Budget Triage

January 1999

When the dust had settled from 1998, I wearily began the plan 1999. I had a cashflow projection from several months ago, and when it updated from the final figures from 98, and was modified for changes that had happened on the farm, I saw to my horror a less than satisfactory margin.

Since raising income, always a good idea but very hard to accomplish, was not going to solve the whole problem, Jan and I took the knife to our expenses, amputating in an effort to save the patient.

This is not easy to do either. Most expenses tend to look reasonable, or “appropriate” as we say today. We do not squander money on frivolous luxuries. We invest in needed goods and services. Soon the discussion became pretty defensive.

There is a strange tendency in farm budget decisions to look at “family living” as the evil demon that causes all the problems. In fact, when farmers talk about cutting back, they usually start by making a pronouncement about living expenses. 

This prejudice offends my mathematical sensibilities. Looking for savings is best accomplished by looking at large expenses, and household expenses are not  at the top of the list compared to many farm expenses. Too often, in my opinion, the wife is expected to make up for inefficiencies in the farm. There also seems to be some sense of justification for overspending if the expense is tax-deductible. Those dollars, despite their IRS status must be generated the same way, however.

Our budget cuts:

1. Major capital improvements:  This is pretty obvious.  Cancel the newer truck and truck shed. 
2. Interest:  I pay a load of interest to my bank. To reduce that outlay, I am refinancing several parcels of land into a much easier to underwrite package. I have proposed, after some research, a scheme to my lender that has been approved and will cut my interest about $4000 this year.
3. Fertilizer:  Prepare for agronomic blasphemy: I am making a withdrawal from the “soil bank”. For many years we have been in a buildup program on fertilizer. Dropping back to maintenance or even sub-maintenance levels for one year will have minimal, if any impact. Using a straight-spread instead of VRT saves about $3500 on top of the  $5500 materials savings. This sends a clear market signal to my supplier as well.
4. Repair: The great mystery category.  Detailed analysis of my spending in this category produced the following decision - no new power toys - er, tools, period. Also, my tendency to replace the whole assembly when one small part shows wear (sickles, sweeps, rasp bars, etc.) can take a one-year vacation. Savings goal: $3500
5. Chemicals: Based on totally unscientific research of my own, I have decided to cut back on first-year rootworm insecticide in the middle of large (80+ A.) fields, since egg-laying seems to be concentrated in the edges. (Yes, I realize the guarantee is void.)  Savings of about $4000 
6. Insurance: Recheck my farmowners/vehicle for deductibles as high as effective. Eliminate all “first dollar” coverage. Make sure the inventories covered are accurate and reasonable. Surf Internet for auto coverage quotes. Target savings $500
7. Office:  Several areas of fertile budget cutting. Subscriptions - eliminate duplicate sources of information. One source is getting me most of what I need.  Lose other services this year. Office expenses - stop upgrading every computer program just because version x.0 is out. No hardware upgrades. (Ouch!) Lose computer mags.
8. Capital equipment: Sell my excavator. (sob!) I wanted to get a different kind anyway, and a 2-3 year hiatus won’t be a big sacrifice. Also sell some wagons and never-used tools at a consignment auction. Capital freed: $15,000
9. Taxes: I have always tried to resist frontloading expenses, but paying some operating interest early could save $4000-5000. I’ll hate myself years from now, of course.
10. Household expenses
• Insurance: Stop term insurance on Jan. Our boys are grown, and their education was the rationale for the coverage. (We replaced my term insurance last year and saved $1200) $500
• Food: If you track it, it is amazing what you can spend on alcohol, even one drink at a time. I don’t vist the tavern, but do enjoy wine with dinner. Cutting back our wine consumption is a good thing for many reasons. If you drink, keep track for a month what it costs - could be  a surprise.) $400
• Rigorous vacation planning: new Internet techniques for travel can cut our vacation costs, if we plan better. $500
• Clothing: Keep my weight down so my old pants and suits fit. Throw out Lands’ End/Speigel catalog. $800
• Home: Moratorium on kitchen investments, magazines $300
11. Miscellaneous
• Change bill paying date from monthly to weekly to eliminate the credit cards that come due right on the wrong day so I keep getting a late payment charge, even though we always pay in full. Also I’ve noticed they are starting to squeeze the traditional 30-day grace period. $100
• Scale back Christmas (easy for us - no grandchildren yet) $500
• As a last resort, consider paying the minimum principal due on long term debts. We have always tried to pay at least at little more than required. Possible savings: $3000-5000

It wasn’t fun, but we both feel better.

