Thread by @eatcookwrite

I did a little thread yesterday in response to this question. It's a question I think a lot of has a lot of center-left non-farmers and probably some farmers scratching their heads on, so I'll rerun it as a thread here.

#fafdlstorm

In terms of bargaining power, a co-op makes more sense than a union in terms of structure for bargaining with producers of inputs or purchasers of commodities.

In the US, the National Farmer's Union is a trade organization like the Farm Bureau but is more oriented to viewing farmers as workers need to unite to increase bargaining power.

In Europe — and other places, India comes to mind — farmers see themselves in terms of class much more as workers than petite bourgeois and will engage in collective action —

–– strikes, large demonstrations in the capital city in order to bargain with the government over policy and aid.

In the US farmers are much more wedded to their identity as petit bourgeois (small business owners) than as proletarians.

I think the difference in the US and Europe goes back to the legal land arrangements that set the stage for contemporary farming.

In Europe, contemporary farming arrangements are set in motion with Enclosure — the series of laws set in place to kick subsistence farmers off the land of the gentry that they had traditional and common law rights to access and work.

britannica.com/topic/enclosure

In the United States, farming structure in the Midwest starts with the Homestead Act where white settlers (and black settlers briefly in Kansas) were given land stolen from Native Americans for free in exchange for simply working the land.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead…

Additionally, the Homestead Act enacted under Abraham Lincoln alongside the Morrill Land Grant Act creating public agricultural colleges to support local farming as well as the Department of Agriculture. Extension starts in 1887.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_L…

These reforms had their roots in the ideology of the short-lived 'Free Soil Party' formed in opposition to slavery, which became Lincoln's Republican Party.

"We inscribe on our banner, 'Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men,' and under it we will fight on, and fight forever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions".

The impulses of the Free Soil Party, while deeply egalitarian were not solidaristic. (Perhaps among the reasons it didn't last as a party. Parties that venerate the individual usually are in coalition and underwritten by Big Business)

All of which circles around to an observation I've made numerous times about current US ag trade groups. They see themselves in coalition WITH the big businesses they deal with AGAINST urban elites and an intrusive federal government —

— (just don't turn off that spigot of crony capitalist subsidies)

So it makes little sense to organize union-like against members of their own political coalition — and in lots of cases those corporations subsidize ag trade groups and staff them through a revolving door.

That's my quick description of the situation. I think farmers would do well to organize from a more unionistic, social democratic perspective but I don't have time to pontificate on that today — hopefully tomorrow.

~ fin ~

#fafdlstorm