The Dec. 26 issue of Farm News features columns of Alan Guebert and David Kruse that ignore history or common sense to avoid the calamity of losing more of the best farmers in Iowa. This cost-price squeeze has happened over and over again since I started farming 50 years ago. They ignore the fact that cheap corn always led to cheap livestock prices which eliminated many independent, diversified farmers. So now we all raise corn and soybeans year after year to feed corporations’ livestock instead of our own. Low grain prices mean bigger profits for big corporations like Smithfield, JBS and Cargill. The interests of these corporations are diametrically opposed to those of farmers.

Guebert and Kruse accept two fallacies as the only solutions. The first is to send out government bank deposits to crop farmers, when inflation is already fed by this year’s federal deficit of nearly 2 trillion dollars and the defense budget of over 1 trillion dollars. The public thinks billions of dollars are added to the federal deficit to “bail out” farmers. On top of that, farmers are blamed for poor water quality. You hear China is our big enemy, but our cheap soybeans have funded their incredible industrialization.

The other fallacy is that commodity groups can spur demand. They have been saying that since I was on the Iowa Corn Promotion Board in 1977. Everybody around the world already knows all there is to know about corn and soybeans. The World Trade Organization already forces other countries to “open up” their markets to cheap commodities, which drives their farmers in debt and off the land.

Most ag journalists ignore the history that farmers came up with a better solution that was developed by President Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1955 more than 500 farmers packed the Guthrie Center sale barn to protest low farm prices and organize their county chapter of N.F.O. You see, their prices were low because the new administration had destroyed the New Deal program that would have assured the grain and packing companies would have to pay farmers prices that kept up with inflation. When you hear about low farm prices and high input costs, you should be hearing about their ratio — the parity ratio — that always measures real prices farmers are receiving.

Unfortunately, President Trump’s farm policy will deliver cheap commodities to agribusiness like he hopes his invasion of Venezuela will deliver cheap oil to multinational oil corporations.

George Naylor

Churdan