I think.

Last year's mistake

January 1999

Agriculture remains, for the most part, an annualized business - a cycle that starts in spring and ends in winter. Farmers feel this rhythm at an almost molecular level, and as we age, I have found, adapt most of our lives to the circle of years.

We speak of years as distinct entities and treat each new round of months as a “new ball game”. But underlying this succession of business and personal cycles are some constants that I find both help and harm my efforts to get ahead in my profession.

One of the strongest such tendencies is the absolute horror of the “successive mistake”. This is the concept embedded in the “Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me” proverb that seems to have been universally taught in rural America. The repeated mistake is not just unfortunate - it is shameful, and professionally embarrassing.

Sounds reasonable enough. But if you look closer at what this syndrome implies, it may not be so straightforward. Successive mistakes deserve personal blame only if they are truly identical, which rarely happens. The world seldom delivers matching circumstances, a problem that plagues forecasters of events as divergent as economics and fashion. Without the repeat of initial conditions, there can be no repeated mistake, just similar outcomes, which cannot be blamed on a character flaw.

Moreover, thinking in terms of mistakes and triumphs oversimplifies a much more complex range of outcomes. I find increasingly, rather than right or wrong moves, I am confronted with a bewildering array of similar appearing choices, any of which might get me where I want to go. Looking back on these decisions, I have also noticed that the results would have been likewise a mixture of good and bad news. Some would work better than others, and some, even after the fact, defy labeling. Was paying that high rent better than losing that ground? Maybe. If I had planted more short season corn, would my yields have improved? Depends.

In short, mistakes, recent or not, are getting harder to identify clearly. Worse still, things that were a bad choice in one instance, could easily be the optimal choice in a set of circumstances only slightly different. Nowhere is this more frustrating than in the area of marketing.

The instinct to avoid last year’s mistake gives a strong undercurrent in my marketing decisions, I have found. In 1998, for example, not selling early (before harvest) was a bad idea, and holding on to 1997 crop was even less fruitful. I now feel an eagerness to dump my 98 crop as rapidly as possible, since declining prices is the scenario I can imagine. When I get these itches, I often interpret market signals illogically.

Therein may be the center of the problem. My middle-aged memory tends to focus on last year to the exclusion of previous years. In the last few years, I have tried to compensate for this by writing down in January both a few simple Goals for the upcoming year, and the “Great Lessons” (profound truths revealed to me by experience) from the past year. It makes for both interesting and confusing reading.

For example, I have been engaged in an ongoing debate with myself (the kind you always lose) over two production topics: what population to drill beans and how much N to apply. Reading my past pronouncements on these problems over the last decade, I have discovered I have firmly resolved to “never again put on more that 140# N” followed shortly by the vow to “never use less than 180#”. Similarly, I have alternated in my so-called “Great Lessons” from 160,000 seeds/acre to 240,000, with equal conviction each way.

It could be that: 1) I’m getting my shorts in a knot over fairly trivial issues, and 2) many of my “Great Lessons” need an expiration date. Much of what I do is a simple response to the preceding year, to avoid the embarrassment of a double fault.

Much of what we decide now in farming will have to be done looking forward, not back. Just as Jerry Gulke is always harping on responding to today’s market, rather than trying to predict tomorrow’s, there may be few fail-safe guidelines that will ensure success. I am beginning to suspect also, that being aware of my own personal mental prejudices when I make decisions could be the best “Great Lesson” of all.

