would differ about this as
> well. The world I envision is one where people farm with the
> health of the
> earth and those who eat their products in mind. Where people are
> encouraged
> to farm in such ways, and continue to do so on their own as soon as
> possible.

Historically, many practices that were done by farms (of any size) were not
always wise, e.g., no conservation tillage, manure management of closer-in
gets more fertility than outlying fields, short term desperation over long
term sustainablity. By the use of education in our land grant system, and
later on, subsidies for doing certain practices, we have greatly changed the
way things were done. Farmers farm because of historical acceptance of doing
practices, and because of the need to survive in the short term.

> Subsidies would be to transition, educate, etc - to such
> practices -because it is of benefit to us all. Then they would
> be dropped,
> unless they were of benefit to the greater good.

For the most part, that is what you have now. If we did not have subsidies,
there would be an impact on farms. The most significant impact on farms
would be the lowering of the entry cost for new farmers. Land prices would
decline without the subsidy programs. Agricultural commodities would likely
increase slightly in price which would be a concern to most politicians,
including those in the cities. Many farmers who have worked their lives to
at least have a substantial gain on the farm real estate would lose their
retirement cushion.

> Now, farming practices
> that are unhealthy to people and to the earth are subsidized.

What are these farming practices that you refer to as being unhealthy to
people and the earth?

> At this point, the subsidies have not been a benefit for the smaller
> arms - milk purchasers have already incorporated the subsidies
> into their
> mental figuring of what they will pay for the milk, and as a result have
> paid less, figuring that the subsidies will fill in the gap. So that the
> subsidies have not worked in the way that those that believe in them had
> hoped.

Here, I have to disagree with you. This is not how economics works. Rather
what is actually happening is that additional product can now be produced
that otherwise would not have been produced (because of more farmers
discontinuing production due to not being able to compete in the market). We
all know what happens when only a "slight" surplus occurs. The price goes
down. It has absolutely nothing to do what the buyers of the product will or
will not pay. They always try to buy at the lowest possible price (they
would love it for free wouldn't they:), and the seller is always trying to
sell at the highest possible price that still allows them to clear the
inventory.

Subsidies allow more of the marginal producers to stay in the market who
would otherwise leave the market. This is well known. It is also well known
that subsidies will lead to lower prices. That is partly why you get support
for many of the farm programs by city legislators. You would never have
enough legislators from just the farm areas to sell such ideas.

> Indeed you will not please everyone. We agree once again.
> However, I would
> like to see a society where democratic dialogue is encouraged -
> in that way
> we can hope to attain a democratic compromise.

And that is why we have in the U.S. It is how the system works and while it
can almost never satisfy those on the margins, it can satisfy the great
majority in the middle.

Sincerely,

Rick Williams





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