Guest Opinion: Who Will Feed Us?
By Gary Lamb

Our family farm food production system has been the envy of the world for over half a century. Those few of us who inherited this rich agrarian cultural heritage have had a tremendous story to tell, and we haven’t told our story very well.

I would guess we became complacent and over-confident, or thought the American people would always appreciate our efforts. We just assumed they would always understand the huge financial investment and risk, the uncertainty of the weather and the markets. Unfortunately, as generation after generation of American people moves farther and farther from Grandpa’s farm, an ever-growing percentage of our people no longer understand the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of producing food and fiber. We are the only industry that manufactures something (raw food and fiber) and do not set a price on our products. Consumers see where farmers are paid subsidies in different forms, and I sense there is a growing feeling that farmers have become welfare recipients, who no longer have the management skills to survive on the marketplace and market prices. What they do not realize is that, because neither political party has had the ability or will or both to enforce antitrust laws through the years, a few huge monopolistic food processing corporations have surfaced that now have the ability to influence the marketplace, enabling them to buy raw food and fiber at prices below farmers’ production costs, at least the biggest part of the time. It is now estimated that a little more than 50 percent of farm income comes in some form of subsidies.

That probably explains why farmers collectively average about a 2 to 3 percent return on all capital invested, while according to Bill Heffernan at the University of Missouri, his research reveals that a few of these huge processors have averaging a 21 to 28 percent return on capital invested. He believes their game plan is that every seven years, they want to double their assets and holdings, putting an even bigger strangle-hold on our food system. Consumers and taxpayers see where Riceland Foods of Arkansas, a cooperative of 9.000 rice growers, received $15.8 million in subsidies last year, and they assume most farmers are getting close to that amount as well. Recently released figures from the USDA reveal that the top 10 percent of farmers who received the largest subsidies average $34,000 a year, or 72 percent of total payments. The bottom 80 percent of farmers averaged a little over $6,900 for the entire period of 1995 to 2003; that’s just $768 a year. Two thirds of the nation’s farmers receive no subsidies whatsoever, because they grow the “wrong” things. Although there is talk of payment limitations to stop this vicious cycle of 10 percent of our nation’s biggest farmers receiving 80 percent of total subsidy payments, the beneficiaries of this unbalanced system are certainly trying to stop it—and so far, they have been very successful. The question all taxpayers and consumers should ask themselves is, who can and will produce our food and fiber if there is no profit whatsoever, either in the marketplace or in the form of subsidies? Think about it! [Editor’s note: Figures quoted are from USDA and from Environmental Working Group analyses. Subsidy recipients and the amounts they received, according to most recent data available, are published on the website of the Environmental Working Group. Visit www.ewg.org.] Gary Lamb has farmed for 55 years near Chelsea, Iowa. He has served as president of the Iowa Farmers Union, Chairman of the Iowa State Committee of the Farm Service Agency, and agricultural liaison for Senator Tom Harkin.