All too often, our images of other groups are tainted by the actions of the loudest and most annoying members of those groups.
An example is U.S. farm politics, where we’ve read about politicians from grain states joking about pointing nuclear missiles at Canada, and lobbyists misrepresenting Canadian programs in efforts to get punitive duties placed on Canadian commodities.
But there are also thoughtful and reasonable people in U.S. farm policy leadership roles.
One of them, Robert Carlson of the (U.S.) National Farmers Union, appeared before the House of Representatives agriculture committee earlier this month to discuss what approach the U.S. should take toward “state trading enterprises” like the Canadian Wheat Board. Among other things, his talk was a useful reminder that not all farm wisdom is north of the border, nor all foolishness south of it.
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U.S. trade officials are believed to be preparing a major offensive against STEs in the next round of world trade talks. Carlson, however, pointedly reminded the committee that the U.S. Commodity Credit Corporation, which operates export promotion and subsidy programs, is an STE.
Carlson, who farms in North Dakota near the Canadian border, said he is familiar with the Canadian Wheat Board: “From a competing farmer’s perspective, we in the U.S. do not have a vehicle like the CWB to create producer marketing power in the international grain trade. We basically sell for the best price among our local elevator companies and lose our interest in our grain after that point.
“Our export trade is dominated by a few large corporations who are interested in buying low and selling high to enhance the earnings of their owners, who are not generally the same people who produced the grain traded. …
“The stated goal of free-trade proponents in agriculture is to have a grain trade without national borders, without internal subsidies, without quotas or tariffs and without pooling or price-enhancing mechanisms like STEs.
“That would be a great world for grain buyers but a grim world for the producers, who would be fully at risk economically.”
Too often, he added, producers in various countries tend “to attack each other in the name of free trade” whenever they feel producers elsewhere have an advantage.
“If we destroy the various institutions that farmers in many countries have built to help themselves survive economically, we will have nothing left but producers standing bare among the ruins of structures that once empowered and protected them in a marketplace dominated by giants.”
