Socialist solutions to the country crisis
BY SUE BOLAND
It is only three weeks since dairy deregulation in New South Wales and already there are casualties: their incomes slashed almost in half as a result of the deregulation on July 1, 50 dairy farmers have been forced off their farms so far.
Dairy farmers are suffering the same fate as thousands of other small farmers and graziers, all hit hard by federal government agricultural deregulation since the mid-1980s. Between 1979-80 and 1989-90, 51,302 farms folded, a rate of 2.8% per year, and between 1990-91 and 1996-97, 10,788 farms went to the wall, a rate of 1.4% per year.
Suffering from high levels of debt, increasing costs for farm inputs such as seed and fertiliser, lower prices for their products, the removal of guaranteed minimum price schemes and the deregulation of marketing boards, farm profits have been slashed by 80% since the Coalition government took office in 1996, according to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Research Economics' Australian Farm Survey 1998.
The problem is not exclusive to Australia. It besets small farmers in the United States, France and other advanced capitalist countries, as well as peasants and farmers in Third World countries. Each round of government "solutions" succeeds only in making things worse.
Worker-farmer alliance
The solutions advocated by the socialist movement seek to deal directly with indebtedness, the high cost of farm inputs and the low prices which farmers receive for their produce at the farm gate.
In 1894, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx's co-thinker, described the small farmer as an "eternally tortured debt slave". They are "neither in the safe possession of [their] tiny patch of land nor are [they] free". They, "as well as [their] house, farmstead and few fields, belong to the usurer", the bank on whose credit they're forced to rely.
Some may be surprised to find out that Engels and Marx wrote about the conditions of peasants and small farmers, given that the socialist movement regards the working class as the key sector of the population able to overturn the exploitative social relations intrinsic to capitalism.
In leading the Russian Revolution in 1917, however, the Bolsheviks believed that the working class could not liberate humanity from the bondage of capitalism and war unless it had the support of all exploited working people, including the small peasants and farmers who use their own labour to farm their land. The worker-farmer alliance was crucial to the revolution's victory, as it was in Cuba in 1959 and again in Vietnam.
In this country, the old Communist Party of Australia, which dissolved in 1991, also sought alliances with small farmers, particularly cane farmers in north Queensland.
Conflicts between farmers
As a starting point, the socialist movement has tried to expose the fact that not all farm owners are working farmers, and not all farm owners have the same interests. Most of the elected and unelected officials who control farmer organisations such as the National Farmers Federation and the National Party politicians who describe themselves as farmers are not working farmers at all. They might own farms but they employ others to work them.
Agribusiness companies avoid investing in farming itself; they find the rate of profit too low. They prefer to control and profit from providing farm finance, selling seed, fertiliser and machinery to farmers, and controlling the transport, processing and retailing of farm produce. Agribusiness companies leave it to family farmers to shoulder the risks of bad weather and unstable market conditions.
The big, capitalist farm owners try to create the impression that they are just like other farmers. They seek the backing of the 90% in the industry who are small family farmers for policies like deregulation and union-bashing which benefit agricultural capitalists but hurt working farmers.
The family farmer, who might employ workers only during the harvest, has nothing in common with these rich farm owners. The family farmer more resembles workers like owner truck drivers, forced to become "independent" contractors but similarly indebted to the banks and dependent on their suppliers.
Solutions
But if the working-class movement does not point to solutions to the problems crushing family farmers, they will continue to be dominated by the rich farm owners. They will be prey to possible use as strike-breakers (like during the waterside dispute in 1998). They will even become easy game for right-wing populists like Pauline Hanson's One Nation.
Socialist solutions to the farm crisis would include:
Banks and indebtedness: Farmers need access to cheap loans, to bank branches in nearby towns and to the option of having outstanding debts cancelled or rescheduled. The only way of ensuring this would be to nationalise the banking system and unite the banks into a single state bank, allowing a big expansion in the number of local bank branches. Such a bank would need to be set up in such a way that there was public control over its activities.
Cost of farm inputs: A publicly owned and publicly controlled corporation needs to be established to provide seed, fertiliser and other farm inputs at a cheap price. Such a corporation, if it worked along non-profit lines, would also need to work towards replacing toxic farm inputs with environmentally benign ones.
The government needs to finance genuine cooperatives to purchase farm machinery to be shared amongst small and medium-sized farmers so that individual farmers don't all have to buy expensive farm machinery, such as combine harvesters.
Farm income: Guaranteed minimum price schemes for farmers should be reinstituted to protect small farmers from the vagaries of the market. Farmers should have access to welfare benefits based on their actual income, not their assets. Disaster relief money needs to be allocated on the basis of need, rather than long-term "viability".
In order to ensure a guaranteed minimum price scheme, the agricultural industry needs to be re-regulated, with statutory marketing authorities controlled by small farmers, rather than agribusinesses.
Freight and transport: The rail system needs urgent repair, upgrading and expansion. If the government invested in the rail system pressure would be taken off the road system and money could be redirected into providing cheap transport for farmers' produce.
Food processing: The establishment of a publicly owned and controlled food processing corporation is necessary to ensure that farmers get a higher return, rather than the tiny fraction of retail prices they currently get. At present, most of the profits from processing go to one of the three major retail chains or to the big food processing companies.
Environmental degradation: Huge swathes of farmland may be degraded beyond cultivation within 50 years unless urgent action is taken. Government bodies need to research and establish sustainable farming practices, then map plans to assist small farmers so they can switch to sustainable methods of agriculture.
Rural services: The privatisation of government utilities, particularly telephone, gas, electricity and water, needs to be halted and reversed. Basic education, health, employment, Medicare, Centrelink and other services need to be returned to country towns.
Farmer organisations: Farmer organisations need to be democratised and members granted control over the organisations' executives, which are at present a law unto themselves. Decision-making should be based on one member, one vote, rather than on the amount of land owned.
Membership criteria could also be introduced to convert these organisations into ones which defend the interests of working farmers. For example, members might be accepted only if they work their land and don't have land-holdings larger than a particular size.
Many (particularly the rich farmers who run the NFF) would scream that this program is utopian. But the really utopian view is to think that the policies of deregulation and "free" trade, or those advocated by One Nation, will do anything for working farmers.
The money to begin implementing genuine solutions to the problems confronting small farmers does exist in the system right now. The government already commits enormous resources to all kinds of assistance, but it is little more than business welfare, which accrues to the biggest and most profitable corporations either as direct subsidies or tax breaks.
Those resources need to be diverted towards the majority, who work for a living. But if small farmers are to overcome the entrenched interests of agribusiness and rich farm owners, and bring to power a government prepared to carry out such policies, they need an alliance with the working class.