From the October 2003 issue of Resource Roundup…

 A Question of Security

by Angie Many

   I recently stopped working for Farm Service Agency (FSA), a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. FSA’s main purpose is to administer funds -- subsidies -- designated by Congress for our country’s farmers and ranchers. Programs include those to help compensate for losses caused by natural disasters such as drought and by low market prices. The USDA Farm Program was born from the problems faced in the Dust Bowl/Great Depression days, which illustrated how important it is to have a steady, dependable supply of food. In general, I don’t agree with government subsidies, but if anyone is going to be subsidized, it should be our farmers and ranchers. We all need to eat.

   But why do our farmers, the most productive and innovative farmers in the world, need subsidies? In addition to the problems faced by all businesses, their livelihoods are very dependent upon uncontrollable weather. Increases in land prices have meant that their estates are valued higher, often forcing heirs to sell the land to pay the taxes. Rising property taxes have hit farmers especially hard. Today, however, there is another big problem: ‘free trade.’

   ‘Free trade’ is a boon for consumers. But is it the best policy for our national security? For years, we had tariffs and quotas to protect American businesses, but successive Congresses and Presidents have increasingly reduced or weakened them. Trade laws like NAFTA and GATT, especially combined with out-of-control environmental restrictions, have truly created that ‘sucking sound’ which Ross Perot warned of, as American jobs go off-shore.

   Our farmers have to pay decent wages. They are severely limited in what pesticides and other chemicals that they can use, and those chemicals which have survived our continuing bans are usually very expensive. U.S. farmers are subjected to some of the strictest food-quality laws in the world.

   Yet because of ‘free trade’, our grocery stores are filled with meat, fruits, and vegetables from countries around the world. Some of this comes from countries where labor is paid slave wages, where chemicals that we banned 20 years ago are used, and where oversight for quality control is non-existent. How can our farmers and ranchers possibly compete with this? And if decent wages, food quality, and safe chemicals are so important to our well-being that our own farmers must adhere to expensive regulations, why is it acceptable for Americans to consume foods produced in manners that we don’t allow in this country?

   What happens to our food supply if we go to war and shipping lanes are closed down? Or, as with the 9-11 disaster, border crossings are slowed for days -- or longer? Or if various countries, in a pique of anti-Americanism, decide not to ship to us? In these days of terrorism, can we implicitly trust food coming in from other countries? Meat from other countries is not even labeled as such in our grocery stores! 

   Keeping our farmers in business -- through subsidies, if necessary, which are really subsidies to consumers -- is in the best interest of our national security. Giving them a level playing field would help our farmers and increase our national security. Having adequate supplies of food that we can trust is essential to our national security.

Textile Industry to Collapse Next?

   Several years ago, I read a book, The Armchair Economist, in which the author explained that it doesn’t matter where our ‘things’ come from. We export wheat from Kansas; we import cars from Japan. It all works out in the end, he said.

   And it would, except in the matter of national security. Because of environmental restrictions, employment regulations, punitive taxes, and liberal trade laws, our tool-and-die industries and our steel industries have largely moved to other countries. Our mining industries, and now much of our logging industry, have moved off-shore. Our manufacturing industries have dangerously deteriorated. There is no longer sufficient industry here in the States to turn out large quantities of military uniforms and boots quickly. This may explain why many of our troops in Iraq were clothed in jungle camouflage -- which endangered their lives in the daytime -- instead of in desert camos.

   The next American industry to bite the dust because of free trade will no doubt be the textile industry, according to an August article by the Associated Press. Textile workers in China make about 69 cents an hour, said the article. In anticipation of the expiration of quotas in 2004, many U.S. textile manufacturers are already giving up. According to the American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI), the U.S. has lost 26,000 jobs in textiles and 21,000 jobs in apparel since April. “The result will be the collapse of the U.S. textile and apparel industry,” ATMI said in a report last month. “As orders are moved to China, a massive series of layoffs, mill closures and bankruptcies will ripple through the textile belt throughout the middle of 2004,” the report predicted.

   And what about our computer industry? Already most components are made in other countries, but now, many of our programming jobs are moving to India. Why? Because in the U.S., programmers command salaries of $70,000 or so. In India, a salary of $7,000 is sufficient. How does that affect our national security?

   It seems impossible to benefit both American consumers and American businesses in a global economy. It does seem hypocritical, however, to insist that our producers abide by a plethora of expensive laws and regulations designed to ‘protect’ us and our environment while we then buy our products from countries that have few or no regulations in place. We’re ‘protecting’ our own workers right out of jobs!

   Until recent decades, Americans believed that it was important for our country to be self-sufficient. It was not only an economic advantage for American businesses (and therefore American workers), it was important in case of war. As we have seen since 9-11, that is still important today. We must at least maintain enough capacity to feed, clothe, and shelter our citizens during extended emergencies and to supply our military with uniforms, hardware, weapons, and more. If other countries slammed the door on us today, how long would it take us to rebuild our oil, mining, logging, manufacturing, farming, and ranching infrastructures?