By Wyatt Fraas, Center for Rural Affairs
(Nov. 2015) The Center for Rural Affairs has worked to support and assist beginning farmers and ranchers for over 25 years. And increasingly, beginning farmer and rancher inquiries come from military veterans. They have the same needs as other new farmers: access to land, financing and information. But they also bring new issues: disabilities, returning to civilian life, a drive to help fellow veterans, a powerful sense of wanting to be of service to their country.
The Center’s Veteran Farmers Project was launched to provide information, encouragement, connections, and referrals that help beginning farmers and ranchers access land and financing, identify markets, build business plans, and more.
We also connect veteran-farmers with other veterans; to help retain and rebuild bonds with others who have served in the military and help each other overcome the obstacles of building a farm business and returning to civilian life. We refer veteran-farmers to resource providers who can help with disability services, business advising, finding mentors, gaining production and marketing experience, and other needs.
Farming fits veterans, and veterans fit farming. Many veterans want to return to small town America to raise their families. And we welcome them home.
However, educational opportunities, off-farm jobs, health services, and young peers are in short supply across much of rural and small town America. That makes networks such as those built through the Center’s Veteran Farmers Project, and the infrastructure and public policies we’re working to create, vitally important to our veterans who want to farm and ranch.
Corporate Farming: Who Owns the World’s Seeds?
By John Crabtree, Center for Rural Affairs
This summer, agrochemical, biotechnology, and seed giant Monsanto dropped their bid to acquire their Switzerland-based competitor Syngenta. Initial merger serenades were sternly rebuffed by Syngenta, and Monsanto’s interest turned into a $46.5 billion hostile takeover.
Monsanto had no fear of backlash from U.S. antitrust officials. And there’s the rub, the reason a failed merger is still worthy of note and cause for concern. What level of seed industry consolidation would have to be achieved to trigger interest, let alone action, at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division?
According to Dr. Philip Howard of Michigan State University, there have been more than 70 seed company acquisitions by the top eight firms since 2008. Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta maintained their dominant position, collectively controlling over 50 percent of the market, up from 22 percent in 1996.
Monsanto acquiring Syngenta would have put over half the American seed market in the hands of just two transnational corporations. It’s difficult to imagine a more crucial concern for farmers than who owns and controls the world’s seeds.
Farmers have lost access to varieties while seeing the prices they pay for biotechnology traits through technology agreements skyrocket. Further consolidation in the seed sector will make matters worse.
The failed Monsanto-Syngenta merger should be a clarion call for the Department of Justice Antitrust division to breathe life into the 2009 announcement of their intention to investigate anticompetitive behavior in the seed industry. We are well past the time for action over empty promises.
Budget Deal has Implications for Agriculture
Recently, the White House and Congressional leaders struck a tentative budget deal that provides a framework and additional funding needed to allow Congress to complete the annual appropriations funding legislative process.
According to Traci Bruckner, Senior Policy Associate at the Center for Rural Affairs, the budget deal contains significant implications for agricultural and Farm Bill programs. “This bill takes a small step in reforming federally subsidized crop insurance programs by reducing the cap on the profits that crop insurance companies extract from administering the program from 14.5 percent to 8.9 percent,” said Bruckner. “In addition, it also indicates that the Standard Reinsurance Agreement must be renegotiated by Dec. 31, 2016 and once every five years thereafter.”
“This is a small but a positive step forward,” noted Bruckner. “Insurance companies have been one of the largest beneficiaries of the subsidized crop insurance program. They witnessed double digit returns over the last decade or more, with one year being as high as 34 percent. During belt-tightening times, it is most appropriate to ask crop insurance companies to accept a reduction in the profits from federal subsidies that they receive.”
“Moreover, the budget deal scraps the Farm Bill provision that prevented taxpayers from benefiting from government negotiations with the private sector over the delivery of crop insurance,” added Bruckner. “This was an outrageous gift to the crop insurance lobby and it is a policy that should never have seen the light of day.”
Bruckner noted further that while there is a great deal more crop insurance subsidy reform needed to support and protect family farmers and the environment, renegotiation is a small but important first step toward much needed comprehensive reform.
“And with the additional funding the budget deal provides to the appropriators to finish the fiscal year 2016 funding bills, Congress has the opportunity to turn back the tide on cuts to conservation,” Bruckner continued. “Congress should move quickly to eliminate the 23 percent cut to the Conservation Stewardship Program in the pending House bill and the $300 million cut to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program that is currently included in both the House and Senate bills.”
“Opponents of cuts to crop insurance company profits have criticized ‘opening up the Farm Bill’ but those criticisms ring hollow when compared to how often Congress has opened up the Farm Bill to cut conservation programs,” concluded Bruckner. “It is disingenuous to use rhetoric about family farmers to protect crop insurance company profits while at the same time cutting the conservation programs that farmers and ranchers depend upon to improve soil and water quality, conserve water, and prepare for extreme weather events.”