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Farmers are indeed an interesting lot. And there are ‘liberal’ farmers, for some values of ‘liberal.’

There are probably no 60’s style ‘liberal’ (ie, flag-burning war protestors) farmers out there unless they’re the type that can call themselves farmers because they inherited land which they lease out to others who do the actual farming. But I do know several liberal farmers and many more who are Democrats, but more of the Truman-style Democrats (remember Harry was a farmer who spent a lot of time looking at the rear end of a horse...)

That said, the majority of farmers don’t take subsidies in the “big six” commodity crops. They support for “Freedom to Farm” in 1996 was pretty good throughout the ag community - the trouble was, the GOP didn’t hold fast to the idea of weening the big agri-businesses off their continued [ab]use of the subsidy programs. I can get into that at another time. It is a long story of huge, missed opportunities by the GOP - again, because they don’t have anyone in their ranks who really understands the issues.

Farmers, however, have been early supporters of “free trade” as a concept - only to see it blow up in their faces. I’d say that if you asked most farmers today “do you support ‘free trade’?” you’ll get a question in return “What do you mean by ‘free trade’?” - you won’t get a “Why golly, YES, sign me right up!” sort of cheerleader response. Back in the 1990’s, farmers were very much in support of “free trade.” Now they’ve learned - the hard way - to ask what do bureaucrats and politicians mean by “free trade?”

I’ll give you a couple examples:

We sign a Free Trade Agreement (which I’ll capitalize, so Toddster and I are on the same page) with Canada back in the 80’s, and then we get into NAFTA (which was another Free Trade Agreement (nb the caps again) with Canada and Mexico in the 90’s. Now we have co-mingling of the ag crop markets in the US and Canada. We no longer talk of “Canadian beef prices” and “US beef prices.” We talk pretty much of “What is the price of beef in Chicago?”

So, from the farmers’ perspective, what has been the result?

Well, here we go:

1. We were able to export more corn and beans to Mexico... but...

2. We got huge quantities of wheat dumped on us by the CWB (Canadian Wheat Board - a subject I can opine about at another time if necessary).

3. We got cattle dumped on us from Canada... which included BSE, ie ‘Mad Cow’ - which has been a PR disaster for the US beef industry, which has resulted in...

4. Japan, S. Korea and others putting restrictions on US beef because we (the US) did not catch the BSE coming over our northern border in time to prevent the cattle from getting into the US beef supply - not infecting US herds, but raising the very real possibility that US-labeled beef (ie, slaughtered and packed in the US, with a “US” label on it) that were originally from Canada and might have been “finished” (ie, fed the last month in the US) and “processed” (ie, slaughtered and turned into “box cuts” and ground beef) had BSE.

The first Canadian cow found with BSE in Washington is now known in beef producer circles as “The cow that stole Christmas” — because going into that late December, beef prices were fair to good - but they went limit-down for at least two days after the news of that cow hit.

Guess when a lot of producers ship their calves? That’s right - from October to December, depending on where you are.

5. As a result of (4), the USDA is now trying to ram down farmers’ and ranchers’ throats a birth-to-death animal tracking system. Get this: the US government refuses to find and deport illegal aliens, but under the USDA’s wet dream, you’ll be able to know EVERYTHING about US-produced beef - where it was born, what it ate, what was the vaccination program for said animal, where it was sold, how many times, to whom, where processed, where shipped to the consumer.

Literally cradle-to-grave tracking of all meat animals is what the USDA wants. It is known as “NAID” (National Animal ID) among farmers/ranchers.

Oh, and who will get to pay for this? The livestock producers, of course - because when it comes down to it, unless we force import meat producers to abide by the same regulations, the US consumer will naturally pick up the cheaper product in the store, leaving the US producer at a price disadvantage in the retail chains, which means that to comply with the USDA proposed regs, the producer pays.

