LETTER: Without change, independent farmers will be bought out

I was fortunate, as an associate member, to recently attend the Iowa Farmers Union annual convention. Having practiced county-seat law and working for numerous farmers in Adair County for 50 years, and experiencing summer jobs on farms and at grandpa’s, my appreciation for the importance of Iowa’s farm sector was thus formed.

Of course, farm convention attenders talked about tariffs and consolidation. One attendee, IFU board member Suzan Erem, declared these topics could be moot in a few years. Farmerless farms were on the horizon. It reminded her of the Kodak camera company.

“They planned to go digital in 10 years. They were bankrupt in 2.”

John Deere has announced plans to go 100% robotic by 2030. (Bloomberg News, Jan. 6, 2025) If today’s farmers enjoy their amenity-loaded tractor cabs - compared to yesterday’s straw hats - will they look ahead to more time off . . . or does this sound like unemployment? Erem further declares that tomorrow’s farmers may not own their machines, and already often cannot now self-maintain them.

Talk about change. Voluminous acres have been given over to the monocrop/CAFO factory farm business model since the year 2000. Massive consolidation. Intensive cropping and polluted runoff. Massive loss of rural youth and community vitality. Massive exports of ag income and equity to urban places.

Admit it or not, the farm sector dwells in the political economy because its members are often at loss to manage production from year to year, to respond profitably to market trends.

So, will rural folks advocate vigorously for USDA policies that stabilize the family-scale farmer, that incentivize robust land and water stewardship? Without a major change in programming, we’ll just go on with policies that affect a mere handful of wealthy and powerful interests – mostly anchored in non-rural places - that are buying out what’s left of independent hands-on farmers.

We might consider a farm bill that features retooled parity mechanisms reflective of those formed up in the great depression era by Adair County native Henry A. Wallace, part of FDR’s inner circle and his eventual Vice President. Wallace’s supply management/price support policies boosted the farmer share of the U.S. Food Dollar to 50 cents (1950). Regrettably, Big Ag interests intervened thereafter with slogans like “feeding the world,” simply a cover for corporate profiteering. The farmer food dollar share has shrunk now to 15 cents.

Vibrant rural communities? They won’t show on our horizon without standing firm for them, for policy changes that bolster local prosperity.

Wendell Berry reminds us that “without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice.”