CJ Buchmann's List: FamilyFarming

• We pledge our support for alternative agriculture and trade policies that will provide
  sustainable livelihoods for farmers in the United States and around the globe, by helping to
  ensure that global food corporations pay family farmers a fair price for their products in the
  marketplace and promote socially and environmentally sustainable farming.
• Building Sustainable Futures for Farmers Globally campaign

   

  advocates a broad platform to address the overproduction and low prices that are harming
  small farmers in the U.S. and abroad
• Indeed, unless
  new farm policies are first put in place that curtail overproduction and thereby provide fair
  prices to farmers from the market, eliminating U.S. farm subsidies could in fact harm many
  smaller-scale family farmers in the United States and lead to further market concentration.
• Mexico and Central America, are facing substantial economic pressure as a result of
  agricultural dumping that force domestic crop prices ever lower.
• In the United States,
  commodity overproduction is creating widespread environmental damage and major
  agribusiness corporations are reaping unfair profits by denying fair prices to farmers, while
  taxpayers are forced to foot the bill.
• U.S. agriculture and trade policy has become a lightning rod for criticism of broader U.S.
  economic policies worldwide, as well as a source of widespread concern among farmers,
  consumers, and taxpayers in the United States. We must change these existing policies in
  order to create a food system that supports, rather than undermines, family farmers and
  farmworkers, and that enables sustainable agriculture and food production to thrive, both in
  the United States and around the world.
• It has also encouraged costly and unsustainable
  overproduction and dumping of strategic agricultural commodities onto world markets at
  prices substantially below the cost of production. This practice, in turn, has resulted in
  sustained downward pressure on world commodity prices, threatening farmers and
  farmworkers around the world.
• Small to mid-sized farmers both at home and abroad are suffering the adverse effects of an
  export-oriented agriculture system that has become increasingly dominated by global food
  corporations.
• This dumping of agricultural commodities seriously undercuts the ability of small farmers and
  peasants in developing countries to sell their goods at fair prices in their own domestic
  markets.

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• Despite differing farm size and techniques, family management dominates farming at all levels of development. Consequently--unlike virtually any other major sector, even retailing--the economic advantages of family oversight prevail in farming across a wide range of development levels, typical farm sizes, capital/land/labor ratios, and types of product and ecology. Data strongly suggest that such farms retain competitive advantages despite market distortions, and despite some genuine and growing market handicaps as agricultural supply chains globalize and concentrate. The evolution of the family farm is thus linked to economic development
• Feasibility depends on availability, quality, and distribution of farmland (and water); crop, land, and water science; and prospects for national and global trade and exchange, and their effects on farm sales and prices. Sufficiency depends on a corresponding rise in the poor's command over staple foods. Even large increases in staple food productivity would do little to cut mass dollar poverty if they were confined to large-scale farms, using tractors and combines but few workers, and selling at government-boosted prices that the underemployed and near-landless poor cannot afford.

• The first to benefit from higher agricultural prices are the agro-industry and large retailers because they increase food prices much more than they should. Will food prices decrease when agricultural prices go down again? Large companies are able to stock large quantities of food and release them when the markets prices are high.

• The farm economy is improving, but the biggest farms are still doing the best financially.
• What is different is that technological, economic and other forces are bearing down so hard on moderate-sized farms—those that are commonly thought of as being family farms—that the powerful agrarian myth itself may be in jeopardy.
• “American agriculture is being propelled by a new major technological thrust—the biotechnology and information technology era. The effects of this new era on agricultural productivity may be more profound than those experienced from either the mechanical or chemical eras.”
• The new technologies are likely to be adopted first by farmers who “are well financed and are capable of providing the sophisticated management required to make profitable use of the technologies.” Most such farmers will be associated with large farms. So the new technologies “will tend to give additional economic advantages to large farm firms relative to moderate and smaller farms.”
• In general, farms that produce more get more support. “Despite the speeches in favor of the small farmer and occasional widely publicized preferential legislation on his behalf, the net effect of public policy has been to speed up the trend toward fewer and larger farms,” agricultural economist Don Paarlberg wrote in his 1980 book Farm and Food Policy.
• “Rather, there is an interrelated complex of questions—environmental, international, economic, and social—of importance to both farmers and the urban majority, And the best answer to most of these is a farming system that is sustainable, ecologically sound, moderate in scale, and democratic in ownership and control.”

