Fixing the Dam with a Bandaid
Farming in 2024...and beyond
Let’s review some top stories in agriculture from the end of 2024 , shall we?
Recently,Biden signed a stop-gap bill giving $10 billion in assistance to farmers to make up for low commodity prices and the high cost of doing business.
Some can even qualify for up to $250,000 in payments. Yikes.
The American Farm Bureau says they need even more because “farmers with a 50/50 corn and soy rotation on some of the very best cropland in the world will have faced an average loss of nearly $90 per acre between the 2023 and 2025 crop years.” This handy graphic from the group tells the story even more clearly.
The AFB says the answer is to pay farmers for the losses they take on year after year after year— but the group does not ever advocate that farmers should consider changing what they grow. Yet in any other industry, if your business only had four good years out of the last 12, might you think about morphing your business model?
By comparison, AFB also published this handy chart showing that “specialty crops” (fruits and vegetables) are doing far better economically—and I might add nutritionally and often environmentally—than corn, beans, and even (our favorite here in Iowa) hogs.
Next up in agricultural news you might have missed,
Mexico lost a court case denying its right to refuse GMO corn from entering the country.
Corn Growers Association described the situation this way on their website:
“Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador first set off alarms in the Corn Belt in December 2020 when he initiated a decree to ban genetically modified corn by the end of 2024. At the time, NCGA [National Corn Growers Association] began outreach to the Trump administration to head off the ban. Those efforts continued with the Biden administration as well as with members of Congress and Mexican officials.
The organization’s leaders argued that the ban would significantly harm growers and rural communities, especially because Mexico is the number one export destination for U.S. corn.”
The NCGA won the suit, dictating that according to trade laws, Mexico must take the corn, whether they want it or not. Mexico put out this statement:
“The Mexican government does not agree with the panel’s finding, given that it considers that the measures in question are aligned with the principles of protecting public health and the rights of Indigenous communities,” Mexico’s Economy Department said. “Nonetheless, the Mexican government will respect the ruling.”
The country also said that it will not allow GMO corn to be grown in the country, and will ramp up its own production.
Again, as with payments to farmers losing money, the reaction was NOT to adapt to the challenge of a changing market, but to insist that the status quo must remain.
In a report also released in mid-December…
The Government Accounting Office found that between 2019-2023, $161 billion was given to farmers in assistance.
Iowa received the third highest payments in the country (next to Texas and North Dakota, not notably California or Florida, the states responsible for growing most of the nation’s fruits and vegetables). 94% of agricultural land in Iowa is dedicated to growing corn and soybeans. The report noted:
In addition, the top 10 producers receiving the most financial assistance received about $18.0 million per year on average. Overall, USDA financial assistance ranged from a few dollars per year to $215.2 million to a single producer in 2022.
A farm received $215 million in one year???
And of course, in 2024…
Congress did not pass a new Farm Bill…
Which, to be clear, would have likely continued many of the same programs it has for the next four (six?) years (with the important exception of SNAP, but that is a story for a different column).
So what to do?
All this reminds me of that story where a little Dutch boy sticks his finger in the dike in order to save his town. It seems that is what we always do. Instead of changing the system and rebuilding the dike, we try to fix things with a simple bandaid. We pay out farmers, even if they have little hope of making a profit next year, and force people to buy things they don’t want so that we will continue to have a faux market for the products we grow.
But it turns out the story of the Dutch dam is not only made up; it is an American tale most Dutch people have never heard of. A quintessential American fable about a fantasy solution, a version of a story we can stick to, even if the logic is sadly lacking. As Dutch writer Yvette Hoitink puts it,
You see, when a dike is about to break, a finger just does not cut it. Dikes don’t typically leak—they weaken until whole sections are washed away. No finger will help when that happens.
Sadly, I could write this article about most of our “systems” in the U.S. As we all know, the dam isn’t only fragile in agriculture—it’s in health care and education, in the brick and mortar of our communities and here, online. All these systems are precariously perched one on top of another like a game of Jenga, held together with the glue of huge multinational corporations and the organizations created to support them (ie—the Corn Growers, the Farm Bureau).
And yet…
We the people, are sick of it all.
It seems that nearly every American who is not a billionaire can agree—corporate control is killing us, both figuratively and literally. The United States is now a government that has been recreated of corporate interests, for corporate interests and by the corporate interests.
And yet “We the People” (all of us, no matter who you voted for) keep sticking our fingers in the dike, maintaining the status quo for them, voting for leaders who change little about these systems, fearing what will happen if we let go. We prefer the Devil we know to the one we do not.
This is the dilemma I see that looms ahead of us in the new year—that in the midst of what will surely be yet another Presidency dedicated primarily to the preservation of what is (or more accurately, what is imagined as once was), we will do little to envision a new future as it can be. We will be blindsided, standing with our fingers in the dike, when it is time to get ahead of the curve and create a playbook for what comes next.
As Vaclav Havel said in his famous speech about how to blaze a new path forward for his country after years of war:
I am convinced that everything will turn out alright in the end. At the same time, however, I presume that if everything does in fact turn out alright in the end, it will be only because we will find within ourselves the strength to look ourselves straight in the eyes, all our previous failures and all their genuine causes, including those which are rooted in ourselves alone and in our negative qualities.
I, too, am convinced that everything will turn out “alright” in the end. But what the road looks like to get there, I have no idea.
Beth Hoffman is the author of Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America (out in paperback this January!)
Thanks for raising these issues! You did not mention the misguided production for ethanol that while it is helping agriculture it is at best a short term solution, besides it is supported through crop insurance.
Iowa‘s FB and politicians are misguided by a profit driven ag supply industry. We must support Land Grant university like ISU for unbiased research, eliminating „gag“ orders and reduce GMO along with Glyphosate to a more base saturation fertility for healthier soils that produce crops at higher nutrient density! Mexico knows why they want NonGMO corn! Germany wants One Million tons of NonGmo soy. These markets are going somewhere else unless American Agriculture will grow what the customer wants!
As always, Beth, you lay out a great argument for sustainable change. Oh for some decision-makers who would lead us where we need to go, instead of the current pack who employ fear mongering -- which for too many of us produces a "hunker-down, keep-it-as-it-is" mentality -- and ensures their re-election. Although you must tire of shouting in the wind, Beth and John, keep on doing so; we hear you and eventually we'll all have to come around.