Straight Dope on Medicine: War on Farmers

Author

Scott Ganser
April 01, 2024

There is a war on farmers.

Our elites and our betters think that farming is destructive, and it should be limited if not done away with altogether.

Our ability to eat does not enter into their mental framework.

Sense doesn’t enter into their mental framework.
Recently I was privileged to view a video on the idiocy brewing in Oregon.

In Oregon, it amounts to a combination of factors. The state is pushing USDA requirements down on small farmers who cannot meet the demands financially, and “the public owns the water.”i Additionally, there is sharp disagreement whether or not Oregon is in a drought.

Oregon is preferentially putting farmers out of business in favor of golf courses, solar farms, dog kennels and wedding venues. Eating, and getting farm-fresh produce is going to have to take a back seat. Oregon is losing farm land faster than most other states in the union.

Oregon Leftists also genuflect to the Green New Deal, which demonizes farms and offers lucrative incentives to do them in.

Oregon has effectively shut down small farms and market gardens on a large scale.

UHD= Urban and Highly Developed

LDR= Low-Density Residential

Sarah King, who launched the enterprise on her eleven-acre property in 2017, keeps things simple by design. She and her husband never own more than two or three milk-producing cows. The animals know the routine. Often, they come in from the fields and wait in the barn for their turn at the milking stanchion, where they each spend 15 to 20 minutes. The rest of the time they are free to wander. Sarah’s clients contract with her in a “herdshare” system: They purchase an interest in the animal for a portion of its produce. They like the sustainable, ethical, transparent business model — and the raw milk that comes with the arrangement.

Industrial dairy farms follow a different model. They aim for efficiency and economies of scale by keeping tens of thousands of cows. These operations keep the livestock penned up for extended periods of time, producing significant waste in concentrated spaces.

The contrast with Godspeed Hollow is stark, yet Oregon decided in 2023 to impose Big Dairy regulations on the state’s smallest players through the reinterpretation of existing rules. Oregon plans to tag any farm that uses a prepared surface for milking as a “confined animal feeding operation” (CAFO). The label would apply even to farms such as Sarah’s, where cows are only “confined” for 15 minutes per day for milking and are otherwise free to roam.

A CAFO designation would have significant implications for Sarah. She would have to install drain lines and holding tanks whose cost could exceed $100,000 — a steep price for equipment she does not need or want. Large farms must channel their waste, but Sarah methodically rotates her cows between pastures, giving the land a chance to metabolize the waste and use it as fertilizer. The operation is safe, and the state has no evidence of soil or groundwater contamination.ii

Benefits of Choosing Farm Fresh Produce

Eating farm fresh produce has a wide variety of health benefits. Locally grown is defined as food grown and harvested 100 miles from your home or the restaurant where it is served.iii

Local fresh produce can be found at farmer’s markets, roadside farm stands, pick-your-own food farms, and through community supported agriculture programs. The main health benefit of farm fresh produce is that it’s fresher because it’s picked at its peak ripeness, when it’s most nutrient dense. Compared to commercial farms, there is no artificial air, lights, temperature changes, added chemicals or long transport time which cause food to lose nutritional value. 

Better quality soil and more sustainable farming practices typically mean better tasting produce. Shopping locally supports independent farms, helps grow your local economy, cuts transport costs, and reduces food waste which is great for the environment too.

Europe hates its farmers

What’s their beef?

PARIS, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Farmers are protesting across the European Union, saying they are facing rising costs and taxes, red tape, excessive environmental rules and competition from cheap food imports.

Demonstrations have been taking place for weeks in countries including France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy and Greece.iv

FRANCE

- EU red tape

- Diesel prices

- Need more support to shore up incomes

- Access to irrigation

- Criticism over animal welfare and use of pesticides

POLAND

- Cheap imports from Ukraine

- EU regulation

CZECH REPUBLIC

- Bureaucracy

- Cheap imports

- EU farm policy

SPAIN

- "Suffocating bureaucracy" drawn up in Brussels that they say erodes the profitability of crops

- Trade deals that they say open the door to cheap imports

PORTUGAL

- Insufficient state aid, subsidy cuts

- Red tape

ROMANIA

- Cost of diesel

- Insurance rates

- EU environmental regulations

- Cheap imports from Ukraine

BELGIUM

- EU requirement to leave 4% of land fallow

- Cheap imports

- Subsidies favoring larger farms

GREECE

- Demands for higher subsidies and faster compensation for crop damage and livestock lost in 2023 floods

- Diesel tax and surging electricity bills

- Falling state and EU subsidies



In The Netherlands, it is basically a land grab by the government being conducted under the guise of virtue and greenness. They are aggressively putting farmers out of business and taking their land to give to others.