Looking for the “right” answer might be a waste of time, too. What I need are some answers that are “right enough”. I also need to lighten up about my mistakes, even the second time around. If my best analysis tells me to plant the corn deeper than usual, even though last year that was a blunder, I need to decide which I trust more - my brain or my pride. The object may be a process to find answers, not a specific answer.

Last year’s mistake is a bogeyman  I need to outgrow. Ruling out a legitimate course of action because it wasn’t the greatest tactic last season diminishes the choices I have for this year’s problems. And I need all the ammo I can get.

Endless marketing

December 1998

Something had to change. Our farm’s financial performance was not getting the job done. It was not illogical to point a finger at bad weather, bad luck, and bad timing. It just didn’t change any of the numbers or ease my own unhappiness.

In desperation I was forced to look at the one area of performance that is the most merciless for my self-esteem: marketing. I have long railed against the marketing obsession of magazines and advisors as just another way to induce feelings of inadequacy throughout the farm belt. After all, marketing is something you always could have done better. Regardless, I had no choice if I was to keep doing what I wanted to do for a living.

With this positive mental attitude, I decided I would grudgingly subscribe to (yes-pay actual money!) a market advisor who seemed to have some meager grasp on logic and then FOLLOW THE ADVICE! I swore this out loud to my wife and friends to insure plenty of irritating support when I began the inevitable backsliding and second-guessing.  

I chose an advisor I had heard speak at a seminar and who agreed with my fundamental outlook. Although advisors can be nice people, good marketers get under my skin in a hurry. They seem to insinuate comparison.

Fast-forward to now. The Result: I am satisfied with my marketing this year. This does not mean I have hit the highs and called the lows, but my farm is doing OK. The credit belongs mostly with the advisor, perhaps, but for once, I actually did some of the things I was supposed to do, instead of just thinking, “That sounds like good advice.”

I’m not all that thrilled about this success. Sure, I’m glad to have sold and hedged at the right times (mostly). In addition, I recognize and appreciate the financial stress I’m not having, for once. I even realize I am not anxiously watching for Congress to solve my problems. Nevertheless, this modest victory exacted a price - a steep and unexpected price.

Time To accomplish my marketing plan took much more time than I had expected.  And not just idle hours on rainy Saturdays, either. I had to stop the planter to read the day’s fax, get into the house to see the price quotes, struggle to make marketing orders while dust was flying in every field around me - I even got up at 3:30 am. to check the Project A quotes on Monday mornings after the weather forecast was issued. In short, more loathsome deskwork that took top priority. I now believe that to be a successful farmer means my work will be more and more management, less and less operating.

Discipline This is not my strong point, as you may have guessed. I run on emotions and frankly, I like it.  It makes life fun and exciting. It rarely makes money. With Jan’s help, I would decipher the recommendations, call the broker or elevator and take a position. And when the market went the wrong way, I strove to remember that losing on a hedge meant winning on my inventory. In short, I made one small painful step in the direction of risk management.

Adaptability I have not farmed for 25 years without acquiring ingrained marketing habits. In fact, I was in a rut - using the same seat-of-the-pants scheme year after year. I liked this rut. It was familiar and required little or no heavy thinking. My new method requires me to constantly analyze and revise my position, and worst of all, keep learning. While I have always considered myself well informed, until now I had not realized the difference between hearing news and responding to it. Moving from knowledge to action is astonishingly hard.

Most years using the “same ol’ same ol’” got me by OK.  But the stakes keep rising and the competition doesn’t care whether I want to change or not. I am not alone in wanting farming to be simpler and less mentally and emotionally exhausting. In this, we are no different from every other occupation. All over the world, people bemoan a new level of performance demanded by global competition. Maybe we have been luckier than many professions to have escaped this long.

I have also realized that this could - and likely will - go on forever. Like every other business selling anything, to survive I have to be marketing every day of my career. I am doomed to work I detest. (In fairness, after two years, I now hate it a teensy bit less.)

