The conditions forcing more and more farmers off the land have been worsening as the capitalist economic crisis intensifies. A resolution adopted by the Socialist Workers Party more than 10 years ago and reprinted in New International No. 10 ("What the 1987 stock market crash foretold"), described several consequences of the steady decline in the profit rate of the capitalist exploiters. One was the farm crisis in the imperialist countries; another overproduction and excess capacity.
There's no doubt that these conditions have become more pronounced. From Japan to France and Greece to Canada, conditions are becoming more difficult. In the past decade more than 1 million farmers in Japan have been squeezed out - about 25 percent of the country's farm households. In the United Kingdom farm incomes are at their lowest level since the 1930s. Farm income in Denmark plummeted by half last year.
Hog farmers have been particularly hard hit. A international "glut" of hogs is blamed for this situation. But this only underscores the irrationality of a system that claims overproduction of food when millions of people throughout the world are suffering from hunger and malnourishment. Most other agricultural prices have fallen too, including those that wheat, beef, and dairy farmers receive.
The mounting difficulties farmers face are very similar from one part of the world to another. Exploited producers on the land in France and Germany protesting their conditions have more in common with farmers in the United States and Canada, despite differences in language, traditions, and history, than they do with the owners of the packing houses, processing plants, canneries, and shipping companies in their own countries.
The true common language of farmers is the widening gap between their costs of production and the price they get for their commodities; increasing difficulty in getting loans; high interest on mortgages; exorbitant rent; and taxes. They are debt slaves - always owing and no prospect of ever being clear until they've been wrung dry by big business and banks, and their farms foreclosed on.
The common language of their exploiters is the relentless drive for profits. The owners of Hormel, IBP, Cargill, Land O'Lakes, and their counterparts in Europe are making record profits. As hog farmers face one of the worst disasters ever, Hormel reaped a record $139.3 million last year and IBP profits rose 62 percent to $190 million.
Those farmers operating on the smallest margin, or no margin at all, are the ones least able to get relief. Particularly hard hit are farmers who are Black. The fight these farmers have been waging in conjunction with federal lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Agriculture's racist practices is an inspiring example to all farmers and is helping give impetus to the struggle of farmers throughout the country. It is also helping to give a boost to the fight against racial inequality and for the rights of Blacks.
The leaders of the fight against the USDA have not only been reaching out for support from farmers across the country but also are attempting to win support from fighters in the labor movement. Farmers everywhere eagerly attempt to establish links with workers. Farmers who offered hogs to striking workers at Titan Tire in Des Moines got support from the strikers when they called a protest.
To help forge an alliance with exploited producers on the land, the labor movement must fight to defend farmers from the ravages of an economic system in crisis. We can offer the following demands as the basis for a pact:
A moratorium on all bank foreclosures on farms;
A guaranteed market for farmers' crops and livestock with prices adequate to meet production costs and provide a decent living;
Cheap credit to working farmers who need it with special preference to those most in need. No discrimination against Black, Chicano, or Asian farmers;
Guaranteed government-funded crop and livestock insurance with 100 percent protection against floods, drought, hailstorms, and other natural disasters;
End to property taxes and a sharply graduated income tax that places the burden on the rich rather than workers and working farmers.
Create committees of workers and farmers chosen by unions, farm organizations, and consumer groups to police the prices and profits of supermarkets and agribusiness. This can help counter attempts to use commodity prices to divide workers and farmers and expose their profiteering in rigged low prices to farmers, and high supermarket prices.
This program of action can help weld workers and farmers into a struggle for protection and at the same time point the road forward to developing a revolutionary movement capable of overturning big-business rule and establishing a government of workers and farmers.