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• Lewontin turns away from his announced premise of scientific objectivity
    to attack, in a markedly personal way, the critics of industrial agriculture  
    and biotechnology who are trying to defend small farmers against exploitation  
    by global agribusiness
• He criticizes Vandana Shiva, the Indian scientist and defender of the
    traditional agricultures of the Third World, for her appeal to "religious
    morality," and calls her a "cheerleader."

• "The house of cards called the WTO couldn't be propped up any longer with lies by the spokespersons for the multinational corporations that benefit from its free trade agenda. The deregulation of agriculture resulting from countries bowing to the pressure of the WTO has decimated family farms and rural communities in both developed and developing countries'just the opposite of economic development,"? stated George Naylor, president of NFFC.
• Dena Hoff, Montana farmer and NFFC Trade Chair stated, "This week's collapse at the WTO is a reflection of a global system dominated from the top down. Democracy and economic prosperity begin when farmers in every region of the world have rights to their own markets.
• "We look forward to working for a global solution that supports family farmers, pays workers a living wage, protects the environment and fosters true democracy. What we need is trade cooperation, as in the Africa Group WTO proposal, so that multinational corporations pay fair prices for agricultural commodities and ensure food security and food sovereignty."
• The NFFC believes the U.S. should take the lead in creating agricultural policy that supports sustainable family farms and a healthy environment for future generations by passing a new 2007 Farm Bill based on the principle of food sovereignty.
• The NFFC supports passage of the Food from Family Farms Act which will (1) create a fair price floor so that purchasers pay for commodities rather than taxpayers, (2) help create food security reserves so that bountiful crops foster a stable food supply rather than depressing prices, (3) implement conservation measures to prevent wasteful overproduction and destruction of our environment, and (4) join international supply management agreements as in the Africa Group proposal.

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• Supporters say subsidies help keep farmers solvent when crops fail or prices plummet. Critics contend subsidies overwhelmingly go to large agricultural operations, interfere with the free market and encourage farmers to overproduce subsidized crops.
• Many smaller farms are struggling to stay afloat in the face of low commodity prices, ever-increasing costs for equipment and fertilizer and steep competition from large farming operations.
• When policymakers talk about helping farmers, they have people like Williams in mind — relatively small- to medium-size planters trying to keep up the family business. But critics say the government's farm policies — which direct the bulk of subsidies to large-scale grain and cotton growers who farm 1,000 or more acres — may actually be tipping the scales toward corporate farming operations that are driving small- and medium-sized farmers off their land.
• Moreover, rural communities are losing population, as young people seek better economic opportunities in the cities — a situation some say is exacerbated by government subsidies, which tend to go to large agribusiness concerns, discouraging diversification of the rural economy. Studies have shown that two-thirds of subsidies go to just 10 percent of the recipients — mainly large operations.
• In fact, 60 percent of U.S. farmers don't get any direct assistance from the government. Most of the fresh produce in supermarkets is grown without subsidies, and livestock producers are ineligible for most government payments.
• 
• Leonard is typical of a growing number of small farmers — generally those owning no more than about 500 acres — who can no longer count on eking out a living every year from the land. About half of the nation's 2 million farmers now supplement their income with off-farm jobs, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Other small farmers survive by producing niche products, such as organic produce, or by supplying their goods directly to farmers' markets or restaurants.
• Some analysts say small farms' profit margins these days are too narrow to survive years of bad weather or low commodity prices. U.S. farmers face especially fierce competition now that globalization is forcing them to compete with overseas farmers, some of whom have lower production costs and fewer restrictions on pesticide use. Others, however, put much of the blame on government programs. They say that because large farms — those larger than 1,000 acres — receive the lion's share of government subsidies, they can outbid their smaller neighbors when it comes to buying land.
• But rural-development advocates say the loss of family farms is depopulating many rural areas, destroying small-town economies and fostering the growth of “factory farms” that generate — in the case of livestock raising — enormous amounts of manure and environmental pollution.

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