Across the West, the foundational class, farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural producers, are on the decline. Western nations are facing a rapid shrinkage in rural economies, farmed land, and youth uptake of agriculture. At the same time, food prices are skyrocketing, farm holdings are being consolidated by larger and larger landholders, and the market is geared increasingly toward financialization and export rather than feeding the nation(s).
On top of these trends, the claims of the agricultural lobbies and political class about the necessity of migrants in doing agricultural work is helping to fuel the Great Replacement and locking Western workers out of entire sectors of the economy. Neoliberal and globalist policies have failed Western nations, harmed much of the rest of the world, and are used as one of the primary drivers of demographic change in wealthier Western nations. Nationalists must present their people(s) with an alternative vision of the agricultural sector and rural economies, and be armed with the facts necessary to push back against the advocates of the current paradigm.
The Current Situation:
Farmers are aging and native demographics are under threat. In the United States some 95% of agricultural producers are White and the average age of these is 57.5 years old, more than a third are already older than 65 years old. Within a decade more than half of America’s farmers will be older than 65, and the situation is not much better in the rest of the West. In Britain, the average farmer is 60 years of age and over 40% have already surpassed the age of 65.
Continental Europe is no better, with farmers in the Westerly nations of the continent skewing near the age of 60 with few exceptions, save the highly innovative Netherlands which has a much younger farmer on average.
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Young people, particularly the male backbone of the life, are not being drawn into a sector where they are not only vital but foundational.
Under the current global system food is a financial commodity first, and life sustaining nourishment second. In the modern finance-driven-capitalist system, the neoliberal system, agricultural land and food itself have become financial commodities which are traded by banks and hedge funds such as Goldmann Sachs and Blackrock. In Europe pension funds invest billions of Euros of retirees money into the agriculture market which results in increased prices for food and agricultural products. These very price increases, which the pension funds profit from, then effect the pensioners who are invariably told the fund simply “cannot afford” to increase their benefits.
The financialization of the agriculture and food commodities markets has already contributed to one major crisis, the 2008 food price crisis, which saw investors hold onto billions of tons of agricultural products as they watched prices increase and their profits shoot through the roof.
Speculative capital ran riot with the global food supply.
The food we eat, particularly here in the West and in the developing world, is held hostage by rapacious middlemen who chase profit for themselves at the expense of both farmer and the population.
These same profiteers and speculators use their corporate wealth to ensure that mass immigration to the West continues apace. In May of 2023, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a law to mandate E-verify, but with cutouts so broad that the legislation, which died in the Senate, would have proven useless even if it passed. A last-minute amendment created an exception for agricultural workers, most of whom are foreign-born.
The agricultural lobby, which spends nearly $50 million a year in Washington , cannot be allowed to determine the economic and demographic destiny of the United States. Not least because the agricultural corporations paying for these lobbyists are not owned by the average American farm holder, but are more representative of Corteva Agriscience. Corteva is a major agricultural chemicals producer who even goes so far as to produce a podcast that advocates for mass immigration to the United States.
These corporations ensure that, aside from owning the land and operating the farms, farmers are cut out from the profit and job market of agricultural altogether. Farmers receive barely 14 cents for each dollar of food sold in the market. Mega corporations such as Tyson and Sandersons regularly collude to cut farmers out of the profit making process and gauge the American consumer though price fixing practices.
These same corporations which package, promote, and sell the products are also overwhelmingly responsible for processing them. Many are systematically cut out of this process as well. Immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, make up roughly 56% of the food processing industry’s employment base, and companies are so desperate to pay lower wages that they have been willing to bus workers from other areas to their plants, rather than hire natives and pay them a decent wage.
The same is true in countries like the United Kingdom where the food processing industry itself is open about the fact it prefers migrant workers to native Britons.
Many Americans and Europeans have been excluded from a job market which is hundreds of thousands of positions strong , and then are blamed for not wanting to do labor which in any other industry would be viewed as unacceptably low paying and high risk.
These same corporations and lobbyists, along with their political mouthpieces in state and national capitals, often promote the falsehood that farmwork is something Americans “just won’t do!” without explaining the reality of the situation in the agricultural workforce.
For example, the United States Chamber of Commerce recently published this article complaining about American workers and begging for significantly higher levels of immigration.
In the piece, which focuses on ‘small business’, a gentleman who owns a company which ships high-performance hay complains:
“It’s a hard job. You’re unloading 100-pound bales of hay in Arizona in the summer in a metal barn. It might be 120 degrees. It’s just tough to find people willing to do that ... For the most part, Americans don’t apply for these sorts of jobs.”
