Agriculture Archive
When is a Farm Bill not a farm bill?
July 22, 2023
2023 is the year that Congress is tasked with writing a Farm Bill. It is a mammoth and complicated undertaking, in part because this bill will set agricultural policy for the next five years. And it involves a lot of money. In fact, the current one, passed in 2018, was budgeted to cost $428 billion—and the next one will likely cost quite a bit more!
You would think that a lot of that money would be spent in rural communities, helping family farms who in turn spend part of that money on goods and services from their neighbors.
But in fact, only a tiny fraction goes to programs that will most help family farms and rural communities. How come?
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Small-Scale Solar on Farms
July 9, 2023
Land is a major asset that many rural folks have that could help them grow and prosper — if given a chance. A small-scale solar installation on only a fraction of a farm operation can add a tidy new layer of profit, according to a report generated in neighboring Maryland. Whether a 900-acre corn-soybean operation, a mid-sized cattle grazing farm, or a 10-acre vegetable farm, using just 5-10% of the acreage for solar production can substantially improve profitability and economic resilience. It also reduces pressures to sell the land, because profits become more dependable. And it helps address the challenge of dealing with dramatic swings in weather and climate.
So, what is stopping this from happening in Virginia?
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Biden’s 2023 budget proposes 12% increase for USDA; attacks unfair market monopolies
April 14, 2022
Rural communities take notice: the Biden administration’s 2023 budget proposal requests a 12% increase in discretionary funding for the Department of Agriculture. A major target for increased spending is research to advance the competitiveness of US agriculture. Another is to strengthen the enforcement of rules to ensure fairness in livestock markets and reduce market monopolies. This includes strengthening oversight of livestock and poultry markets under the Packers and Stockyards Act.
How do the Biden budget proposals compare with that of his predecessor? It turns out, according to the Daily Yonder, that Trump in fact tried every year of his administration to slash USDA budgets across the board, including the critical agriculture research that the Biden administration is proposing to increase. That led the National Farmers’ Union to blast “the Trump budget proposals, with NFU President Roger Johnson writing, “It’s time the president’s policy proposals and rhetoric acknowledge the financial pain in farm country.”
“Over the Fence” with Henry B. Wood, Harris Hollow Foods
March 17, 2022
Few people in Rappahannock County can speak as authoritatively about the effects of inflation on the business of farming and food processing these days than Henry B. “H.B.” Wood. A tenth-generation descendant of one of the oldest apple-growing families in the county, H.B. now runs Harris Hollow Foods LLC, a national supplier of fruit products. In the past two years of the Covid pandemic, supply chain problems have wreaked havoc.
“Basically, we’re sales agents for processors of agricultural products, primarily fruit,” he says of his staff of seven based in Little Washington. They source their produce from Mexico, the U.S., and Canada—apples, berries, exotic mangos, passionfruit and melon, and veggies like carrots and rhubarb—all preserved and packaged as juices, purees, in sugar, or flash-frozen.
“I grew up in it in Rappahannock. We were raising apples and peaches. There was a strong fresh market. Then South Carolina, Washington state came in, growing gorgeous fruit.” Concentrated juices began to come in from China and Europe. Labor costs increased. The family land on Red Oak Mountain in Woodville was relatively hard to farm.
White House to Help Small Meat Farmers and Processors
January 14, 2022
The White House just announced a $1 billion action plan to improve fairness and competition in the meat industry. The core message is that the nation needs to break the stranglehold of a few Big Ag companies on how meat and poultry get from farm to table. That would be good both for consumers (lower grocery store prices) and farmers (higher cattle prices). (See two White House Ag Plan links below)
Previously New Rural Virginia reported on how weakening of anti-monopoly oversight by heavy corporate lobbying has led to a dramatic consolidation of the meat industry. Only four companies now control over 80% of beef processing. We reported that, while farmers have seen no price increases for their livestock in many years, profits for large corporate processors have increased dramatically, as they continue to jack up consumer prices.
This started about the time of the Reagan administration, when enforcement of anti-trust laws was substantially weakened, allowing significant consolidation in many industries, including meat processing – leaving farmers with fewer choices where to sell their product, and less and less bargaining power.
Farmers for Whom?
October 18, 2021
GOP politicians take a lot more money than Democrats from Big Ag monopolies while farmers get squeezed
Prices farmers get for their cattle have stayed absolutely flat since 2014,
While Big Ag meat processors have seen their income triple!
Why? Big Ag corporations have poured ever more money into political campaign donations – overwhelmingly to Republican politicians – to weaken or block anti-trust and price-fixing laws and regulations,
So that they can grow ever bigger by buying up their competitors. Now only four meat processors control 80% of the beef market.
They are using that monopoly to command higher and higher prices at the supermarket while keeping the prices they pay the cattle farmer as low as possible, as farmers have fewer and fewer choices on to whom to sell to and at what price.
The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress want to crack down on price-fixing by the giant meat processors – but Republicans in Congress aren’t helping. Why?
First the facts: why farmers suffer while Big Ag prospers? In 2016, cattle prices to farmers averaged $2.60 per pound, nationally. They are now averaging $2.55.
“Over the Fence” with Jacob Gilley
The Role of Regenerative Farming in Rappahannock's Future
November 18, 2021
Recently we talked with Jacob Gilley, a Madison-based livestock producer, about the role of regenerative agriculture in Virginia’s rural future. Gilley is the Mid-Atlantic Sustainable Grazing Manager with the American Farmland Trust (farmland.org), a national organization dedicated to protecting farmland, promoting sound farming practices, and keeping farmers on the land.
What is regenerative agriculture? In a nutshell, it means adopting farming practices that improve soil and water quality, enhance wildlife habitat and biodiversity, and make it easier to adapt to changing environmental conditions. All this while actually improving farm profitability by, for example, enabling nearly year-round grazing, thus reducing dependence on fertilizers and commercially-purchased hay.
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“Over the Fence” with Farmer Bill Fletcher
Water Key To Protecting Rappahannock’s Future
July 20, 2021
By Tommy Bruce
A while back, I met with my friend, Bill Fletcher, to have a bite and pick up where we had left off so many years earlier. Listening to him talk about water as Rappahannock’s most precious asset, I was reminded that change happens when need and experienced-based insight converge. What follows is Bill’s thinking about what we can do next to protect what we all cherish about Rappahannock:
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“Over the Fence” Interview with Jim and Carol Manwaring
July 16, 2021
Family farms are a critical part of our Virginia countryside (it’s not just beauty). However, the number of traditional family farms have been shrinking for decades and that trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. What then is the future of farming in rural Virginia, and what will "rural" Virginia look like in 30 years? Over the next several newsletters, New Rural Virginia will be putting this question to several of our farmer neighbors. This month, we talked with Jim and Carolyn Manwaring.
NewRuralVA: Tell us a bit about your farm and the work you have accomplished working your land.
Manwaring: We have several farms my father bought in the late 40s up to early 60s. He started out raising a little of everything, but we evolved into a cow calf operation. I took it over in 1985, and my wife and I ran it from then on. She and I did nearly everything ourselves even though I had a very full time job as a manufacturing engineer in a nearby automotive plant. We changed the way things worked to go from a farm with 3 full time workers to one with more cattle that two people worked part time. We introduced rotational grazing, and changed the herd from a wild bunch of cattle to a tame group that would follow us from field to field. In the process, we improved the fields, and fenced out many of the streams to improve water quality.