Maybe this is change isn’t so undeserved.  Throughout my career, many of the tasks I truly hated in farming have been eliminated - cleaning out the barn, for example. The physical aspect of farming is now perilously close to enjoyable exercises: operating machinery, building and repairing stuff, driving around in a pickup a lot. There have always been unpleasant tasks. Most of them just used to be outside. Maybe I’ve gotten spoiled. It could even be that I might come to find some small satisfaction in these new chores as well.

So that’s where I am now.  My attitude is being adjusted. I no longer think of it as marketing.  I picture it as cleaning out a managerial barn - something you just gotta do.

As safe as we want to be

November 1998

It should be obvious to any member of this profession that farming is not a particularly safe occupation. In fact, it is one of the more dangerous ways to make a living or raise a family. And we seem determined to keep it that way.

It is difficult for many farmers to make safety a priority. For starters, “Who’s gonna make us?” Because of operation size or the lack of employees, there are few enforceable safety restrictions. Similarly, the politically sacrosanct “family” umbrella shelters us from other safety mandates.

This lack of superior authority makes it easy to engage in hazardous practices, many of which pass for clever tricks of the trade. When I was in the Navy, by contrast, nuclear technology was so unforgiving that safety was the first thought, not the last. Plus I have seen naval careers crippled by not following the rules to the letter.

My son is a mining engineer. He has described in harsh detail how mining has been changed by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Like OSHA in industry, MSHA is a bureaucratic cross for miners to bear. But the bottom line is that far fewer miners are injured and killed than before.

Indeed, one reason I strongly urge young people to work off-farm before returning is to get some real-world exposure to safety training. My naval training changed my attitude and helped me handle the urge to take unnecessary risks when pressured. The fact that almost every other job has stringent safety rules can make farm practices seem pretty foolish by comparison.

Maybe farmers will continue to avoid regulation by being small and family-based. However, it could also be that some politician or regulator is going to take a look at our professional safety record and see a need for government action, which could just coincidentally help his career.

One possible justification for such intervention is that, unlike other industries, we too often injure our own children. I do not wish to add pain to those who have experienced this terrible tragedy, but I am appalled at the casual attitude we have towards placing children in harm’s way through apathy and ignorance, or worst of all, for profit.

Those who feel that government will never have the political will to invade the family boundary to enforce safety rules on farms might want to rethink. The increasing use of “children’s welfare” as the moral justification for efforts as diverse as foreign policy (Iraq) and health care provides a useful precedent to those outside agriculture who would clean up our act for us.

There will be those who see this position as an infringement of constitutional freedom, but freedom brings concomitant responsibility. In my opinion, we are not handling that responsibility well, to say the least.

Others will also argue that safety rules and equipment interfere with the operation of our farms. Actually, I agree. But if your farm derives its competitive advantage from operating unsafely, you are not much of a farmer in my eyes, nor a likely long-term competitor. The operators I admire and want to emulate are those who can keep the people safe and still make money. Oddly enough, even cumbersome rules can be adapted to, and routine safe procedures can become as timely as hazardous shortcuts. Over the long run, safety pays huge dividends.

Our professional obsession for speed also complicates our priorities. Cutting corners on safety can save time in some instances. Even the threat of not finishing at all due to an accident rarely overcomes this racetrack mentality. It is important to remember therefore, that your work practices affect others by contributing to the professional standards in your area. In short, you are risking other lives as well as your own.

Unfortunately too, farm safety has become a “women’s issue” in many male operator eyes. Farm women’s organizations have been more alert to the magnitude of this problem and are in the forefront of its solution. Perversely, this can exacerbate a sexist perception of operating safely. Believe me, the “real men take chances” philosophy is out there. It is to our shame, gentlemen, that we have been so slow to join in this important effort. The truth is that real men don’t throw lives away.

We could be building our own solutions. For instance, by helping insurance companies devise routine farm safety audits that allow farms to qualify for insurance discounts, we could assign a dollar value that many farmers seem to need to recognize the risks involved.

