Today’s farm economy is a wonder of advanced technology, science, and engineering, but Washington, D.C.’s agriculture policies haven’t kept up. Too often, policy is the product of outdated stereotypes, rather than the realities of high-tech modern farming life. The Farm Bill, and the legislators who deal with agricultural policy, need to update how D.C. deals with farming for the 21st century.
Popular perception of modern farming is often based more on hagiographic representations of a hardscrabble existence, such as Dodge Ram’s “God Made a Farmer” Super Bowl ad, and childhood memories of Charlotte’s Web, than fact.
Many facets of today’s farming operations would be unrecognizable to farmers of just a generation ago. Dairy production is typically referred to as a 365, 24-7 commitment that gave us the idiom, “Go to bed with the chickens and get up with the cows.” Because cows don’t take a day off and need to be milked on a precise schedule, that meant no sleeping in, and certainly no vacations. But today, the cows practically milk themselves, giving farm families new found flexibility:
On small dairy farms, though, which were among the first to adopt this technology, the robots are replacing the labor of the families that own those farms. Instead of displacing people, Bill Schuler hopes that the robots will help his sons stay right where they are, on the farm.
Air conditioning, internet access, and other creatures comforts (to say nothing of cupholders) are now standard in the tractor cab. Most tractors and combines have some kind of self-driving feature. Yield monitors provide live feedback on volume, moisture content, weeds, and other on-the-ground conditions that can affect planting and harvesting decisions. Some screens allow farmers to stay current on other farm operations, markets, weather—and even communicate with other machines in the field. Sensors help determine precisely where, when, and how to plant or fertilize. Perhaps most impressive of all, machines can be equipped with thermal imaging that can help farmers detect and avoid wildlife that may be present in a field.
Today’s farm is wired. Many facets of the farm can be monitored and executed from a smartphone with numerous apps available - some with Nest-like features - for farmers to manage everything from infrastructure to livestock feed and harvesting decisions.
Major leaps in farm technology have been a big contributor to the massive increase in farm productivity Americans have seen since 1948. From the Department of Agriculture:
Technological developments in agriculture have been influential in driving changes in the farm sector. Innovations in animal and crop genetics, chemicals, equipment, and farm organization have enabled continuing output growth without adding much to inputs. As a result, even as the amount of land and labor used in farming declined, total farm output more than doubled between 1948 and 2015.
As farm productivity has soared, farm household incomes have also climbed. For the past two-decades, farm household incomes have been well above average nonfarm incomes.
In no way does all this suggest that active farming isn’t a tough, often full-time job, but it’s a far cry from the Grapes of Wrath.
So why are our farm policies still rooted in the failed, Soviet-style, command-and-control economic philosophies of the Great Depression and New Deal era? Though the program names have changed, the basic logic, that the federal government can successfully steer the farm economy through price, income, and supply controls, remains the same.
The first Farm Bill, in 1933, was a response to farmers essentially hurt by their own success: high yields had led to low prices. Rather than let the free market unscramble these market signals, the federal government swooped in with broad centralization….a move that has been debunked wherever it has been tried, including the United States.
Recent reports show that U.S. farm policy remains seriously out of step with the needs of farm businesses, consumers, and taxpayers. In May, the Government Accountability Office found that for 2015, the top fifty farm businesses averaged $885,000 in commodity payments, with $3.7 million going to just one farm. Just two weeks ago, the Environmental Working Group reported that from 1985-2016, according to USDA data almost 28,000 farms received payments every year for the past thirty-two years.
These programs aren’t providing a safety net - they’re a golden parachute.
Unfortunately, over time the very idea of a farm bill and federal meddling in in the industry has simply become standard operating procedure. The modern American farm increasingly looks little like the ones that first spawned our current agriculture policies - and neither do the farmers. Far from struggling the way a Great Depression farmer was, today’s incomes are far above the median household average, there are low debt-to-asset ratios, and farmers are equipped with myriad ways to reduce risk and optimize profits.
Individuals and business has flourished in other sectors of the economy where government interference has been reduced. Most likely, the ag economy would feature even more innovation and productivity were the role of government reduced.
Farms and taxpayers deserve a new New Deal, one that critically reexamines not only our outdated policies, but their very premise.