What goes unsaid by the Chamber of Commerce in this piece, which slanders Americans as lazy and unwilling workers (an old trope by this point), is that agricultural workers in the United States have a median wage of just 29,680 dollars. This wage is 57% lower than the average median income for a White household.
Agricultural workers are not entitled to overtime pay in most states. There is also no Federally protected right for farm workers to organize, as they were deliberately excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.
This is the reality, not one in which Americans and Europeans inexplicably lazy.
White Americans make up the majority of steel and sheet metal workers, miners, electricians, cement masons, mechanics and work in many other demanding fields. What the peoples of the West are unwilling to do is work in industries which lack the labor, wage, and social protections which their ancestors fought so hard for in the past.
The end result of these decades long neoliberal policies, such as the European Union’s common agricultural policy (CAP), is that many Western nations have been left with immigrant dependent, high cost to consumer, and intensely market oriented agricultural sectors.
If a nation cannot feed itself, despite having the resources to do so, its ruling class have failed in their responsibilities.
The United Kingdom is a prime example of a nation which cannot currently feed itself, importing nearly half the food it eats. Swedish agricultural self sufficiency is now below 50%. joining the European Union has strained much of Eastern European agriculture, as the nations were flooded with cheap food from France, Spain and Ireland. And now the European Union’s emphatic support for Ukraine has put Eastern European farmers under even more strain by a state which over producers and intentionally undercuts other nations.
It is also commonly known that the quality of Western European products sold to Eastern European nations is much lower than in domestic western markets.
In some nations, such as Italy, countless hectares of farmland have been abandoned as the state has abandoned the sector to ‘global markets’. Sweden too has seen significant declines in the number of farms and amount of agricultural land since joining the European Union, whereas before membership the country had policies which actively protected farmholders.
Policy choices, namely by the European Union and other global actors, have result in nations like Britain and Sweden being unable to feed themselves, despite having the ability and available land to be much more self sufficient. While in other nations an export orientation without care for the domestic market has resulted in similar price increases and a move away from national priorities.
The Solutions:
In the face of an agricultural sector in decline, which is resulting more generally in the decline of rural communities and affordable foodstuffs, an alternative is needed outside of the neoliberal system and its global worldview. Nationalist policymakers and advocates need to put forward a vision of the rural economy which is forward looking, technology oriented, pro-worker, and pro-farmer. Self-sufficiency, to whatever extent possible, must be a cornerstone of promoting this agenda.
In the United Kingdom just 54% of the food on an average Briton’s plate will have been grown or raised in the country, according to a 2023 Parliamentary report . Yet, The British public overwhelmingly backs the idea of self-sufficiency to the extent it is practical.
The same is true for nations in continental Europe and the United States, some of which are already agriculturally self-sufficient. The fact the public backs this concept even in nations which have already achieved this status stands as a testament to how crucial the public views food security.
Solving the aging crisis:
Moving young people, and particularly young men into the agricultural sector to replace the outgoing generations is not only desirable but an absolute necessity to ensure that domestic food production continues.
One of the key aspects to this transformation will be turning farming into a modern practice which integrates technology and state/private support on all levels. Instead of a culture of hardship where farmers themselves often discourage young people from taking up the profession, it must become a profession of dynamic growth and innovation.
A nationalist policy agenda would include:
Vocational programs and technical schools should be established in partnership with agricultural automation firms to train young farm hands in the use of the numerous technologies which are now being developed. The aim is the creation of a generation of “technologically native” farm workers and farmers.
The creation of a ‘farmer’s apprenticeship’ program to pair the
50% of farmers with no successor
with young people interested in taking over the operation.
A school-to-farm program will be established where young people in secondary/high school are able to begin a farm apprenticeship in the last two years of their schooling.
The establishment of a Young Farmers Grant (YFG) that will pay a living wage to farmers under 35 for up to eight years. Funding will be provided via a tax on the largest food processors and distributors.
Focus farm subsidies and support (CCC in the US, CAP in the EU) on younger farmers and small farm holders. Cap subsidies for corporate agricultural concerns at 10-15% of the budget.
Solving the Immigration and Labor Debate, with Technology:
White Americans make up the largest share of farm workers, at 45% of the total agricultural workforce in the United States. While Hispanics come in second place at 40% of the nation’s agricultural workforce. This means that, despite popular portrayal, American farm is still overwhelmingly powered by the management, labor and toil of the pioneers who founded the country and through Manifest Destiny civilized an entire continent.
Regardless, losing a large percentage of the farm workforce may seem like a hobble, but this is only in a context where farming is not made to adapt to the modern world. Farm laborers are only 1.3% of the total US working population, and these numbers decline more and more with each passing year.
