Trouble Ahead For The Family Farm!

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Now a grower's desire to raise more wheat—or corn, or oats, or soybeans—is understandable, but the course of action that must be taken to do so does have several hidden consequences. For one thing, large-scale farmers—with good access to credit—often bid up the price of available land ... and the result is that small growers cannot afford to buy or lease additional acreage.

Worse yet, as the sales value of the land in an area rises, taxes follow suit . . . again putting economic stress on the family farmer. Furthermore, the problems are aggravated because—according to a recent USDA study—federal and state tax laws give special tax benefits to high-income farmland buyers ... and such laws have created incentives for farmers to shift their attention from efficiency and productivity to farm expansion, and to the appreciation of land values as an end in itself.

Even the federal commodity programs—supposedly designed to help growers when crop prices are depressed —accelerate the trend toward fewer, but larger, farms. A USDA report indicates that most price supports don't differentiate between family farms—the natural target of such aid—and corporate farms . . . and thus the programs provide the largest amount of assistance to the giant enterprises that produce the most.

And—in a self-perpetuating cycle—the corporate farmers often apply that "bonus" money to underwrite even further expansion! What's more, income support and disaster payment—as well as commodity—programs tend to encourage the large-scale, single-purpose farms ... often operations that are bankrolled by nonfarm investors, who use highly leveraged debt financing.

As you can imagine, such economic factors often force smaller-scale farmers either to expand, abandon production, or become part-time growers . . . and the last two choices—given the limited capital of most family operations—are the ones frequently taken. Well, you might ask, why not? Why shouldn't the most efficient and best-capitalized farmers drive the inefficient little guys out of business?

Aside from the ethics of the situation, the best answer to such questions is simply that our present system isn't working. The fact is that much of America's fabled agricultural productivity is based on large chemical- and energy-intensive monoculture (single-crop) operations. And—as we approach the end of the century-it's going to become more and more difficult, and expensive, to maintain the kinds of farms that we've come to depend upon.

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