Professional organizations such as Farm Bureau or National Corn Growers could also work to train members to view safety as an urgent political issue, not a breakout session for spouses. And the media, including me especially, needs be careful how funny we make essentially dangerous actions appear. We also need to educate our whole industry on how to weigh and compare risks - risk communication.

More than most other occupations, we farmers enjoy freedom of action in our professional lives. However, there is no legal or moral freedom to hurt and kill. 

Farmers are from Earth,
brokers are from Pluto

October 1998

One tiresome theme of this latest “new” age of agriculture is that farmers just have to get better at using the Board of Trade to market. Even more amusing is the idea that government handouts can be replaced in some manner by manipulations of a commodity trading account.

Think about this concept for a second.  Farm payments required that you sign your name and have a body temperature of around 98°.  Receiving the same compensation from commodity trading requires you outsmart someone who is likewise trying to get your money. It was difficult to lose money in the ASCS welfare game, although many of us suspected that others were somehow milking this cow more efficiently that we were. 

Now we are confronted with a new “future”. We have to deal with its essential unknowability. Marketing is, at its core, a problem of prediction. Using whatever information we can muster, we estimate what tomorrow will bring and place considerable bets - which we can lose! Compounding this risk is the unfamiliarity of most producers with direct commodity trading. Bottom line: the new system requires enormous effort that up to now we have largely avoided.

For my entire career, this problem has been addressed by the “education” route, and in all fairness, there is a huge knowledge void to be addressed. But after the courses are completed, and the workbook examples calculated, the actual plunge into commodity trading introduces a new factor into the problem that, in my opinion, causes more difficulty than all other influences: the broker.

It could be that producers have little direct market participation because of cultural, not business, obstacles. All I seem to have in common with any broker I’ve met was a species. We don’t talk the same, we don’t think alike, we operate at different speeds, and we share few social conventions. Nor are brokers and traders chosen for communication skills with the farm public - no easy task for anyone. My own experience is that I have not made trades simply because I didn’t want to deal with my broker. This is my problem, but he is the one who lost a commission.

For example, brokers live mayfly lives, compressing their real existence into the trading hours.  Every one of those minutes is important and must be employed to advantage.  As a result, speech is terse, impatience ever-present, and jargon commonplace.  Contrast this to a farm customer who normally has a ten-minute conversation warm-up period before addressing the business at hand; who is cramming a whole dozen or so trades into an entire year; who speaks producer-talk of bushels and rain rather than resistance points and margins.

The result of this interplanetary dialogue is enduring misunderstanding. This feeds outlandish rumors and stereotyping on both sides. Consider the “prairienoia” that surges through the farm community during low prices. Even well-informed leaders fall back onto tedious conspiracy theories concerning “them” at the CBOT and other exchanges. [My opinion is that traders are congenitally incapable of plotting together. Self-interest is not just a facet of their personalities, it is their personalities.]

The injection of a third party into my marketing scheme also provides a convenient scapegoat when things go wrong. When the blame shifts to the broker, my learning process stops. And sometimes brokers earn this blame.

Furthermore, I regard “open outcry” as 90% theater and 10% commerce. At the very least, I find no compelling argument that this quaint, labor-intensive tourist attraction provides any benefits that technology could not duplicate. As a farmer, I can empathize with this loss of a cherished way of life. Been there, done that. But what has not occurred to Chicago is that many of us trust computers to transact our business more than guys we don’t know. 

For producers and exchanges to do more and better business together requires dragging the pits out of the pits. Linking traders and the public with a common (computer) interface could bridge this cultural gap, widening the field of prospective customers for producers to transfer risk to and brokers to service.  Many regulatory issues, such as dual trading, become less troublesome. Brokerage house computers can control customer trading limits and other financial ground rules the same way VISA does. This is not rocket finance. In fact, the cost savings of direct account access and trading might actually make some business sense. The easier access could help compete for new liquidity from untapped sources, like Internet stock brokerages have. 