29 Nov 2022 --- Dutch farmers are facing a new dilemma in the ongoing fight with government. They have been told to either make farms more sustainable or risk facing a compulsory buy-out situation – which would see the government directly buying livestock land to reduce “undesirable emissions” so that farms fall in line with EU targets.

The country is under pressure from the EU to meet its conservation and agriculture rules, and cut nitrogen emissions in half by 2030.

However, farming unions defend that plans to curtail emissions would have profound economic, social and cultural effects as the primary sector is a staple of the Netherlands economy.

In an unclear wording, the Dutch administration says that if their efforts do not succeed, “with pain in our hearts,” they will deploy, if necessary, “binding instruments.” Farmers are interpreting this as land expropriation.v

The Dutch government reveals that the initial, short term, plans will affect between 2,000 and 3,000 farms.

The Dutch government reveals that the initial, short term, plans will affect between 2,000 and 3,000 farms. In July, internal documents from the Ministry of Finance revealed plans to cut nitrogen use in half by 2030, which would mean the closure of 11,200 farms.

The farmers are fighting back. Good for them.

Today member states' representatives in the Special Committee on Agriculture endorsed a targeted review of certain basic acts of the common agricultural policy (CAP) proposed by the European Commission as a response to the concerns voiced by farmers.vi

Specific exemptions from certain GAEC standards are introduced, such as:

  • for GAEC 6 on soil cover during sensitive periods: member states will have more flexibility to decide which soils to protect and in which season, based on national and regional specificities

  • for GAEC 7 on crop rotation: crop rotation will remain the main practice, but member states will be able to use crop diversification as an alternative; this is less demanding for farmers, especially in areas subject to drought or high rainfall

  • for GAEC 8: farmers will only be obliged to maintain existing landscape features and will from now on be encouraged, on a voluntary basis, to keep land fallow or to create new landscape features through eco-schemes.

The endorsed revision also exempts small farms of under 10 hectares from controls and penalties related to compliance with conditionality requirements under the CAP.

Dutch Farms – Tip of the Spear

The number of Dutch farms plummeted – in 1950, there were 410,000 farms among 10 million Dutch people, while today there are only 55,000 in a population of nearly 18 million – and those that remained became increasingly productive. Since 1984, for example, the number of cows per farm has more than doubled.vii Dairy production jumped further between 2008 and 2015, as the EU phased out its limits on the amount of milk that individual farmers could supply. By 2020, the Netherlands was home to 3.8 million cows, 11.9 million pigs and 90.2 million chickens in an area one-quarter the size of England, giving it the densest livestock population in Europe by far.


The Dutch are encumbered by nitrogen.

By 1990, the environmental effects of Mansholt’s policies were also becoming clear. A government commission into the country’s compliance with its nitrogen emissions targets stated that much more needed to be done. The commission acknowledged that nitrogen reductions would create a drop in income for dairy farmers: a typical farm would lose 10,000 guilders a year (about £3,900 today), or about 20% of per capita GDP at the time.

A rally in The Hague in March 2023. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty

The dairy industry would like to see more pressure on other sources of nitrogen. While the vast majority of current ammonia emissions in the Netherlands are produced by agriculture, 67% of nitrogen dioxide emissions comes from vehicles, and 24% from industry and energy production. “The farms are really under the microscope,” Zoet told me. “I think the government should do more to make other businesses responsible.” But Remkes’s report was clear that nitrogen reduction was not only necessary for farmers. It also targeted the construction industry – another major nitrogen emitter – and proposed other measures, such as lowering the motorway speed limit.

File:Gross phosphorus balance, averages 2003–08 and 2009–14.png

File:Gross phosphorus balance, averages 2003–08 and 2009–14.png

The nitrogen deal seems to be coming down.

Phosphorous too.


Taking Chickens

Washington County Virginia is having a conniption about chickens in certain residential zones. The planning commission wanted to push an ordinance through limiting the number of chickens someone could have. You know that they are up to no good when they have to do things in secret and under cover of night.

If you own an acre lot, you can only have six hens.

Roosters, capons and crowing hens are prohibited.

No chickens roaming free.

No slaughter of chickens should occur on the property. You cannot raise your own chickens for food.

No selling eggs or chickens for meat shall be allowed.

Next they will tell you how to put on your pants and how to brush your teeth. They just won’t call it slavery. It is protection.

They are working on construction requirements for chicken coops.

Remember, these people are better than you are, and they will tell you what to do accordingly. It’s for your own good!

Selling Farm Equipment for Peanuts

Southern farmers grow cotton and peanuts. Yields were good, but the market for those crops was down. When income doesn’t meet expenses, something has to go.

