8 Decisions You’ll Make
ing text applauds the customer, too, because their purchase will “help
support hard-working farm families everywhere.”
The subtle ploy is to bond consumers with small farmers, with the
restaurant playing the neighborly role of bringing everyone together.
The paper bag had held a chicken sandwich and ice cream sundae, with
the cost totaling $.95 plus tax. The farmer’s portion, after others in
the food system have taken their cut, works out to be a penny or so for
the wheat made into a bun, maybe a nickel for the milk and sugar that
became the ice cream, and a few cents for having raised the meat. (Few
poultry farmers actually own the chickens or the feed, the two biggest
expenses.) From the customer’s decision to stop by and purchase ready-
to-eat food, hard-working farm families earned a dime, maybe fifteen
cents. The rest was gobbled up by expenses like transportation, pro-
cessing, packaging, preparation, cleanup, wholesaling, retailing, labor,
advertising, profit, etc.
All but the top percent of farms are called family farms. One in ten
farms account for more than three-quarters of value produced. Nine in
ten farms account for less than one-quarter. Household income for the
top 0 percent of family farms ranges from $ 8 ,000 to $.7 million. Nine
percent of farms receive two-thirds of all government subsidies. Seventy
percent of farms receive nothing.
Subsidies began at a time when farms were more alike, facing similar
challenges. Then as now, farmers made decisions months before harvest.
So long as non-farmers were employed, there were buyers for what
farmers produced. Then came the Great Depression. As the economy
nosedived and savings dried up, volunteers and nonprofit relief agen-
cies were overwhelmed. Some of the unemployed resorted to forag-
ing through garbage cans, digging for roots in public parks, and sending
their children begging door-to-door.
Farmers were also in dire straits. They had food to sell but not enough
buyers able to pay for it. Unsold milk was dumped in ditches, piglets
were slaughtered, fields were left fallow. Surplus farm products piled up.
Farmers needed money to keep farming, but the unemployed had none
to spare. Millions cried out for public assistance.
America had provided such assistance previously—to other coun-
tries. When World War I ended, the United States dispatched food to
starving Europeans. But President Herbert Hoover viewed America’s