Many of us organic farmers share an aversion to government interference in our affairs. Although there has been some minor improvement lately, government ag programs and the Land Grants have not done much for organic agriculture. Few politicians of either major party have ag programs that support local food systems in general and organic farming in particular. Tax laws on both the state and national levels favor corporations over the self-employed. What is even worse, department of agriculture regulations in many states function as discouraging obstacles to the production and sale of food produced by small-scale operations. The ignorance of the US public about microorganisms in particular and biological systems in general makes it easy for proponents of industrial agriculture to manipulate us into ever more regulations in the name of protecting public safety. So it is not entirely surprising to find advocates of Ron Paul at organic farming conferences this winter. Paul’s rhetoric as a defender of the little guy and critic of big government speaks to our libertarian streak. I was intrigued enough to check out his website. I have to report that I am not happy with a lot of what I found there.
Paul is one of the very few politicians who criticizes the so-called “Free Trade” agreements. I congratulate him for publicly calling attention to the way the trade agreements and the WTO take power away from our elected officials and local governments and give them to trade bureaucrats. But at the core of Paul’s warnings lurks a paranoid isolationism that is unlikely to lead to peace and harmony in the world. Paul denounces the trade agreements for endangering our borders, but offers no analysis of how free trade has allowed the big shippers of ag commodities to hold down prices to US farmers in order to flood markets in countries like Mexico. Paul borders on hysteria about the need to control immigration, but never makes the connection that it is those trade deals that are driving farmers from their own lands to risk their lives seeking work in the US. Paul does not stop at attacking the WTO – he calls for US withdrawal from all international agreements, including dismantling the United Nations. Whatever impatience we may feel about the maneuverings for power that go on at the UN, it is the only place where every country, large or small, gets to sit down and talk with all the others about our shared world. The crisis of global warming and the danger of nuclear proliferation make this communication all the more urgent. And let’s not forget that it is the UN that provides for millions of refugees from every war zone. Not many people in this country heard about the excellent conference the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN sponsored in May 2007 where the central topic was the contribution of organic farming to food security in developing countries.
On the War in Iraq, Paul expresses a similar paranoia. He supports bringing our troops home not to reduce the size of our military or to replace war with diplomacy. He wants our troops in the US better to defend our borders.
Reduce taxes, Paul vociferates, always a welcome notion for us hard-pressed farmers. Less government is better, Paul insists and attacks liberals and Democrats who inflate government spending and increase regulation. To his credit, he stands up to the Food and Drug Administration and demands unregulated freedom to use herbal supplements and natural medicines. But like his more orthodox Bushian Republican colleagues, Paul says nothing about reducing the largest sector of our government – the military with its huge and ever-swelling budget. Paul directs his scathing words at spending for social programs, the tattered safety net that our rich society reluctantly hands out to the poor, sick and elderly. Paul’s stirring calls for freedom come down to unshackling corporations from government regulation while leaving ordinary citizens defenseless.
Paul does stand up for the elderly and our right to the Social Security payments we were promised. But in his very next sentence he endorses the freedom of younger taxpayers to stop paying into the social security system by choosing individual retirement investments. Where does Paul think the money comes from to pay the seniors? As it stands, Social Security weighs heavily on the contributions of middle and lower income tax payers and the self-employed. By the most conservative estimates, the system is solvent for at least another 40 years, and the burden on lower income tax payers could be adjusted in a flash by taxing everyone’s entire income.
Paul is a big defender of our Constitution and especially the 2nd Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms. For obvious reasons, like many vegetable farmers, I appreciate the freedom to keep a rifle in my house. But Paul outshines even the National Rifle Association (NRA) taking this freedom to the extreme of opposing the Brady Bill ban on hand weapons and crazier yet, the ban on assault weapons. At the same time, he would have us believe that he loves every single human life because he opposes women’s right to choose abortion.
Like other farmers who have trouble affording health insurance, I enjoy hearing Paul declaim against the high cost of medical care. His solution – Medical Savings Accounts – still leaves us out in the cold. The half-percent interest on what farmers can save in these accounts might pay for a broken finger, if we hold onto them for many years. Paul would not like a single payer system like that in Canada or France that provides health coverage for everyone because it might cut into the freedom of insurance companies to scalp the public for every penny they can squeeze out of us.
Our uphill struggle to make a decent living as farmers makes most of us just a little paranoid. Paul plays into this with his confident attacks on those who threaten to lower our standard of living. But watch where he puts the blame – on illegal immigrants who raise our taxes by taking welfare and using other services that should be reserved for law-abiding taxpayers. Deport them all, Paul exclaims. No amnesty for the adults, no right to citizenship for their children born here. Does this match the reality we see in the countryside? The migrants I have seen work hard on our farms. In Wayne County this past season, apples covered the ground on farms where the migrant workforce had been scared away by the Gestapo tactics of the INS. A farmer friend rented a van to drive some unemployed people from Syracuse out to work on his farm – they lasted less than one day. The crowds of US citizens demanding work on farms are some demagogue’s fantasy. Family-scale farmers in the US will not get our freedom by attacking the people driven to our fields by the same forces that make our lives difficult.
When it is hard to tell the difference between the major candidates on the issues that would make a difference for local organic agriculture, I am all for registering a protest by voting for a principled, outspoken candidate who stands no chance of winning. Paul’s anti-corporate rhetoric may resonate with us. When we look closely, however, it turns out to be just more political hot air because it isn’t backed up by analysis that gets to the root of our problems.
We do need candidates who stand up for the freedom to opt out of the industrial food system. Joel Salatin hits the nail on the head:
- Our culture’s current fear of bioterrorism shows the glaring weakness of a centralized, immunodeficient food system. This weakness leads to fear. Demanding from on high that we irradiate all food, register every cow with government agencies, and hire more inspectors does not show strength. It shows fear.
- Indeed, official policy views all these minority production and marketing systems that have been shown faithful over the centuries to be instead things that threaten everyone and everything. As a teepee dwelling, herb healing, home educating, people loving, compost building retail farmer, I represent the real answers, but real answers must be eradicated by those who seek to build their power and fortunes on a lie – the lie being that genetic integrity can be maintained when corporate scientists begin splicing DNA. The lie that, as Charles Walters says, toxic rescue chemistry is better than a balanced biological bath. The lie that farms are disease-prone, unfriendly, inhumane places and should be zoned away from people.
As Jim Hightower puts it, “There is no building so tall, even a small dog can’t raise his leg against it.” Surely we can find a better little dog than Ron Paul.