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Cornucopia of Waste
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16521 |
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BOOK WORLD
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11 / 1989 |
2,171 Words |
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James Bovard
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Richard Rhodes' Farm is a detailed portrayal of American agriculture, and the author does a commendable job of showing some of the day-to-day realities of American farming.
Unfortunately, despite its wealth of colorful detail, Farm is flawed because it fails to ask the right questions. Moreover, Rhodes is often confused about the economics underlying farmers' decisions. The author does not understand the politics of agriculture in Washington--which is the source of most of the problems in contemporary American agriculture.
There is no better way to become confused about agriculture than to accept government statistics as an accurate representation of the real world in rural America, as Rhodes does. One key mistake: Rhodes accepts the "official" number of farms in the United States as around 2.2 million. This statistic is grossly inflated because the federal government defines as a farm any piece of land from which more than one thousand dollars in agricultural commodities are sold. If someone sells a single horse, by the government's definition, that person is a full-time farmer. If the federal government defined corporations as it defines farms, every eight year old with a lemonade stand would have to file a corporate tax return. Most agricultural economists agree that a farmer cannot expect to survive unless he is selling at least forty thousand dollars--or better, more than one hundred thousand dollars in farm products each year. In reality, there are only about four hundred thousand full-time farmers in the United States. It is crucial to understand the number of farms because this shows the "farm crisis" is affecting far fewer people than widely believed.
One gets the impression that the author felt that the Bauer family, whom the book follows through a year in the planting and harvesting cycle, is struggling financially. However, their net worth was around $230,000. By comparison, the average American family is worth only $78,734, and half of all American families have a net worth less than $32,677. Thus, the Bauer family is worth almost three times the typical American family, and over seven times as much as half of all the families in America. Yet, the Bauers are still eligible for scores of thousands of dollars of federal hangouts each year. (Tom Bauer's net worth is far lower than the average farmer in his sales class, whose average net worth was $664,000 in 1987.)
Federal handouts
The reader can peruse almost three hundred pages of this book and still not realize the extent of federal subsidies to American agriculture. At one point--looking at a minuscule trim in farm benefit payment--the author observes, "Someone had to pay off the national debt. Might as well be the American farmer." This borders on the bizarre: Farmers, as a class, get more government handouts than any other occupation. Average federal farm handouts are enough to buy every full-time subsidized farmer a new Mercedes each year. With the same $250 billion that taxpayers and consumers have spent on farm subsidies since 1980, Uncle Sam could have bought every farm, barn, and tractor in thirty-three states.
The author also fails to understand or highlight the fundamental dichotomy of American agriculture. The vast majority of farm products produced in the United States receive no federal subsidy. A few products--like
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