Expecting More, Committing Less 9 needed attention. Reward or loss, this was the reality of farming, which
he understood well and offset by raising other crops and animals.
Sam, a family friend who lived a few miles away, had a different
approach. His farm was exclusively apple orchards. Each spring he au-
tomatically worried when temperatures crept upward too early in the
year. To ward off frost, he placed smudge pots (oil-burning containers
and flues) throughout his orchards. When temperatures dropped too
quickly, he walked the orchards at night, lighting his pots.
At times, Sam worried so much that my parents worried about Sam.
Sometimes, despite his best efforts, he lost the entire harvest due to a
hard late-spring frost. A new crop of apples or not, his orchards needed
to be maintained. To keep the farm, Sam’s wife worked as the secretary
of the local public school.
Farmers know that planting endless fields of the same crop re-
duces the checks and balances inherent in nature, while amplifying the
odds for widespread pest infestations. They also know that packing too
many chickens, hogs, and cows in close confinement increases the like-
lihood of disease outbreaks. The decisions they make set up risks and
rewards. If they elect government subsidized insurance, some of the
costs from taking risks are passed on to taxpayers, while they keep all
the rewards when things work in their favor. When things don’t go their
way, consumers end up paying twice: once through higher store prices if
widespread losses cause supplies to fall, and again though higher taxes
to subsidize the insurance. As one farmer in Iowa said about subsidies,
“I don’t know that I need to be subsidized for doing the right thing. I
just want us to stop subsidizing the wrong things.”
When Congress passed the 201 Farm Bill, the White House announced
that the bill would be signed at Michigan State University. An advance
team was dispatched to identify just the right farm-looking building,
which underwent slight demolition so farm equipment could be moved
inside and staged as props. Attendance, by invitation only, included
federal, state, and local politicians, university administrators, farmers,
token faculty and students, and an entourage of news media.
Watching the webcast from my office a country block away, I expected
to hear familiar phrases from the past such how “the Farm Bill benefits