You hear it all the time, “No farmers, no food.” It’s on bumper stickers, t-shirts and I’m sure it is spraypainted in graffiti all over the place. It’s effective because it’s true – if we lose our famers we are screwed, which is why the issues facing farmers are important to you, whether you realize it or not.
Want to feel old? Remember all the “cause” concerts in the 1980s? Live Aid was the biggest, but pretty much every cause back then had a concert thrown for it. The tradition goes back at least to 1971 with George Harrison and the Concert for Bangladesh – the idea of people coming together to help those in need is an inherently human, maybe even American, instinct.
We are approaching the 40th anniversary of the first Farm Aid in September, a benefit concert that allegedly sprang forth from a comment by Bob Dyan and was acted upon by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young. Unlike famine in Ethiopia, the struggles of the American farmers is ongoing, as family farms teeter on bankruptcy every day. In fact, this September will see another Farm Aid concert, as the series has never stopped because the need has never faded.
But what can be done that matters more than a concert? Not that raising money that is a problem.
First, kill the death tax.
Family farms are hit hard by the death tax, as on paper they are worth a lot of money because the value of land and equipment can add up quickly to surpass the tax’s limits. That causes farms to have to be sold, either in whole or in part, to avoid the government taking the whole thing.
What was sold as “taxing the rich” ended up hurting farmers, as the truly rich have ways to shelter their wealth from the death tax to the point that it’s a joke. So, why continue it? The politics of envy sells among Democrats, so yelling “tax the rich” is popular even when the rich aren’t the ones being taxed.
But if you really don’t care about running family farms out of business, consider the aftermath of that action. China is slurping up as much American farmland as it can get its hands on. If that weren’t enough, they’re buying as much farmland as possible near US military bases.
That Congress is not moving heaven and earth to block this and deconstruct the mechanisms that made it possible is something I will never understand, but at least they’re talking about it now.
In the meantime, as who knows how long it will take for Congress to do the right thing, the measures our government has taken already to help farmers should continue. More specifically, that means subsidies.
Not a big fan of the concept, but you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and subsidies do go a long way to keeping farms away from foreclosure and, for many of them, Chinese hands. That price is worth is, at least to me.
In the One Big Beautiful Bill, there are “agriculture programs typically included in a farm bill,” because, as the head of the American Farm Bureau Federation pointed out “More than half of farmers are losing money.” That should terrify everyone, and another 100 years of Willie Nelson won’t be able to fix it. (Although, who couldn’t go for another 100 years of Willie?)
Protecting farmers means protecting not only farm jobs, but the jobs over everyone tangentially involved in the agriculture business. You probably don’t eat cane sugar, but I bet you consume sugar a dozen things you eat everyday. The OBBB extended programs for sugar producers through 2031 and one study found “the industry supports 37,000 direct jobs and more than 151,000 jobs overall when counting downstream activity.” That’s nothing to sniff at.
The OBBB also made “improvements to the Livestock Indemnity Program and Livestock Forage Program,” and it “permanently sets the death tax exemption to $15 million or $30 million for those married filing jointly.” That will help, some.
Great starts, all of them, but only starts. As long as other countries are artificially lowering the cost of their goods to undercut our farmers, we have to fight fire with fire.
President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is a good first step to protecting farmers, but it is only a first step, just as Farm Aid helps. The whole situation has to change from overseas – much like the tariffs are levied to set American companies on equal footing, American economic power needs to be flexed to protect American farmers for the very same reason. We can’t thrive without the jobs, we can’t live without the farmers.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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