Sean Dengler.

At the heart of agriculture is culture. What makes a culture? Community. At the heart of agribusiness is business. What makes a business? Money. These almost diametrically opposed ideas are at the struggle of farming. A community thrives with more people, and a business thrives when they are the one on top.

For farmers, they work together as a community. On the other side, they are also competing to be the best farmer. The tides of farming have also become harder, including whether to grow large or get a job in town. Diversified operations providing several avenues of potential revenue have since been whittled down into two or three different revenue lines with potential off-farm income. This situation creates more fragility for farmers and the food system.

With the consolidation in the agribusiness space, the incentive becomes more on the money to stay afloat versus the community. Public supports used to be managed in a way to support farmers and help sustain farm country. Unfortunately, they are used to prop up an industry forcing farmers in a race to the bottom for their labor to help provide for the one or two businesses thriving in each agribusiness industry.

Meatpackers are closing cattle plants left and right, and President Donald Trump’s plan to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef without tariff – sold at 25% below market prices – will only continue to hurt farm country. The meatpackers profit while the farmers and community hurt. This provides less incentive for cattlemen to hold back their herd when they are undercut by the government.

A community action like coming together to build more meat processing facilities to compete with the meatpackers while breaking up the conglomerates and enforcing strict antitrust laws to create competitive markets would allow for farmers to make more money and prevent the middlemen (meatpackers) from squeezing consumers and farmers. Despite being told bigger is better and consolidation creates efficiency by these companies, this has not been born out. Meatpackers created the conditions for the smallest cattle herd in 75 years. These high beef prices lie at the feet of meatpackers.

Americans want low prices so the meatpackers must go. When agribusiness has too much power, farmers suffer. When farmers suffer, the community falters. When communities falter, the culture leaves. When the culture leaves, there is no more agriculture. This is an issue of who Americans want to hold power whether those who create culture or those at the top of the business food chain. In the United States of America, citizens always have a say. It might not feel like it, but this feeling exists by those who want to keep the status quo for farming.

Fortunately, power can be held by the masses with markets set up to be competitive for farmers and consumers. It happened before, and it can happen again. Anything is possible when communities fight for their best interest and against those who look to create economic conditions where they suffer. The time is now to fight back and return power to the community and to agriculture.

Sean Dengler is a writer, comedian, now-retired beginning farmer, and host of the Pandaring Talk podcast who grew up on a farm between Traer and Dysart. You can reach him at sean.h.dengler@gmail.com.