10 Questions about American Agriculture (Reflections on From the Farm to the Table, Ch. 8-9)

I read these chapters a while ago, but I was so challenged by them that I put off writing this reflection.

In a chapter titled, "They Say Eating Is a Moral Issue," Holthaus includes one final interview with a Minnesota farmer. Bill McMillin, a dairy farmer on hilly land that drains to the Mississippi, said "we're losing the soil" producing corn and beans. He said, "I mean, the government subsidizes exports [of corn and beans, exports that would not be profitable without the subsidies]. What is the sense in that? It's totally flawed. I don't know if Monsanto and Cargill and those people are writing the legislation [or] if they're so big that the legislators are afraid to do something that's going to hurt them" (115). In the next chapter, Holthaus analyzes the scope of changes that have allowed corporate agribusiness to flourish.

The ecosystem of American agriculture "includes its history, its environment, and its cultural and social context" (118). He says it is an ecosystem in crisis, that in the last fifty years, farmers have lost productivity, efficiency, access to markets, independence, and political influence (167). My goal is to look back over his arguments and list some thought-provoking questions.

Loss of Productivity and Loss of Efficiency
1. Which is more productive, the average 4-acre farm that nets $1,400 per acre in total output ("various grains, fruits, vegetables, and fodder, as well as animal products, including meat, cheese, and leather" produced in a land-intensive, labor-intensive way by a farmer who seeks to "conserve soil, prevent runoff, and follow good conservation practices" (127, 129)) or the average 6,000-acre farm that nets $12 per acre in corn or bean monoculture ("much of it subsidized by federal farm legislation" (129-130))? The annual incomes of such farms would be 4*1,400=5,600 and 6,000*12=72,000. 1,400>12, but 5,600<72,000.
2. What is more efficient, seeking long-run or short-run economic gain, conserving soil or not conserving soil, using no-till intercropping, rotations, fencerows and cover crops, or using fertilizer, GMO seed, pesticides, and more fuel?

Loss of Access to Markets and Loss of Independence
3. Are people aware that United States industrial agriculture would "collapse" without migrant labor, that it "is more dependent on migrant workers than it is on herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers" (137,140)?
4. How bad are the opportunities and the standard of living in "the poorest parts of Texas and Mexico" if migrant workers are willing to leave there for physically demanding jobs in Minnesota that pay minimum wage, in an industry with "the highest rates of job-related injury and trauma," and live in local company housing, while also contending with racism, language barriers, and cold winters (143, 138)?
5. Who benefits from the increase in contract farming, and is how should the acceptable degree of control exercised by contractors over individual growers be determined?
6. Who pays for research at our land-grant institutions and which values do they embrace? Would a slant towards organic farming practices be any more objective than a slant towards transnational corporations?
7. Should the U.S., like Europe, follow the precautionary principle, sacrificing sales and profits of corporations by banning GMO while the risks of GMO to human health remain unknown, unproven, and uncertain?
8. Would "another economic depression like that of the 1930s" create a larger welfare burden since people "no longer have access to land [and] have forgotten how to farm and garden" (162, 164)? Are non-farm incomes so much higher that this would not be a problem?

Loss of Political Power and Influence
9. Is the loss of small farms and political capital among small farmers the result of efforts by the non-governmental Committee on Economic Development (CED) to increase the labor force available to industries in town and create "an atmosphere relatively free of the political pressures from farmers experienced in the past," or are a broader range of forces and less malignant motives to blame (166)?
10. How much power do farmers, in contrast to corporate attorneys and lobbyists, have on USDA and EPA regulations, and do these regulations match legislative intent?

"...if members of Congress continue to say, 'We're all for the family farm, but it's the market, it's the inevitable result of equally inevitable globalization, it's the way things are,' while passing farm bills that penalize small farm diversity and conservation and protect affluent agribusiness, absentee landlords, and transnational industries, than their action is no different from stabbing America's small farms and small towns to death..." (169)