Eliminate Amish Milk

No one is an existential threat like the Amish. As such, the government is aggressively pursuing them.

Then they are coming for your grandmother AND her cookies.

A raw milk farmer is seeking to sell his products outside Pennsylvania while the state pursues a case against him.

Amos Miller faces irreparable harm to his business if he is not allowed to sell out of state, attorney Robert Barnes said in a March 4 filing.

Modifying the March 1 injunction would respect the state’s interest in protecting its consumers while avoiding the possibility that Pennsylvania is governing interstate commerce, which is under federal jurisdiction, Barnes said.

Miller has customers in a number of states outside Pennsylvania, despite federal law barring raw milk sales across state lines.

County Lancaster Judge Thomas Sponaugle enjoined Miller from selling raw milk after the state Ag Department and Attorney General’s Office sued in January. The state is seeking to stop Miller from marketing raw milk without a state-required license.

The lawsuit came after officials searched Miller’s Bird-in-Hand farm Jan. 4 after two out-of-state people were sickened by E. coli suspected of coming from Miller’s raw dairy products.

Several consumers from other states traveled to Lancaster to testify on Miller’s behalf at a Feb. 29 court hearing, saying his products have helped them or family members with serious health problems.

Public health authorities say unpasteurized milk poses a health risk and has not been linked to health benefits in medical studies.

In his filing, Barnes also asked that the website millersorganicfarm.com be blocked from promoting the farm’s products. Barnes said the website is not associated with Miller.

On March 11, the state asked for Miller’s preliminary objections in the case to be dismissed, saying they are rife with irrelevant and unsupported claims.viii

The government has no grounds for what they are doing. Yet, they keep doing it. There is NO evidence that Amos Miller’s products have any safety issues at all.


What is the pollution?

Agriculture is the leading source of impairments in the Nation's rivers and lakes. About a half million tons of pesticides, 12 million tons of nitrogen, and 4 million tons of phosphorus fertilizer are applied annually to crops in the continental United States.ix

At least one pesticide was found in about 94 percent of water samples and in more than 90 percent of fish samples taken from streams across the Nation, and in nearly 60 percent of shallow wells sampled.x

Agriculture is performed on a very, very large scale. Roughly 10 billion animals are raised for food each year in the United States. Think about what goes into growing this country’s 92.7 million acres of corn, used mainly for livestock feed and ethanol production.xi

Between 1961 and 2014, meat consumption around the globe doubled, from an average of 44 pounds per person each year to 95 pounds. Americans now consume even more: an estimated 225 pounds of red meat and poultry per person annually in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

CONFINED ANIMAL FEEDING OPERATION (CAFOs)

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) refer to a specific type of animal feeding operation where animals are kept and raised in confined situations for the duration of their lives. Rather than roaming and feeding in a pasture, food is brought to the animals in their pens. Given the cramped conditions, everything is condensed in these facilities, including both live and dead animals, feed, and animal waste. These operations create a significant amount of animal waste which, if released, can greatly affect the environmental. Runoff from these facilities can impair downstream waterways, kill fish, produce harmful algal blooms, and potentially transmit disease. Because of issues that may arise from CAFOs, the USGS works to monitor and quantify potential impacts of these operations to the environment. 

Typically, CAFOs house hundreds or thousands of animals. Not three or a meager number. Additionally, if the government labels something a CAFO, they get CAFO permit money. Permit money is irresistible.

The Bottom Line

Farmers, especially small farmers, are under attack. We need them to produce our food. Much progress has been made with nitrogen and phosphorous pollution, which is not being recognized by the powers that be.

Costs are rising for farmers, and the sales prices are not keeping pace. Net farm income nationally is expected to be about $118.2 billion this year, down from a record of about $162 billion in 2022.xii Prices for grain and oil crops have fallen dramatically in the past year. Missouri farmers were receiving $14.90 a bushel for soybeans in January 2023, and $6.94 a bushel for corn. According to the monthly agricultural prices report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the price received for soybeans in January was $12.90 a bushel and for corn it was $4.79.

The result is what you would expect. Missouri, where I live, is losing farmers – and farmland – faster than the national average. The number of farms declined 7.8% since the 2017 farm census while nationally the number fell 6.9%. Nationally, 2.2% of farmland was converted to other uses between the surveys, while in Missouri the acreage in farming declined 2.7%.

Missouri has lost more than 1,000 cattle producers a year over the past 25 years, a trend that accelerated to about 2,000 per year in the past five years, according to the farm census. The number of farms producing hogs has declined from 12,133 in 1992 to 2,184 in 2022.

Farming is not just an industry, but a way of life. Farm workers are considered family by their employers, and relationships last for decades, if not generations. We need to value our farmers and respect the great work that they do.