Which Presidential Candidate Would Solve the Farm Problem?
At the end of every U.S. Presidential campaign, I ask: Which candidate is more likely to solve the farm problem?
For nearly 100 years, Americans have worried that not enough farmers were making enough money to keep our rural communities thriving and vigorous. The Congress has time and again appropriated billions of public dollars intended to increase farmers’ incomes, without much slowing the exodus from the farms and rural towns.
Today, however, Interstates, electronics and global economic growth may have brought the moment for higher rural incomes and stable rural populations.
Which presidential candidate is more likely to achieve these excellent things?
The first element of rural America’s new opportunity is the rising farm export potential in densely populated Asia. When the farm problem began, about 1900, the world had only 1.6 billion people, and only a few million of them could afford to eat well. Moreover, the steam engine, used in both locomotives and ships, had just opened 500 million acres of new farmland in places like North Dakota, Australia and Argentina. Farm surpluses were the order of the day.
Today, the world has 6.3 billion people, and 4 billion of them will soon be living in Asian countries with rising incomes and limited cropland. China, India, and Indonesia will have 40 percent of the world’s population, and only 20 percent of its suddenly scarce arable land.
Asia’s growth in population and meat demand should be making America’s abundant farmland a strong national economic asset. Unfortunately, Europe’s predatory farm policies have been depressing world farm prices, and driving Third World countries to keep their farm import barriers high.
President Bush recently led the World Trade Organization into a major farm trade negotiation. Both the Europeans and such Third World leaders as India and Brazil are apparently moving to accept liberalized world farm trade for the first time ever. Whoever occupies the White House two years from now could offer our farmers the first really big farm export opportunity in history.
U.S. farmers might well double their farm exports in a decade with free farm trade – from the land and equipment they already own. But the momentum of the current talks must be carried through.
Kerry seems less likely than Bush to aggressively pursue farm trade liberalization. He has a history of supporting free trade, but during the campaign he has emphasized putting into all our trade agreements the “high labor and environmental standards” favored by the big unions and Greens who support him. Neither the unions nor the Greens want more trade.
The second element of today’s rural opportunity is rural nonfarm jobs. Good roads, good employees, and the Internet now make rural America a prime location for many businesses. But the rural infrastructure-schools, bridges, high-speed Internet-is not yet adequate in many places, and most of the government’s “rural” money is going to a few big farmers in the form of crop payments.
John Kerry’s Democratic Party has long favored the big-farmer payments, even though they do nothing to solve the long-term rural problem.
Mr. Kerry’s positions on spending and taxes also seem problematic for rural America. His idea of taxing “the rich” would hit a lot of farmers who have to pay off their land and keep their equipment working.
On both trade and taxes, Kerry seems less likely to help farmers than Bush.
Bush is actually trying to “solve” the farm problem, as he wants to “solve” terrorism and Social Security. Are Americans comfortable with that much change, even if his solutions are plausible? We’ll soon see.