This possibility may be coming as soon as 1999. Member trading companies will have the technology to provide transparent real-time trading for their own customers. When I can log on when I want, manage my account, and execute trades, - just like stocks and mutual funds - I can guarantee I will become more active in the market. And I won’t have to learn Plutonian.

Many are called, few are chosen

September 1998

A young (30) farmer from Arkansas wrote me concerning remarks I had made about “paying your dues”. He explained his frustration with his inability to get his farming operation off the ground and expanding to the size he wanted. He also stressed that farming was his dream - one for which he had prepared and worked hard all his life.

I have no doubt as to the sincerity and passion of this young man. His words were eloquent and familiar. I wanted to encourage and reassure this young farmer and others like him that things would work out. And that could well occur. But it would be both patronizing and an act of disrespect to avoid some harder issues.

First, “wanting” is no longer enough. Popular athletic jargon has raised “wanting” to an aerobic virtue. (“He just didn’t want it bad enough!”) Nevertheless, “All I’ve ever wanted to do is farm” repeated fervently, has little bearing on survival. There are millions of young people with intense career dreams - astronaut, pediatrician, actor, politician, executive - who will never overcome the odds to live the only life they think can bring satisfaction. Furthermore, becoming a full-time farmer may be more difficult than any career just mentioned. 

Consider how few slots there are. Fewer than 300,000 farms gross over $100,000 - hardly a luxurious living. This is half the number of physicians, and one-third the number of lawyers in America! (Somehow this fact always disturbs me.) Deciding that one particular style of farming is the sole acceptable future is a mistake. Our industry sanctions this as the proper attitude for farm hopefuls, but it can mislead many to bitter disappointment. Farming is no longer an occupation of last resort or for those who simply don’t choose another.

Second, farm sizes and land ownership patterns make farming an “insider game”. Many are outraged at this statement, but few dispute it. Without strong extended family backing, the possibility for a successful farm career tends to hinge on a “break”. While such good fortune occurs, the vast majority of farmers are in the positions they enjoy because of what their grandparents and parents accomplished and passed on. Our industry has a strangely bipolar view of this. While lobbying for policies to ensure family succession (estate tax elimination), we decry the inability for other young farmers to get a start, ignoring the obvious contradiction.

Third, luck plays a role. It is not fair, of course, but that is the wonderful thing about happenstance. While life is unfair, it also tends to balance out. Don’t ignore the other breaks you may get by deciding what kind of good fortune you will accept.

Finally, farming is not the pinnacle of existence that we tend to portray it. Being a farmer has many positives, but so do thousands of other careers. Inability to achieve a career as a farmer can be a sharp disappointment, but it certainly does not brand you as a failure. Who faults the star collegiate because he did not make the NBA? Remember, magazines publish success stories. Most appealing are the “Hoosiers” stories of overcoming the odds. The odds are still accurate however, and command respect.

On a practical note, I would offer these words to young farmers whose careers seem to be going nowhere. First, are you tracking your progress by internal yardsticks rather than your envied classmate/neighbor? Do you have hard numbers that indicate any progress, however slow, toward your goal? If not, and you have 7-12 years in the saddle, gather your family and consider whether your dream is displacing theirs, and whether you are sacrificing happiness for stubbornness.

Second, can you formulate any credible scenario where things improve in the future? For instance, will you inherit or take over ground (and when?) or will retirement open slots for which you have a chance? Is your future dependent on a shift in government policy or social attitudes? Time could be your scarcest asset. Decide on a “drop-dead” date. 

Third, if your farm is not at least contributing equally with off-farm (especially spouse) income, rethink your goals. If you work elsewhere, play the cards you are dealt, and take the rewards from the other career you are building. Consider a delayed entry into full-time farming after the advanced age of 40 or so.

Single-minded devotion to one narrow career vision can result in missing golden opportunities for fulfillment just because they didn’t look exactly like your detailed fantasies. It may well be that the future of farming, and the farmers themselves, will look markedly different than now. In fact, your group may redefine midsize farming. But in order to do that, your goal must be something other than being “just like Dad”.

