Too many Democrats are missing on an issue fundamental to farmers: the consolidation of the agriculture sector.
By Brian Barth
In The Nation OCTOBER 27, 2020
Wisconsin dairy farmer Sarah Lloyd believes she has the answer to a question that has convulsed the Democratic Party for the past four years. “People from the coasts are always like, ‘What’s going on with Wisconsin? How could they have possibly voted for Obama and then voted for Trump?’” she asks, putting on a falsetto to conjure the hysteria she often hears in such voices. On a chilly, overcast October afternoon, she lays out her theory at the 400-cow Columbia County farm she runs with her husband, which the couple recently considered shuttering after years of unsustainably low milk prices. A Democrat with a PhD in rural sociology, this third-generation farmer believes her party is sorely out of touch with an issue that resonates deeply in conservative heartland communities: countering the monopolistic level of corporate power that has emerged in agribusiness over the past 40 years.
“The Obama administration came out swinging and said they were going to get the DOJ to dig into the issue and try to create a level playing field. Nothing happened.”
President Barack Obama vowed to do exactly that during his 2008 campaign. He promised to enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act, 1920s-era antitrust legislation designed to put reins on meat companies that were racking up profits while farming families weathered oppressive levels of debt and the constant threat of bankruptcy. The law took aim at an early form of vertical integration in the livestock industry, in which companies were able to manipulate prices by controlling the production and the distribution of meat. A century later, the consolidation of the meatpacking industry in the hands of a few immensely profitable transnational corporations makes the 1920s seem quaint in comparison.
The law remains on the books, but over the years government oversight has grown exceedingly lax. After his election, Obama dispatched Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, to conduct a series of high-profile workshops on industry consolidation with farmers across the country. Lloyd recalls genuine excitement in rural corners that meaningful change was imminent. It turned out to be a “dog-and-pony show,” she says. “The Obama administration came out swinging and said they were going to get the DOJ to dig into the issue and try to create a level playing field. Nothing happened.”
While Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s platform discusses strengthening antitrust enforcement in agriculture, his approach to rural voters has consisted largely of pummeling Trump over his trade war with China and the economic pain it has inflicted on farmers. This summer, he told attendees of a virtual rally in Wisconsin, where dairy farms are shutting down at a rate of nearly two per day and farmer suicides are on the rise, that “Trump’s unmitigated tariff disaster” was to blame. While this has become a media mantra, the message may not resonate in rural communities the way the Democratic establishment seems to think.
“She points out that Bernie Sanders’s “going-after-the-big-guys” approach, as she puts it, helped him win every county in Wisconsin outside Milwaukee in the 2016 primary.”
Bill Bullard, the CEO of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, a conservative group working to stop anticompetitive practices in the meatpacking industry, says that’s because many farmers and ranchers favor protective tariffs. Free trade agreements have saturated the market with cheap imports, driving down the prices US farmers receive for their goods and promoting overproduction, he says…
Read the full article in The Nation.