There was never any need for animal ID until we started down this road to “free trade.” There wasn’t any BSE in the US animal herd. But because our trade partners want this to insure to them that we have the BSE problem under control (which never was “our” problem - it was a problem we imported from Canada), we’re going to bend over and pay again.

Why has there been so many cases of BSE found in Canadian cows (they’re up to 15 now)? Because they imported animal feed from the UK when the UK banned the sale of bloodmeal and bonemeal feeds after their wave of BSE. The Canadian producers clearly are feeding banned feed after the “use or destroy by” dates, because at least one of the animals found here in the US with BSE was younger than the feed ban - and was found to have been fed banned feed in Canada before being shipped down here.

This of “free trade” in ag a little like “free love” — it isn’t just who you sleep with. You’re effectively sleeping with everyone who your partner slept with in the past. Same deal in ag WRT pests, diseases and so on.

6. So why didn’t US beef producers protest the importation of Canadian cattle? They did. Loudly. The bigger powers in DC ignored the protests. They don’t care, they’re for “free trade uber alles” in DC. And the US beef producers wanted the border shut to untested cattle when only 3 cases had been found in Canada. The next 12 cases found in Canada have only served to reinforce the point of US cattle producers - the Canadians have a serious problem and they’re clearly NOT on top of it.

And yet, I can watch truckload after truckload of steers come south out of Canada, headed for feedlots in Nebraska and eastern Wyoming - every day.

Another example of “free trade” in the ag sector: South American countries ripping off GMO technology. The EU banned GMO soybean imports from the US some years back, so they started importing more beans from South America. Ahhhh... but the South Americans liked Roundup Ready beans - it makes cleaning up a field of beans so much easier than other weed elimination programs. These South American producers were “seed saving” — ie, they’d harvest some of their beans late and keep them for seeding next year’s crop, in direct violation of the Monsanto seed licensing agreement/contract.

Because these producers of course wanted to claim (with a straight face) that their beans were NOT Roundup Ready, the EU allowed them in while keeping US Roundup Ready beans out.

BTW — when the EU came down with this policy, a whole lot of farmers lost their shirts. It was late in the season and many farmers had already started or were well into harvesting. Suddenly the exporters said to farmers “Hey, you can’t export RR beans to the EU — so you need to certify that the beans you’re bringing to our elevators are non-GMO - and if we test your load and find out that they are RR beans, we’re docking you the difference in price, plus the penalty for spoiling whatever was in the elevator.”

So now farmers who had only a minority of their crop be RR beans were screwed - because they had co-mingled their non-RR and RR bean crops in their own grain bins, it was now as if the entire crop was RR. Again, “free trade” was such a triumph for American ag producers.

The US producers finally had to go to a really bizarre route of getting the South American countries to respect US “intellectual property” of the RR seed by a) testing beans being exported out of SA countries, b) showing that a very large proportion of those beans were RR, c) showing a lack of agreements with producers in SA countries relative to the amount of RR beans being exported, and d) then getting the WTO to allow the US to levy a license fee on beans being imported to the EU. The EU, remember, all this time had a restriction against importing RR beans from the US - at the same time they were importing RR beans that were being sold as conventional beans from SA.

Once the EU had to start paying up for RR beans, then they started testing the beans from SA, and the EU then had to make a decision: would they continue to ban RR beans from importation, or admit that it was a policy enacted specifically against the US?

This was a great example of why the WTO-style agreement is broken and why we should have bilateral agreements, where we could have sent someone over to the EU or France (where the real problem was) and said “Look, we either get this hashed out or we’re enacting a retaliatory measure...”)

“free trade” is a great talking point - until you’re a producer of a tangible product here in the US and you’re trying to comply with the export regs that change at an international level — and US producers as individuals have almost no input to these negotiations or issues at all. There’s no other way to get a voice into this process without a powerful lobby.

Economists talk as if there’s nothing but blue sky from “free trade” as a concept, but there are very real costs for the US, especially in food production, becoming even larger costs to consumers in terms of their health and safety.