It ' s Time to Put the Farm Bill Out to Pasture

Some Americans may be surprised to learn that agriculture in their country is in large part based on a five-year plan. Most commonly referred to as the farm bill, it is up for renewal this year and —just like in years past—is likely to produce a legislative morass in which the primary beneficiaries are lobbyists and the business interests they serve. The following excerpt from arecent article inThe New Yorker helps to illustrate the madness:When milk prices bottomed out in the summer of 2016, Robin and David Fitch didn ’t know how they could continue. Their four-hundred-and-seventy-acre dairy farm, in West Winfield, New York—a four-hour drive north of Manhattan—supported about a hundred and seventy milk cows. Sixteen years earlier, when they had married and started farming together, a herd that size would ha ve been more than enough to keep them afloat. But milk prices kept falling that summer, eventually hitting fourteen dollars per hundredweight, down from twenty-five in 2014. The Fitches’ income took a nearly fifty-per-cent hit, while the debt they incurred from fuel costs, rising interest rates, a nd other expenses grew. The day came when they had to tell their two children that they might be forced to sell the farm. “My fourteen-year-old was in tears,” Robin recalled. “For the farmer, it means losing everything they have worked for their entire life—their land, their home, everything . It’s gone.”The Fitches were not alone in their struggles. The ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs