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Farm Welfare Program
Term Paper ID:35759
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Essay Subject:
This paper examines the history of federal support for farming and analysis how effective ...... More...
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Paper Abstract:
This paper examines the history of federal support for farming and analyzes how effective it has been. The historical and economic background of the current crisis in American farming. Impact of the Grange movement. The Dust Bowl catastrophe. Poor farming and land management methods. Federal subsidies to farmers.
Paper Introduction:
Introduction Background to the Farm Crisis We tend to think of the current crisis faced by American farmers inwhich each year farmers are forced to leave a profession and a calling thattheir families have often practiced for generations sometimes on the sameland as being a recent one But in fact American farmers have held atenuous position in our economy even as they have fed us for over acentury This paper examines the historical and economic background of thecurrent crisis in American farming
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But the earliest settlements occurred during a wet cycle, and the first crops flourished, so settlers were encouraged to continue practices that would later have to be abandoned (http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm). "If we didn't get the federal money, we'd all be broke," said Dose, whose extended family received $1.7 million in federal farm aid between 1996 and 2 (http://www.pjstar.com/services/special/Farm/g38233a.html).These subsidies have been criticized by the farmers for not being largeenough (especially for fruit farmers, who can lose almost an entiregeneration's worth of crops when an orchard is destroyed). Farm size has increased, the number of owners of farmshas decreased, monoculture is now almost universal, farm technology is moreexpensive and farm labor is almost all non-white and working in terribleconditions. Is It Broke? To the extent that farmers and ruralworkers were able to band together in the Depression, they borrowed on theexperiences and ideals of the Grange Movement, which had sought to improvenot only the economic conditions of farmers but their social status andpolitical power as well. . The Grapes of Wrath, 194 .http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htmhttp://www.pjstar.com/services/special/Farm/g38233a.html http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr141h.htmhttp://www.publiclandsranching.org/htmlres/subsidies.htmMcCabe, J. Steinbeck's family - The Joads - represented the reality for thousandsof small farmers during the Dust Boel. Still in 1933-34, one out of ten American farms changed hands, half ofthose involuntarily through bank seizures, many others other technicallyvoluntarily as farmers simply gave up their lands to their creditors(http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm). Certainly, it helps the trade deficit tosome extent, but it also helps promote large farms over small ones (sincefamily farmers are large enough to focus on export markets) and is helpingto harm perhaps irrevocably the Western landscape as unwise water-usepractices are encouraged by federal programs(http://www.publiclandsranching.org/htmlres/subsidies.htm). History of the Grange Movement. The catastrophe that the Dust Bowl made of so many farmers' lives wascaused in part by the Great Depression (which lessened the ability offarmers to sell their crops at fair prices). But subsidizing farming beyonddomestic needs is problematic. A number of pieces of legislation bearing the imprint of Grangerideals were also passed, although many of them would be quickly repealed.Railroad companies found their power limited, and a number of anti-monopolystrategies were written into law. They could not, they believed, effect change within the currentstructure of government. Agribusiness farms animals in inhumane ways, wasteswater, and contaminates soil and air with pesticides, fungicides, andnitrogen build-up. The power and energy of American farmers was lessened by the failureof the Progressive Movement, but it was in many ways even more severelydamaged by the Great Depression (which hurt all Americans) and the DustBowl (which hurt mostly farmers and ranchers). Dose, his father and brother own more than 6, acres outside Lostant, one of the biggest farms in Illinois. These federal subsidies areused by farmers in a variety of ways: They are used to lower the interestrates on money that farmers borrow, to lower the rate that farmers pay forwater, to subsidize farm education programs, to fund agriculturalexperiment stations, to buy farm land, to improve current land, to setaside some land for it to recover, and to grow crop surpluses that can beexported to the nation's trading partners. A number of poor land management practices in the Great Plains region increased the vulnerability of the area before the 193 s drought....Misleading information, however, was plentiful. The kinds of aid thatthey received were similar to the kinds of aid that farmers receive now,and while they were certainly not enough to save all of the Midwest'sfarmers, they were certainly enough to help many farmers hold on to theirland and their occupation during the long terrible years of the drought.The federal government, working sometimes with state and local governmentshelped to: . Labor in America: A History (5th ed.) New York: Harlan Davidson.Ford, John (director). Provide emergency supplies, cash, and livestock feed and transport to maintain the basic functioning of livelihoods and farms/ranches. Large companies - largecorporations - have moved into their place. Very soon it became apparent to the farmers that while talking to eachother was useful, it was more important for them to acquire politicalpower. The farmers might well have beenpsychologically broken by their troubles, but they chose instead toorganize - following the most important principle of populist politicalmovements, as McCabe in his 1969 history of the Grange Movement tells us.The effective and long-lived of these political organizations developed byfarmers was the Grange Movement. It wasnot only farmers, after all, who were harmed by the dominance of the U.S.economy by large and monopolistic corporations. ReferencesDulles, F. Current Farm Social Welfare Programs The American farm, and the American farmer, have change dramaticallysince the Dust Bowl. American farmers in the years after the Civil