Farm Labor Laws
Farm Work Management
Farmstead Creamery
MOSES 2019 Highlights
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TM
Volume 27 | Number 2
Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service
March | April 2019
Community works on collective vision of organic future By Lauren Langworthy
More than 100 changemakers joined forces to create a path forward for organic farming into the year 2050 and beyond during Organic 2051, a forum held in conjunction with the 2019 MOSES Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wis. Through dialogue, facilitation, and art, these community members shared how they want our food systems to evolve to support the world’s population as it grows past the year 2050, when it’s expected to reach 9.8 billion. Small groups worked together to define gaps, brainstorm resources, and develop action steps. “Organic 2051 was emblematic of what MOSES does every year, at every event and conversation—tap the wisdom, energy,
and ideas of the crowd,” said Sylvia Burgos Toftness, one of the forum participants. “Farmers and ranchers, policy makers, economists, marketers, and consumer advocates put their heads together over thorny and complex challenges. They identified key opportunities, drilled down to the major obstacles, and worked to express possible strategies.” Former board member and long-time farmer friend of MOSES, Audrey Arner acted as facilitator for the day. Groups gathered into 15 issue areas, including climate change, rural community revitalization, market infrastructure, and more. At the end of the day, many people shared that they appreciated the space and facilitation to express and hear diverse perspectives on these topics.
Commodity system creates persistent losses
To Organic Future on page 6
By Ken Meter & Megan Phillips Goldenberg
This article is based on the MOSES 2019 workshop, “Strengthening Community-Based Food Systems,” presented by the authors. Here, they explain the context in which organic growers operate—the prevailing commodity system. In the next issue, the authors will focus on organic markets. Some data have been updated since the conference, as more complete data sets became available.
Chart 1
To begin with, let’s consider the economic context all organic farmers operate within. Setting the terms under which we farm, this dominant, conventional commodity economy both creates the potential for organic farmers to thrive, and simultaneously limits it. Chart 1 shows the history of U.S. farming over the past century. On this chart, the orange line shows the cash receipts earned by all farmers since 1910. As you can readily see, there have been tremendous increases in the sales of farm commodities. However, the maroon line shows that production expenses have
PO Box 339, Spring Valley, WI 54767
Source: USDA Economic Research Service Farm Income Balance Sheet data
risen just as fast. The red line on Chart 1 shows the net cash income of the farm sector—production expenses subtracted from cash receipts. While farm families have other ways to earn income, this red line shows how profitable it is to raise crops and livestock. A quick glance at this chart shows that there has been no sustained growth in net cash income for more than 100 years. In fact, at the time this data set was compiled, the net cash income for all farmers was nearly zero for 2016-2018, after a few peak years in which prices rose to abnormal levels. In an earlier compilation, the one we showed in our workshop, ERS showed negative net cash income for U.S. farmers in 2015. For reasons we are not clear about, this estimate has now been changed. Thus, the nation that claims to feed the world has created extensive supports and incentives for
commodity production, but these encourage the market conditions that lead to persistent losses. These results are both a testimony to the fragility of all farm enterprises—due to farmers’ dependence on the weather and other uncertainties—and a caution about the actual efficacy of public policy. Yet it is also important to consider this same data from a slightly different perspective. The value of the U.S. dollar has declined over the past century as a result of inflation. This means a dollar earned in 1910 was worth about $25 today. So we like to adjust this data for inflation to show what these same trends look like in today’s dollars. That adjusted data is shown in Chart 2. Visible in Chart 2 are several periods of prosperity for the U.S. farm sector: a) the “Golden Age” of To Commodity System on page 8