In the Heartland, a Meeting of the Minds

Posted: 19 April 2005

by Andrea Perera

A Senegalese agriculture expert talks with American family farmers about reforming subsidies.

St. Joseph, Missouri—We must have been a sight to see.

Honky-tonk music blared from the sound system. Peanut shells lay scattered all over the floor. It was an odd setting for a city girl from California, a fifth-generation farmer from Kansas, and an agriculture expert from Senegal. But there we all were, in a booth at this Missouri “grill and saloon,” enjoying barbecue and talking about, of all things, agriculture subsidies.

I had come from Oxfam America headquarters in Boston to write about Jim French, Oxfam’s Kansas field organizer, and Dr. Thiendou Niang, director of the Agricultural Policy Expertise Network in Dakar, Senegal. In a rented van, French and Niang were in the middle of racking up a couple thousand miles during a week-long tour of Kansas and Nebraska. Strangers until Sunday, they had come together to talk to rural Americans about agriculture subsidies. That might seem like an obscure topic for many of us, but consider the way one farmer describes US subsidies as they exist now. He says it’s a war in which the federal government takes a box of bullets, gives a handful of them to family farmers and the rest to huge, industrial farms – and then tells the two to fight to the death. Worse yet, this war produces casualties around the globe.

With a farm visit ahead of us, we finished our barbecue, and jumped back into the van. We drove north on Interstate 29, passing images straight off a postcard -- tin silos, windmills, bales of hay, corn fields, and rolling green hills.

Near dusk, we pulled off a dirt road and onto Mike Korth’s 1,250-acre corn, soybean and alfalfa farm in Nebraska. There, in Korth’s machine shed, a dozen or so farmers listened as French explained that the poverty we see in rural America is spreading overseas.

Already that week, French and Niang had appeared at several other farms, and at editorial boards, radio stations, and university campuses in Kansas. At each stop, they shared the same message: US agricultural policies are outdated and need to be reformed. One opportunity would come through the Farm Bill, which expires next year. As Congress begins to look at what needs to be changed, Oxfam is joining a coalition putting forth a new vision of US agricultural policy that shifts taxpayer dollars to programs that truly help rural America, like conservation and rural development, while preventing the harmful effects of dumping. Dumping is the practice by which countries like the US fund agriculture subsidies that lead to overproduction and depressed prices in places like Mali and Senegal, all but ensuring that family farmers can no longer make a living off their crops.

French told the gathering at Korth’s farm that the current subsidy program is pushing American family farmers out of business. “But what we see in America is going to be even more dramatic when we go to Africa and other places,” he said. “Basically subsidies are putting gasoline into the engine of overproduction.”

When it was his turn to speak, Niang said that 10 million farmers and farm workers in Mali and Senegal struggle to make a profit, many living on $1 or less a day, not even enough to buy even a cup of coffee in the US. With that single dollar, he said, those workers must provide food, housing, schooling, and health care for their entire families.

“With subsidies, the problems start. A one percent increase in US subsidies leads to a 3.8 percent drop in the price on the world market,” he said. “That may not seem to be a very important matter, but when you translate that into money in Mali, for example, it makes a big difference -- less money for the government to invest in education, to invest in churches, mosques, housing, water, electricity. It means the dissemination of hunger and poverty in our countries.”

It was an intimate and engaging presentation. As the two men spoke, I watched the Nebraska farmers. Some lowered their heads, listening and nodding. Others fixed their eyes, unwavering, on Niang and French.

Korth, who owns the farm and who people call “Payment Limits Mike” because of his outspoken support for a subsidies cap, has plenty to say himself. He bought his father’s land and farms with his younger brother.

“What we have now is forcing consolidation,” he said. “The federal government is picking the winners and losers.”

The latest US Department of Agriculture figures show that 8 percent of producers receive 78 percent of the subsidies.

“So, in the end, who is the federal government, really subsidizing?” he demanded. “The corporations.”

Korth said he watches American family farmers quit every year. They either sell or rent out their farms. Some of them live within 50 miles of where they worked the land, but now they work in manufacturing.

“If you look at the business and you see an out migration. That’s a tale of what’s going on in the business,” he said. “I’ll bring you up here when one of my neighbors sells out and has an auction and he’s wearing sunglasses because he doesn’t want you to see him crying when he’s selling the farm.”

We went back and forth, exchanging stories, talking about political obstacles, and wondering how we can overcome the apathy affecting so many who want to change the system but worry that they don’t have the ear of the decision makers in Washington, DC.

Niang just listened. Finally, after a sip of lemonade, he offered a burst of inspiration.

“I believe in the power of the people,” he said. “I used to think, ‘I’m wasting my time.’ But now I think, ‘If I don’t act, we will suffer.”

We thanked our hosts and took signatures from the farmers who wanted to help us spread our message. One man walked up to me and said he hates taking subsidies. He wished he weren’t forced into it, he said, but he can’t compete without them since everybody else takes the money.

He explained his love for farming, how there’s nothing better than “planting a seed and watching it grow.”

I told him, “Well, that’s what we’re doing these days, isn’t it? Planting the seed of a good idea, and watching the momentum grow?”

He said that sometimes seeds never really take root.

So I told him what I had learned from French and Niang:

“Then you keep planting, right?”