My father in law wrote this editorial a few weeks ago before Wall
street went for a ride. It is agriculture related thus maybe more appropriate for this forum yet still something to think about when you go to the polls in November.
This spring, all across this region, dairy farmers faced an unprecedented escalation in production costs. The planting decisions faced by area dairymen were stark. Fuel, freight, fertilizer, livestock feed, machinery, pesticides, land rents, had risen by unprecedented margins. When looking at the numbers farmers faced, one truly wondered if ''the game was worth the candle.'' The inordinate number of dairy herd dispersals throughout the Northeast this spring seemed to pose the answer, and that answer does not bode well for our nation's future. In all this instability we may have started to ''eat our seed.''
Given this increased expense, was there enough of a possibility of profit to justify the remaining farmers' inherent risk in planting another crop? Profit, you say? Food should be for people, not profit! But what is ''profit'' to a farmer? Profit to a farmer is what a pay-check is to any other worker; take-home pay. Without the prospect of profit the tractor might better stay in the toolshed, the cows go to the sale barn and the land lie fallow.
When one watches the national news these days, the lead stories are less of Iraq and Afghanistan and more of the state of the national and world economy. Government officials would seem to have the public believe that those in charge of the nation's economy can forestall and protect U.S. consumers from the ravages of inflation. Were this only true. But ever so insistently the ''hens are coming home to roost'' from this nation's obsession with a foreign adventure, oil and finance. For 35 years our national leadership has neglected the implementation of a coherent national energy independence strategy. For years our national economic policy has had no higher purpose than making billionaires out of millionaires. The foolishness of our aimless national strategic and economic policy is rising daily in the national consciousness.
The catastrophic effects of our national policies of deficit spending, dependence on foreign oil, continuous war footing, unsupervised financial sector, subsidized ethanol, and globalization all have to share blame in the unprecedented decline of the U.S. dollar and the corresponding run-up of farm expenses. The inflation visible at the supermarket so far, is pale indeed, to what America's farmers saw this spring in their input prices. America's consumers will soon have to deal with this new reality. America's farmers can not bear this increase in costs along: to do so would be a recipe for ruin.
Needed is a fundamental shift in national policy thinking. Policy makers should discard the notion of farmers as a class of workers and see them as what they really are: a priceless national economic resource. Farmers are among those few American workers who actually produce something of real substance: food, the third basic element of life itself.
This nation is truly blessed with an abundance of agricultural capacity, and yet our national leadership seems incapable of any sensible strategic use of this unique economic potential. In the aftermath of globalization about the only thing the U.S. produces in any quantity for export, besides pricey weapons systems and ''intellectual property,'' is agricultural commodities. Any other developed country can and will easily compete with the U.S. in the first two arenas: however, most other developed nations lack spare agricultural capacity. A trading nation must, by definition, have something to trade: agricultural commodities are absolutely essential to this country's otherwise ruinous balance of trade.
An intelligent national economic policy would have been positioning and encouraging a sustainable U.S. agriculture. A thriving agriculture will be an absolute necessity if this country is to avoid becoming a second-rate economic power. If American agriculture and hence, the American people are to survive financially, our government must stop its asinine policy of the last 50 years; attempting to balance this nation's books on the backs' of America's farmers. Farmers must be allowed to recoup these inflationary input price increases. Prices farmers receive for farm produce must be allowed to rise with their cost of production. Our government's concept of ''Cheap Food'' us just as unrealistic, unworkable and unsustainable as ''Collective Farming'' was in the now defunct Soviet Union.
Even in the best of economic times, planting is an act of faith: farmers are dicing with the whims of weather, markets and the realities of supply and demand. This year those concerns will be coupled with the uncertainty of whether the increasingly stagnant and shaky U.S. economy will be in any position to sustain and reward its farmers' perennial optimism. This is no small matter; the economic survival of America's perpetually industrious, patiently dedicated dairy farm families hangs in the balance.