War found themselvesfacing increasingly difficult times. Does It Need Fixing? & Dubofsky, M. But even these large farmers have problems getting byeconomically and many rely heavily on federal subsidies, which are the mostimportant form of current federal aid. Introduction: Background to the Farm Crisis We tend to think of the current crisis faced by American farmers - inwhich each year farmers are forced to leave a profession and a calling thattheir families have often practiced for generations, sometimes on the sameland - as being a recent one. Continuous decreases in the price of farm goods (both crops andbutcher products) produced a dramatic rise in the level of indebtedness ofthe farmers, who began to owe more and more to banks during both the teensand twenties and even more so during the Great Depression Many farmersrealized that there was no possible way that they could ever earn enoughmoney in the marketplace as it was currently constructed to bringthemselves out of debt and leave their land to their children to farm inturn. It began with a general sense of discontentamongst farmers who found that no amount of hard work could produce enoughwealth to feed themselves - even as they were feeding the nation. But in fact American farmers have held atenuous position in our economy even as they have fed us for over acentury. This 2 1 article about an Iowa cornfarmer suggests at the dependency of farmers on federal subsidies: Ron Dose's family farm operation appears to be a model of success. The kind of farmer epitomized by the Joads - a multi-generational family that works the same land for decades, feeding itselfand selling the surplus to others - is almost gone, in the same way thecorner family-owned store is almost gone. . This fictitious family, like so manyothers, left their unworkable farm in Oklahoma to ride the winds of theDust Bowl west to California to try to find land that would repay a farmerfor hours of labor. The Joads Perhaps it is ironic that it is John Ford's movie of The Grapes ofWrath far more than John Steinbeck's novel of the Joads that familiarizedso many Americans to the plight of the American farmer during the Dust Bowlsince Ford's version is less dark than Steinbeck's. Establish health care facilities and supplies to meet emergency medical needs. By 1937, after years of both Depression and drought, over one-fifth ofall rural families living in the Great Plains were receiving some sort offederal emergency relief, according to the Works Progress Administration;the greatest majority of these were farmers(http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm). To some extent these larger agribusiness firms are more efficient, andthey are in general better to sustain themselves during a single year oreven three or four years of poor weather, something family farmers areoften not able to do. . This paper examines the historical and economic background of thecurrent crisis in American farming as well as assessing how effectivecurrent steps may be to help 21st century farmers. "Boosters" of the region, hoping to promote settlement, put forth glowing but inaccurate accounts of the Great Plains' agricultural potential.... The farmers would havesuffered from the Great Depression alone, as did all other economic sectorsof the economy. But this does not mean that the entire concept of farming subsidiesshould be thrown out. Rather, subsidies should be given more selectively.Currently the United States exports a great deal of the food that itproduces, and it is questionable whether such exports should be subsidized.Subsidizing the production of food to be consumed domestically means thattaxpayers are subsidizing farmers - but also means that we are getting muchof that subsidy back at the grocery store. Provide the supplies, technology, and technical advice necessary to research, implement, and promote appropriate land management strategies (http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm). They have alsobeen criticized by legislators and the general public as being a hand-outto farmers: This year close to $2 billion in subsidies will be given bythe federal government to farmers, sometimes to(http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr141h.htm). Farmers still regularly lose their land and their livelihood.Farmworkers - whether Latinos picking spinach in California or West Indianscutting sugarcane in Florida - lead lives that are all too often nasty,brutish and short. And yet, even thislighter vision of the effect of the Dust Bowl on American farmers wassufficient to encourage Americans and the American government to reach outto farmers with a number of forms of legislative relief. Certainly the current system of farming subsidies is less thanperfect. After the initial political push of the Granger movement, it appearedthat the uprising of populism might in fact die out, but in fact itexperienced a number of mini-revivals, as McCabe describes for us. (1969). But small farmers, using organic methods to feed those at home, arefar more deserving than agribusiness. Certainly farmers - who feed us all and who connect us to the past ofhuman history - are far more deserving of federal hand-outs than Bechtel orEnron. (They were in all probability right about this:The only way to make significant changes in a political system withoutbeing first enfranchised with it is through revolution, which the farmerswere not prepared to wage.) The farmers in the Grange Movement began to organize a number ofpolitical parties that were focused on issues of local concern but thatalso incorporated the general concerns of the Granger movement. Members ofparties like the Reform Party (not Ross Perot's Reform Party by any means!)and the Anti-Monopoly Party were elected to state offices in the twodecades after the Civil War. Yet the family is dependent on federal subsidies to stay afloat. Without these substantialfederal subsidies, both small and large American farmers would face verydifficult economic times. (1993). Establish government-based markets for farm goods, higher tariffs, and loan funds for farm market maintenance and business rehabilitation. But they also had to face the ecological disaster of theDust Bowl, a disaster brought on in part by years of drought but also inpart because of farming methods that were ill adapted to the ecology andsoil of the Midwest. Chicago: Augustus Kelley. Many workers in a widerange of professions joined together to fight against the corruptingeconomic and political power of large corporations.
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