A Load of Manure: Farm Analyses by Non-Farmers

Says Steve Chapman at reason.com:

“If you don't mind sweat, dirt, or the smell of manure, this is a great time to be a farmer. Incomes are up, land values are high, and global demand is growing. Oh, and if you're one of the lucky farmers, there's a bonus: a tap on the federal treasury.”
“Farm subsidies are an oddity in a competitive, capitalist economy. In what other business can you expect continuing government support, whether you need it or not? But by now, they are as American as kudzu, and about as hard to get rid of.”
(…)
“In recent years, the average farm family has enjoyed an income about 20 percent higher than the average for all families, not to mention five times more net worth. In 2010, net farm income jumped by an estimated 20 percent, according to the Department of Agriculture, and net equity rose nearly 7 percent. The average farm family now makes $86,352 a year.”

Chapman is completely out to lunch regarding the finances of farming. If the average farm takes in X dollars, it is highly likely that its costs and expenses run X + 20%. That is why virtually all farm families have at least one member and probably both who work full time in town, as well as running the farm. And the entire family works on the farm, and probably hires occasional workers, too.

I even doubt Chapman's undocumented figure of $86,352 income; that might be the mean, if corporations are included, but I doubt that it is the average. Missouri is heavily oriented toward cattle, having the second largest herd (Texas is first). The average cattle herd in Missouri is 30 head, and if that (luckily) produces 28 calves for sale, at an average of $550, is $15,400... hardly a source of great wealth.

Farming is not ordinary capitalism as Chapman would have us think. (Has he ever even seen a farm except from the sealed windows of his much newer car at 85 mph on the interstate??) Farmers get paid at well below wholesale prices for their goods – selling their production at commodity prices which they cannot set or even negotiate. Yet farmers pay retail for virtually everything they buy; even co-op prices are the same as the hardware store in the mall. Even feed grain is purchased at prices marked up by middlemen processors and transporters and resellers.

Our farm was hit extremely hard by a two year drought several years back. The first year wasn’t bad for us because I had arranged for our purchased hay well in advance, and had even bought it at a discount. The second year there was no hay, period. Farmers were selling cattle by the herd, and prices dropped far below cost of production. We all were forced to sell the cattle or watch them starve… or buy in hay that was grown in another state. We sold cattle at a huge loss, and bought in hay that cost 400% of normal, just to feed the small remaining herd. Our investment was devastated, and contrary to what Chapman thinks, there were no capitalist investment bankers lined up to invest in the next few good years on our farm. Nor is there a government subsidy check in my mailbox. When the investment is destroyed, no further investment can be made.

There’s something else Chapman seems ignorant about, and that concerns the source for the abundant groceries and vegetables he cites in the stores: much of that now comes to the USA from other countries. The USA is not friendly to farmers, much less making them filthy rich like unto politicians and their investment banker buddies. Never mind the regulations and the water-rights denials, the specter of discovering a protected species inhabiting your land, corporate ownership of genetics that turn up in your crops, encroaching neighborhoods of city folk who love the country except for what’s in it, the cost of returning fertility to land that has been sucked dry by centuries of crops, the cost of repair to incessant erosion and loss of top soil, the inexplicable deaths of a few valuable newborn animals which are crucial to profitability, the cost of fuel, fertilizer, feed, machinery, medications, and the potential for theft from the farm (we recently lost a large amount of diesel fuel from a previously unlocked tank in an inconspicuous place).

No, never mind all that, and the work conditions in the sub-freezing to sizzling heat, seven days a week. Never mind that the price of farmland is far higher than the ability for it to produce farm products to produce a return on investment in the life time of the farmer. And ironically, if the farmer wants to sell out at those prices, there is no one to buy. The farmer is stuck on his farm, farming at a loss or not at all, working in town to make up the difference and still pay the property tax so he can at least keep the land and buy groceries. Chapman's net worth argument is, using a farm term, bullshit, and ear deep at that. An item is worth only what someone will pay for it.

I live on a farm. We produce farm products. I’m surrounded by farms and farmers.

I’d say Chapman knows exactly nothing about farming. But that doesn't seem to stop him from demonstrating it.