Measuring Past Success
And considering the future...
I want to thank all of you who have come along on this journey with me. So far, it has been relatively short, and my reach is limited, but I know there is a dedicated group of readers out there, and for that, I am very grateful.
As 2025 came to an end, and the new year of 2026 is here, it is a time of reflection and planning for the days, weeks, months and year ahead.
As the sun burned through the thick soup of foggy mist this morning, I appreciated all that I have. The warm sun shone on my face, and I stopped for a moment to think about how fortunate I am. It dawned on me that only recently have American farmers judged the success of their season by the amount of money sitting in their bank account.
For millennia, a farmer would ring in the new year and judge their success by their ability to provide for their family through the coming months before the next harvest. What were those early farmers thankful for? Certainly, they appreciated a warm, dry home, without drafts; adequate clothes for all members of the family; ample stores of food in the root cellar, wood in the wood shed, and hay in the hay lofts; healthy livestock with adequate shelter to care for their young; and a family bound together by love and common sense of purpose.
By that traditional measure of success for a farmer, I have enjoyed a very successful season. My bills are paid, and there’s enough hay to sell to provide sufficient income to care for all of my family’s needs. My children are happy and healthy. My relationship with my wife has never been stronger. And for all of that, I am incredibly grateful.
Yet, despite all of that, I cannot say that I enjoy the fruits of my labor. Modern-day agriculture is so different from that of earlier generations. We do not grow our own food; we largely purchase it from a store, just like everyone else. We are divorced from the consumers of our product, often shipping products across the country and around the world. A large volume of what we grow isn’t even food; it is seed stock to produce energy for biofuels. And of the food we do produce, a large volume is sent to large factories for processing and packaging into highly palatable, shelf-stable products that do not fully nourish our fellow citizens and often lead to poor health outcomes.
Farmers have always been resourceful, independent spirits who found ways to overcome challenges and persevere through adversity. It was the spirit of the early American farmer that made America great. However, today, farmers have been tamed by a system of government and business that seems to be threatened by that independent spirit. Over the last 80 years, American government policies, in collusion with large agribusinesses, have been working to neuter our independence.
It is hard to be a cynic when the sun shines and life is at peace, but as I look at the year ahead, it is hard to be positive. The government has offered a bailout for agriculture, but it isn’t enough to make us whole after ad-hoc trade policies destroyed our markets. Moreover, this is a bailout that my hay farm will not qualify for, because my crops aren’t considered commodities, even though my products are direct substitutes for many of those products. Therefore, my price is directly correlated to the price of the subsidized crops.
I do not have confidence that the powers that be understand the situation farmers on the ground are facing, and to be honest, I don’t think they want to know. Neither political party cares about rural America. Even though one depends on it for its survival, it is more than willing to take us for granted, too. The most recent bailout seems more intended to ensure that farmers can pay their debts, thus shoring up large banks and businesses, rather than helping the everyday farmer get ahead and gain independence.
Gone are the days of the American farm that only needed to produce enough to provide for their family and just a little extra to sell in the market to pay some taxes and purchase other necessities. Today, it is an industrial business where the government and business overlords dictate the terms of our existence. In many ways, it feels like American agriculture today is returning to a type of feudal serfdom that our ancestors fought and died to escape.
We are becoming complicit in our own subjection.
When will rural America, and farmers specifically, wake up?