Farming is now a career of such desirability that the selection process is both rigorous and continuous throughout your tenure. Those who do not thank God each day they farm need to look hard into the hearts of those who are denied the opportunity.

A line in the dirt

August 1998

The farming profession has been struggling for years to ignore a growing polarization of our membership based on size. The big-small split can no longer be ignored, however. Unfortunately, talking openly about the differences between large operators and smaller farms inevitably deals with sensitive emotional issues not just of economics, but basic social values.

The demarcation between large and small has been vaguely drawn. Some have used $100,000 gross income, which gives a split of about 83% below and 17% above. The most recent line in the dirt has been defined by the Report from the Commission on Small Farms, which draws an arbitrary division at $250,000 gross farm income. This makes 6% of us “Large” farms. The kicker is this one-in-fifteen minority receives over half the gross farm receipts. The necessary ingredients are now in place for incendiary rhetoric and populist actions to redress what many see as the basic imbalance and, therefore, injustice, of this divergence.

This is exactly the issue many of us in the upper group don’t want to deal with. The broad principles of equality and fair play are ingrained into most all Americans, and we are not exceptions. Few of us consider ourselves as part of an economic elite, but in the eyes of many of our neighbors, as well, apparently, as our government, we are. Nor can we pretend to be just plain folks, when we have worked for generations to become exactly the opposite.

Part of our discomfort centers on the well-worn prejudice against The Big and Rich - defined as everyone bigger and richer than we are, of course. Since we have always been happy to ascribe all manner of evil intent and scurrilous behavior to these scoundrels, we certainly don’t want to be numbered among them now when we’ve gotten our own act together.

But does size carry with it fixed moral qualities? Maybe we are still essentially the same people we have always been, just more successful.  And if success necessarily corrupts, perhaps it’s time we warned those who are working diligently to be successful.

It could also be that the same virtues admired in “small” farmers - honesty, industry, cooperation, etc. - are the reasons we are now “big” farmers. What did we expect - that the personal values we preach would simply keep us even, or are they truly the keys to upward mobility?

My own conclusion from studying those above me on the ladder of success is they have achieved because of the nobler qualities they brought to bear on the problems of this work, not because they were more ruthless than their competitors. Uncooperative strategies may work in the short run (10-20 years), but will not withstand the abrasion of time. Virtue is truly its own reward, but it frequently makes other rewards possible as well.

Therefore it is important in the upcoming debate that large producers address the moral arguments as well the economic. Enduring success happens because of right behavior, not despite it. Nor is it arrogance or conceit to refuse to be cast as the “heavy” in a staged policy melodrama. While silence has been the seemingly gracious response to those who challenge the ethics of large farms, such a response allows the presumption of guilt to appear as fact in many minds, which takes a toll on agriculture’s public image, as well as our own self-image.

The truth is that there is no linkage to ethical behavior and farm size. This straw man argument is actually an effort for something other than personal competence to decide how America’s farms should be operated - if you can’t compete in open commerce, try to get the rules fixed in your favor. Hence, I predict that means-testing, targeting, and other economic discrimination will be suggested over the upcoming years before 2001. 

It won’t change the eventual outcome, however, as our cousins in Europe are finding out. Neither will it prevent the transfer of production to those areas, such as South America, that realize individual initiative should be fostered as the historically best way to produce efficiently. The geography of our land, the cultural heritage of our people, and the historical freedoms of our country are the reasons that large farms prosper in appropriate areas like mine (Central IL). To skew the economic equation to get a different answer will require modifying all these elements. 

Small farms are, and always will be an integral part of American agriculture. It may be they will not be competitive everywhere or guaranteed for everyone. To deconstruct American agriculture to some pastoral ideal will mean riding roughshod over individual rights and seizing what hardworking families have built over generations. 

The point is that the success of others in agriculture insures the opportunity for our success. When we discriminate against so-called large farms, we jeopardize our own future possibilities.