Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture

1. Crisis and Opportunity in American Agriculture

Crisis and Opportunity in American Agriculture North American agriculture is in crisis. Until recently, the crisis had been a quiet one. No one wanted to talk about it. Thousands of farm families were being forced off the land each year, but we were being told by the agricultural establishment that their exodus was inevitable—in fact, it was a sign of progress.1 Those who failed were simply the victims of their own inef- ficiency, their inability to keep up with changing times, their inability to compete. We have no more reason to be concerned about the demise of the family farm than we were about the mom-and-pop grocery story or the family-owned restaurant. We can’t stand in the way of progress, they said. With farm prices at or near record low levels for 1997, 1998, and 1999, even the agricultural establishment began to realize that something was wrong. The U.S. Congress passed emergency farm legislation each of those three years, pushing U.S. farm subsidies to all-time record levels. But even then, the farm crisis was being blamed on such things as weather problems, loss of export markets, or unwise public policies. In general, we are led to believe that our farm problems are someone else’s fault. The crisis is a simple matter of supply and demand, we are told. The only solutions being seriously proposed are to tinker with government policy, or better yet, to simply wait for markets to recover. In the meantime, the only alternatives farmers are being offered are to get big enough to be competitive, get a corporate contract to reduce risks, or get out of farming. Eventually, prices for agricultural commodities will recover, at least for a year or two. Weather problems in a major ex1 1 2 Crisis and Opportunity porting country will tighten global supplies, a crop failure in a major importing country will spark global demand, or changes in financial markets will shift global trade patterns. Agricultural markets are inherently unstable. However, a year or two of profitable prices will do nothing to resolve the underlying problems of American agriculture. In a recent book, The End of Agriculture in the American Portfolio , University of California economist Steven Blank envisions the imminent end of the American farm.2 His conclusions regarding agriculture in the United States would seem to be equally applicable to agriculture in Canada. American agriculture is coming to an end, he argues, but he claims this should be no cause for alarm. He contends that the end of agriculture in America is the result of a natural process that is making us all better off. He foresees a time in the not too distant future when North America will import nearly all its foodstuffs from other, “lesser developed” countries. Costs of land and labor will be too high for American farmers to compete in global commodity markets. He argues that globalization of the food system is not some corporate conspiracy but is simply the inevitable consequence of the individual struggles of farmers and agribusiness in America and around the world who quite logically are pursuing their individual self-interests, which ultimately will benefit society in general. Blank believes that the current open spaces of rural areas will be transformed from farms to residential developments to accommodate a growing and increasingly affluent population fleeing the problems of urbanization. Cornfields will be unable to compete with condominiums for farmland. Farming is a lowskilled primary industry that has no place in an advanced hightech economy. Rural ways of life will give way to urban ways of life, as farms become residential ranchettes. Virtual communities of people interconnected by the Internet will replace real communities of people who meet face to face in church or at the grocery store. Communities of interest will replace com- Crisis and Opportunity 3 munities of place. Agriculture will no longer be a significant factor in the rural economy. Most people in the community will be employed elsewhere—perhaps by companies thousands of miles away. Blank claims the only forms of truly sustainable agriculture will be those compatible with urban life—mainly golf courses, plant nurseries, and turf farms. Blank’s fundamental arguments are based on the premise that economic considerations ultimately will prevail over all others. He assumes that industrial agribusinesses will replace family farms because they are more economically efficient...