Nate Wilson, dairy farmer
Sinclairville
street went for a ride. It is agriculture related thus maybe more appropriate for this forum yet still something to think about when you go to the polls in November.
This spring, all across this region, dairy farmers faced an unprecedented escalation in production costs. The planting decisions faced by area dairymen were stark. Fuel, freight, fertilizer, livestock feed, machinery, pesticides, land rents, had risen by unprecedented margins. When looking at the numbers farmers faced, one truly wondered if ''the game was worth the candle.'' The inordinate number of dairy herd dispersals throughout the Northeast this spring seemed to pose the answer, and that answer does not bode well for our nation's future. In all this instability we may have started to ''eat our seed.''
Given this increased expense, was there enough of a possibility of profit to justify the remaining farmers' inherent risk in planting another crop? Profit, you say? Food should be for people, not profit! But what is ''profit'' to a farmer? Profit to a farmer is what a pay-check is to any other worker; take-home pay. Without the prospect of profit the tractor might better stay in the toolshed, the cows go to the sale barn and the land lie fallow.
When one watches the national news these days, the lead stories are less of Iraq and Afghanistan and more of the state of the national and world economy. Government officials would seem to have the public believe that those in charge of the nation's economy can forestall and protect U.S. consumers from the ravages of inflation. Were this only true. But ever so insistently the ''hens are coming home to roost'' from this nation's obsession with a foreign adventure, oil and finance. For 35 years our national leadership has neglected the implementation of a coherent national energy independence strategy. For years our national economic policy has had no higher purpose than making billionaires out of millionaires. The foolishness of our aimless national strategic and economic policy is rising daily in the national consciousness.
The catastrophic effects of our national policies of deficit spending, dependence on foreign oil, continuous war footing, unsupervised financial sector, subsidized ethanol, and globalization all have to share blame in the unprecedented decline of the U.S. dollar and the corresponding run-up of farm expenses. The inflation visible at the supermarket so far, is pale indeed, to what America's farmers saw this spring in their input prices. America's consumers will soon have to deal with this new reality. America's farmers can not bear this increase in costs along: to do so would be a recipe for ruin.
Needed is a fundamental shift in national policy thinking. Policy makers should discard the notion of farmers as a class of workers and see them as what they really are: a priceless national economic resource. Farmers are among those few American workers who actually produce something of real substance: food, the third basic element of life itself.
This nation is truly blessed with an abundance of agricultural capacity, and yet our national leadership seems incapable of any sensible strategic use of this unique economic potential. In the aftermath of globalization about the only thing the U.S. produces in any quantity for export, besides pricey weapons systems and ''intellectual property,'' is agricultural commodities. Any other developed country can and will easily compete with the U.S. in the first two arenas: however, most other developed nations lack spare agricultural capacity. A trading nation must, by definition, have something to trade: agricultural commodities are absolutely essential to this country's otherwise ruinous balance of trade.
An intelligent national economic policy would have been positioning and encouraging a sustainable U.S. agriculture. A thriving agriculture will be an absolute necessity if this country is to avoid becoming a second-rate economic power. If American agriculture and hence, the American people are to survive financially, our government must stop its asinine policy of the last 50 years; attempting to balance this nation's books on the backs' of America's farmers. Farmers must be allowed to recoup these inflationary input price increases. Prices farmers receive for farm produce must be allowed to rise with their cost of production. Our government's concept of ''Cheap Food'' us just as unrealistic, unworkable and unsustainable as ''Collective Farming'' was in the now defunct Soviet Union.
Even in the best of economic times, planting is an act of faith: farmers are dicing with the whims of weather, markets and the realities of supply and demand. This year those concerns will be coupled with the uncertainty of whether the increasingly stagnant and shaky U.S. economy will be in any position to sustain and reward its farmers' perennial optimism. This is no small matter; the economic survival of America's perpetually industrious, patiently dedicated dairy farm families hangs in the balance.
Nate Wilson, dairy farmer
Sinclairville
