Progressivism, Farmers, and the Future

The young Progressive today lives in a tumultuous and defining moment for the movement, one in which its very soul is on the table. Topics such as healthcare, the minimum wage, LGBT rights, finance and banking reform, and police brutality have come to dominate the progressive conversation, and have seen armies of activists coalescing around them in recent years. At the core of these endeavors lie resonating values of equity, opportunity, and inclusion. Materialization of these efforts have resulted in some of the largest political demonstrations in history.
While there has been tangible vertical growth in the progressive movement, American liberalism as a whole has stalled out on horizontal growth. There is no better example for the need for the progressive left to reflect on its inability to reach new cohorts in the American voter body than the American farmer, the Forgotten Man incarnate.
Understanding and addressing the plight of the American farmer is critical to the survival and advancement of progressivism, and in order to accomplish this the left must not only want to alleviate the economic and material needs of rural America, but also to protect the Farming way of life in modern America.
THE ISSUES FACING FARMERS
Farmers today find themselves in a generational crisis. Over a third of American farmers are over the age of 65, and the rate of younger farmers entering the trade is nowhere near high enough to replace the outgoing generation. Seasoned farmers are retiring later and later if at all, and when they do it is often without a traditional savings plan. The retirement plan is often the value of the operation made in those hard years of work, and the idea of collecting on that value if a family member does not pursue the trade is one that most farmers put off for as long as possible. This sedentary, aging population will be some of the most effected by the decisions of the next handful of administrations; determinations regarding healthcare costs and availability, rural infrastructural development, and land management will mean life or death for these communities.
The farmer stepping into the profession faces a unique set of challenges both exacerbated and to some degree abetted by the intricacies of the 21st century. The young farmer that is walking onto the farm they inherited are tasked with safeguarding their parent’s retirement plan, and the one that is making their way without an inherited family farm will join the nearly 40% of farmers who rent their land from non-family members. This type of operation has little opportunity for long-term ownership, and accounts for around 350 million of America’s 911 million acres of farmland. To make the matters of new-farmer rentals worse, farmers can find that land suited for booming crops in current and growing markets, such as pulse crops, will sometimes have their rental rates inflated beyond the availability of their means, sticking them with croplands that may not be as desirable.
The independent nature of farming has also found itself under attack by the 21st century entanglements of intellectual property rights. Large equipment manufacturers such as John Deere have been adding clauses to their user licenses that prohibit farmers from modifying or even doing certain repairs on their own equipment that includes newer agricultural technologies. Farmers would need to call a certified mechanic for support, and doing their own repairs or downloading third party software in order to get around restrictions put leases, warranties, and long-term resale value into a haphazard situation.
WHAT ARE PROGRESSIVES TO DO?
The list of challenges facing farmers today can only expect to grow as steadily as the gigantic population they are tasked with feeding every year. Not even touched upon here are issues such as environmental impacts on farming and the one billion dollar Farm Bill that is reauthorized every five years, which contains things such as the SNAP benefits program.
The duty charged to those in the progressive movement is to create a place for the American farmer among its ranks, to understand the plight from state to state and pick up the fight alongside the myriad of other causes. Most important still is the need for the progressive movement to create dialogue to drive home an imperative point; Progressivism can provide an answer to the plight of farmers and rural America without assaulting the traditional farming way of life. We can follow the tenets of affirmative government and provide support and services without the need to ask farmers to give up the life that they know. The aim of a farmer-inclusive platform should be to preserve the way of life that has been so greatly threatened by the decline of rural America, both in population and support. Progressives have to push through the political slander such as “California Democrats” and say that the policies and answers we offer will help farmers preserve their way of life more than any bathroom bill or careless tax cut.
The future of the progressive movement will be decided on how we can step outside our traditional comfort zones and stand beside all Americans to achieve equality, opportunity, and inclusion. Success will be built upon honest conversations about needs, and honest answers to the problems we find. Failure can mean the careless collapse of everything countless generations have built before us. The new chapter in progressivism must begin with an earnest effort to reach out to the American farmer, and to say that we are the movement to get behind for a better future.
