Tuberville warns that we have lost 150,000 farms since Biden took office

On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) spoke with members of the Alabama press corps about his growing concerns about the struggling farm economy. Tuberville said that "We have lost 150,000 farms since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office."

Republicans and Democrats in Congress are at an impasse about differences in farm policy. This is largely over the size of the food assistance programs that are tied to the farm bill in Congress. The resulting partisan gridlock has made passing the new farm bill this year increasingly unlikely.

"I have been meeting and talking with farmers for the past weeks about this," said Sen. Tuberville. "We would love to get a good farm bill for the farmers."

Tuberville said that Senate Democrats on the Agriculture Committee don't understand the dire situation America faces with its farm economy.

"Our farmers are in trouble, folks," Tuberville explained. "If you are not a farmer, you don't understand this, but our farmers work 365 days a year to put out a crop to feed the American people; but unfortunately the people on the committee from the Democratic side think if the farmers go under and they can't make we will just go to the grocery store and get our food. That's how ignorant these people are. They think Wal-Mart grows the food out back of their stores."

The war in Ukraine means that the U.S. and other countries have slapped sanctions on Russia so fertilizers that used to be imported from Russia are no longer on the market driving up the cost of fuel. The combination of low unemployment with more generous government benefits for people who either don't work or are loosely attached (part time) to the work force has driven up wages – including those for farm workers – and made finding competent people to work on farms outside exposed to the heat, the rain, and the cold increasingly difficult at almost any price. Meanwhile decreased drilling for fossil fuels in the Artic and the Gulf of Mexico has driven up fuel prices including for the tractors and trucks that farmers use to produce the food and bring those foods to market. Seed companies meanwhile have patented the varieties of seed that they sell so farmers can't keep a portion of what they grow to plant for the next season; but instead have to pay artificially high prices for seed from the large corporate biotech entities who now produce most of the highest yielding varieties of seed available to American farmers.

"We're in trouble," Tuberville told the Alabama reporters. "There is no common sense up here. Our farmers are paying prices that are out of sight for fuel and seed and fertilizer. The hourly wage is going up. You can't hardly get anybody to work, and they are trying to do it on their own. And then there is the prices, we are letting an influx of food come from overseas."

Sen. Tuberville expressed his frustrations with the Democrats in the Senate for their lack of concerns about these issues.

"That is what the Democrats want," Tuberville said. "They want to run farmers out of business. They want food to come from foreign countries. They are worried more about climate change and fossil fuels than they are about caring for our farmers."

"We Have lost 150,000 farms since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office," Tuberville said. "This is a critical year for farmers to make a living to be able to pay their bank loans. Its going to be a tough time if we don't get some decent prices for our food and if we don't drive the costs down so they can make a living."

America has been losing farms and farmers since World War II; when small farmers left the farm to take higher paying jobs off the farm. For decades farms grew bigger and bigger as the surviving farm families bought or leased farmland from their neighbors who went out of business. The crash in soybeans, corn, and wheat prices in the early 80s forced many more farms out of business. Farms were planted into timber, bought up by hunting clubs, or sold to land speculators and developers. Smaller family sizes meant that even on a successful farm there often is not a son or daughter capable of and willing to take over the farm when the increasingly aging farmers get ready to retire. The current crisis has only accelerated these trends. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that the American cow herd has shrunk to 28.1 million cows. That is the smallest the American cow herd has been since 1951 – when the population of the U.S. was less than 150.6 million.

In the 1970s the typical American family dined on pot roasts, steaks, burgers, and meat loaf. Fewer families can afford that now and instead are living on pizza, highly processed formed chicken products like nuggets or tenders, plant based imitation meats, and microwavable dinners with smaller main courses than what their grandparents ate. Where Americans used to dine on big cuts of meat with some vegetables and potatoes on the side; it is more common now even when there is meat on the table for it to be served in a stir fry with rice or pasta, as burritos, and fajitas where the meat portion is smaller; but the carbohydrates portion is much larger. Obesity and diabetes rates have correspondingly increased exponentially and American life expectancy has begun dropping even though medical technology and knowledge has advanced greatly.

Today the population of the U.S. has grown (largely through historically high immigration rates) to 336.7 million people. In 2022 there were just 2.00 million farms in the United States1. This is a decline from 2.20 million farms in 2007. The number of farms has been steadily dropping since 1982 even though the mouths that each farmer supports has grown exponentially.

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