To the editor:

After reading the Farm News Friday, Aug. 22, farmer advice column, “Low prices cure low prices … or so we’ve been told” by David Kruse his advice “to embrace the suck” is what psychologists and philosophers would call defeatism and for farmers to accept market exploitation!

Kruse shamefully insinuates there is no other path forward for farmers and to accept his status quo advice outlined in his third chapter like its church gospel.

According to the dictionary, exploitation means the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work. Defeatism is an attitude of expecting or accepting failure without struggle, often believing the effort is futile. It is characterized by pessimistic resignation, which is opposite of an optimistic, resilient mindset.

Since I began farming in 1965, I would have liked to have gotten a $100 bill every time a farmer told me there is nothing we can do about price. I would have quite a stock pile of hundred dollar bills! Years ago, I even had an older farmer say, “Don’t expect to get paid for your labor.”

That was pure defeatism and an acceptance of exploitation and very, very bad advice.

Most church goers have heard the gospel message beware of false prophets. Well, the Chicago Board of Trade and their brokers are false prophets. Pardon the pun.

Contrary to Kruse, there is a different, more hopeful path for farmers. We could have a federal farm policy that promotes supply management and a price floor that reflects the true inflationary costs of farm inputs and family living expenses.

How many farmers today understand we actually had a federal farm program that promoted supply management and a price floor that calculated grain price with inflationary costs of inputs and costs of living each year, and it was successful!

How many farmers have knowledge of the historical 72-year government betrayal of the family farm system in 1953, by deregulatiing the government managed price floor and supply management grain policy and replacing it with the skewed philosophy of fence row-to-fence row grain production coupled with under-priced government grain subsidies?

How many farmers understand that in the 1960s there was the Committee For Economic Development that advocated to get rid of farmers.

How many farmers understand they produce and provide the raw material (grains) that enable each year the production of billions of dollars worth of surplus value (products made from grains)? How many farmers understand the price they receive at the farm gate does not reflect the value of all that surplus value? If we had a parity price floor, the price reflection would be $12 a bushel for corn not the Kruse analogy, “embrace the suck” $3.5O per bushel for corn.

In reality the grain subsidy price does not reflect the surplus value from grain production. However, the grain subsidy in philosophical terms is a pacifier and allows cheap grains to flow into the pockets of the grain cartels, agribusiness CAFO’s and ethanol producers.

Larry Ginter

Rhodes