For Western countries which want to do away with immigrant labor and focus on employing natives the path of agricultural technology is the one to follow. This sector is seeing investment and development increasing at a rapid rate.
Nearly 35% of harvesting platforms are going through some form of automation process.
Many of these platforms do not replace the worker wholesale, but enable them to do a more efficient job. Often requiring less workers to do the task than. When a worker can stand on a robot platform which propels itself, and which can provide them with shade, air conditioning, water misting or even fans, the worker’s quality of life and wages can increase substantially.
Still, these technologies are capital intensive for the average farmer, and so will be implementing the working standards that Americans have come to expect. A nationalist policy making environment would prioritize subsidizing this process and transition instead of spending $18.3 billion subsidizing illegal immigrant healthcare like the system currently does.
In total American taxpayers are subsidizing illegal immigrants to the tune of at least $150.7 billion annually, as of 2023. It would make much more sense for part of this money to be retooled into shoring up a domestic, productive, and modern agricultural system which can operate free of immigrant labor and provide stable employment for millions of Americans.
A nationalist policy agenda would include:
The creation of a Farm Automation & Technology Grant (FATG) that would go directly to farmers so they may purchase equipment. Currently most farm automation grants go towards university and college systems and lack an adoption mechanism for farmers.
Legislation to enable the nationwide organization of farm labor, such as including farm workers in the National Labor Relations Act or European equivalents.
Training and information services on the integration of technology and latest best practices. Services which are not dependent on major agricultural corporations.
With technology, higher wages, and labor protections the Americans who work the steel mills and chemical plants will also flock to the agricultural sector.
Breaking Big Business and Reviving Communities:
Just four companies control some 85% of beef processing, 80% of soybean processing, 77% of beer, and 67% of pork Processing. The numbers are similar for chicken, grains, and other forms of agricultural output.
These same companies have also consolidated physical processing locations, often requiring food to be shipped hundreds or thousands of miles to be processed, and then returned to near the point of origin for sale. This also means that when a plant shuts down due to safety, healthy, or other concerns if often affects entire nations.
A great example of this can be found in the 2022 shuttering of the Abbott Nutrition formula factory in Sturgis, Michigan. This one factory provided an entire nation with formula and caused a shortage which required coordinated Federal, State, and International action.
A nationalist policy agenda would:
Establish a “Farmer Protection Agency” to ensure that farmers are given the same protections as consumers and workers in other sectors.
Restore individual farmer and rancher rights to bring claims for damages against agricultural monopolies that engage in abusive, coercive, or market manipulating practices.
Rigorously enforce anti-monopoly and anti-trust guidelines so that mergers are not made without public oversight. A moratorium on mergers should be issued while new regulations are drawn up.
Create a Farm Cooperatives Fund (FCF) to fund the creation of local farm cooperatives on a geographic and or product/sectoral scale. Farmers should see as much return as possible on the goods they produce.
Reestablish and provide robust funding for state, provincial, local, regional etc. agricultural inspectors and processors. Allow local authorities to certify agricultural products for sale within the local or regional area without the need for national government approval.
Allow local governments/agencies to create training programs for food health and safety inspectors.
Financializaton & Farmer Income:
The widespread commodity speculation in the financial market for food and agriculture related commodities is estimate to contribute to between 10 and 25 percent of the current prices which consumers are facing at the grocery store.
Markets should be regulated in such a way as to deliver stable pricing to producers and affordable prices to consumers, not to maximize the profit of Wall Street’s speculative class.
The state must return to assuring price and income stabilization for farmers through interventions to purchase surpluses or provide subsidies when there are harvesting failures.
A nationalist policy agenda would:
Limit cash-settled contracts by requiring physical delivery of goods to those who purchase them, thereby limiting speculative behavior.
Restrict non-agricultural index speculators (hedge funds and institutional investors) ability to purchase and trade agricultural commodities and related financial products.
Create a Sustainable Farmer Income Certification (SFIC) for domestic farm products sold in stores that ensure at least 30% of the price goes into the pocket of farmers.
Provide a tax progressive break to grocers based upon the share of SFIC products they have on their shelves.
Conclusion:
Neoliberalism and globalism have broken the back of one of the most crucial sectors in any nation’s economy. The population of the West face higher food prices, higher barriers to sectoral entry, and mass immigration at the hands of a state and agricultural lobby which are not concerned with the national interest.
This framework must be scrapped and a nationalist framework, which puts the nation and communities first, put into place.
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As someone who lives in the heart of agricultural America, all of these proposals would greatly benefit our communities. We need new farmers but men want to own the land and feel their work will be justly compensated. We also need more local farm co-ops, processors and keep profits in the towns.