You may have heard of the New Grapes of Wrath, a blog that describes the hard life of migrant farm workers.

There’s a new book out by the same name and it’s getting good reviews. It seems to be an expansion of the blog, with more detail and cleaner prose. I don’t know how much you can trust the reviews, though; the two books are being sold together, which suggests some kind of insider trading.

Thing is, I don’t like either one. The blog isn’t bad, but it’s pretty annoying when you’re trying to get work done. The same goes for the book, though to a lesser extent since it is shorter and there are fewer pictures in it.

So why am I writing about them? Well, because I think that both versions miss an important point. And because I’m going to tell you about my own experiences as a poor farmer. If you’re wondering what I have in common with farmers (I know it may seem odd), well…have you ever seen my lawn?

I have been writing about the plight of farmers for several years now, but I have been doing something wrong. I have been talking about our problems in a language that was common around here until recently, but has now become obsolete.

I am referring to the language of farming and farm life, which seems quaint and irrelevant to people who don’t live here. The fact is, being a farmer today is really hard, and for most of us it’s just not worth it anymore.

The problem isn’t low prices or high input costs. It’s that farmers are simply not respected by the society in which we live anymore.

I’m a farmer. I used to be a coal miner. I’ve been poor my whole life and I’m not going to change the subject because you don’t like hearing about it. I have always been afraid of someone stealing my children from me, but it’s worse now that I’m poor because now my ex can get away with it.

I know about coal mining and farming because that’s all I’ve ever done and all my family has ever done, unless you count laying bricks. My grandfather was a bricklayer and he taught me how to build good walls and also how to lay out a garden at the same time. He told me if you make the rows straight then you’ll always know where you’re putting things back when you go to weed, and if you let your rows wander then everything gets confused. My mother had her own garden, so she never helped him in his garden but she put up with it while he was alive because that’s what wives do.

My father had his own garden too, and he didn’t help my grandfather much with his, though they worked together sometimes. When my mother got sick of doing both gardens by herself after my father died she gave away most of my grandfather’s equipment to the neighbors so she wouldn’t have

I have been a farmer for nearly my entire life. I grew up on a farm, and have farmed steadily ever since. I was born in a town of about 300 people; now the town has 1,700 people and the farmland around it has been swallowed up by tract housing.

I am not writing this to complain. Farming is hard work, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else. But as a farmer myself, as well as the son of farmers and the father of two more, I believe that we need to figure out how to make farming sustainable again.

I am writing this blog because I don’t see anyone else doing it. There are plenty of people who will tell you that the way American farming is currently done is unsustainable. But there are almost no farmers who blog about how hard their lives are and how we should try to fix things.

They are not in it for the money, but for the love of the land. With their own hands, they have tilled and cared for the land. They have seen it produce and bring forth bountiful harvests. But social pressures and government regulations are threatening to destroy them as well as their land — and as a result, they’re going broke.

Why is this happening? Because society has developed a passion for protectionism: high tariffs, quotas, regulations, taxes, subsidies — all of which serve to protect politically powerful corporations at the expense of small farmers and consumers. Big agribusinesses use their political clout to win these policies from compliant politicians in Washington — politicians who do the bidding of big agri because that is where their campaign contributions come from. As a result, small farmers’ prices drop below production costs; but consumer prices rise above production costs because of all the tariffs and taxes placed on imports in order to protect domestic producers. Consumers pay more for food than they would in a free market. The result is that many small farmers go bankrupt every year.

The rich have done fine over the past few years: their incomes have risen considerably while everyone else’s have fallen or stayed flat. But if you look at the rest of America —

I work in the field and I know the conditions. The “farmers” in America are not independent small farmers. They are employees of companies like Cargill, Monsanto, Tyson foods, etc. These companies own the land, set production quotas and prices to be met by their “independent” contractors.

The government subsidies that were intended to help small farmers stay on their land were instead funneled into the pockets of big business, furthering their control over the industry and destroying small businesses in the process. There is no more family farm in America today. We have become dependent on the large businesses that don’t care about anything other than profit.

They will kick you off your land if they do not like how you are doing things or if they think they can make more money with it. It is not a safe life at all.

=======

Name:

Van Gogh, who was a very poor artist, had his first painting accepted for exhibition in 1880. It was priced at 400 francs.

Today that would be about $80.

Van Gogh has become a symbol of the starving artist whose talent is never recognized in his lifetime. This isn’t really true. He did have some recognition in his lifetime, and he did manage to sell a few paintings.

What Van Gogh really had was a single patron: his brother, who supported him until he committed suicide in 1890