The meat and dairy industry, as well as farms that grow corn and soy animal feed – are some of them maximum Polluters In the United States. But they are largely Free from environmental regulations. One argument often made by industry lobbyists and allies is that there are too many farms to regulate.
In 2022, when asked why farmers are not required to reduce pollution, At the time Minister of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told reporters Farms do not simply regulate pollution like factories. Vilsack claims there are “millions of farms” in the United States. “So, as you think about regulation, the reality is that it’s not as easy as you think.”
Around the same time, the Supreme Court was ready to argue the height of the results Case about the Clear Water Lawindustry group debate Court summary Stricter water pollution regulations will put too much burden on the American Peasant Corps. The first sentence of the summary reads: “There are more than 2 million farms and ranches in the United States…”
2 million farms are an impressive number, which is often cited not only to proposed pollution restrictions, but also through beneficial pollution ranges Tax law and Farmers’ subsidy plan.
Farmers hold self-conceited identity In today’s ongoing American founding myth, it is therefore effective conversation point for the industry to oppose or favor legislation from helping 2 million farms. But it’s just a problem: not true.
About half of the U.S. farms have little money and little food, but they often mix with the country’s largest and most polluted farms, a verbal challenge that is rarely questioned and provides the largest polluters with political cover to continue their business as usual.
Really, how many farms are there in the United States?
USDA Define a farm As “produced and sold $1,000 or more of the product in a year, or anywhere that would normally be sold.” When the USDA conducted its last farm census in 2022, it calculated 1.9 million farms.
But “usually for sale” does a lot of work here.
If the property earns $1,000 or more, it can be considered a farm, but if it doesn’t earn sales, or even sells zero dollars, it can still count it as a farm if it gets enough “points”. The agency has a system that provides landowners with a certain number of points based on factors such as planted area or animal count to estimate how much money they can make in theory. this Original Intent In the point system introduced in the 1970s, it was to capture actual farms that were poor for a year due to weather, crop diseases or other problems. But it even expanded to include “some small areas and houses, such as large sizes in partitions”. Texas Agriculture Bureau“Although there is no agricultural production.”
It’s like saying, because I have a laptop and a strong WiFi connection, in theory I can develop software even if I’ve never written or intended to write a series of code.
According to the US Department of Agriculturemore than 25% of farms in the United States have no sales A typical year. This is because in fact, when you think of a commercial farm, you probably won’t imagine anything. Many claim their land is a farm to benefit from various tax advantages, including Reduce property taxesBut they may have only a small ranch of some calf or horses, a small colony of bee, some berry bushes or eggs backyard chickens – more like a hobby than business.
“More and more people are seen as farmers, even if they never intend to be commercial action.” Silvia SecchiProfessor and natural resources economist at the University of Iowa, recently published a paper on the issue in the Journal Agriculture and human values. “These very small actions provide political cover for real large-scale actions.”
this USDA also provides points for landowners Obtain government subsidies for “retirement” farmland for protection purposes. This is a good thing for landowners, but it is clearly not a farm if it is not used for farming.
Outside a quarter of zero-sale farms, at least 30% Farm generates sales of $1,000 to $10,000which means only a few thousand dollars in profit. Removed both categories and the number of U.S. farms dropped to about 800,000.
Statistically speaking, the government has not exaggerated such numbers in other professions, Sage said. This is similar to the classification of the United States 1.2 million craft beer homemade As an alcohol manufacturer. In her paper, she did not try to be an arbitrator to exactly which property counts as farms and which should not count as farms. However, Secchi told me that a starting point is just to exclude farms that are not intended to be commercial enterprises because “a lot of them do not intend to make money. Pay less taxes. ”
Draw lines somewhereWhat if a business had to sell $100,000 of agricultural products to be considered a commercial farm?
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This is a fair division because for a almost all Agricultural Sales From a farm selling $100,000 or more. USDA says Agriculture’s profit margin exceeds 25% Being a good person, so an operating farm needs to bring in $100,000 in sales (and/or subsidies) to generate a modest profit of around $30,000. Thinking of it as a benchmark means there are only 390,000 farms in the U.S., about 20% of the 1.9 million figures. But the 390,000 voice is far less rhetorical than 2 million.
This is conservative because USDA believes farms are still “small” If sales are up to $350,000. This is indeed a bigger operation – classified as medium, large and very large operation with the most concern for environmental pollution. An agricultural census separates commercial farms from amateur farms, conservation projects and land more clearly and is classified only as “agriculture” as tax advantages will take away the talk points of the powerful “2 million farms” in the agricultural hall and allow for more honest and accurate policy debates.
Secchi told me that the 2 million farm number is not only symbolic. Some federal funds are used for agricultural research and other activities with Number of farms or the number of people living on a farm in a state.
What does the government’s farm classification system ignore?
Calculate almost no food with the US medium, large and giant actions also produce very little food, which also distorts the average farm size, masks the concentration of the US agricultural sector, and the difficulty of small and medium farms competing with the largest players.
Take the egg farm as an example. According to the USDA census, there are 240,530 egg farms, meaning that the “average” egg farms have about 1,600 hens. However, the vast majority of “egg farms” are small, with only dozens of hens – basically backyard chicken lovers. Meanwhile, only 347 egg farms (up to 0.14%, owning 100,000 or more birds) produce 75% of the country’s egg supply.
same, Up to 6% of pig farms – Those with 5,000 or more animals – produce 75% of American pork. However, the National Pork Producer Council – a trading group Factory style agricultural practice – This is usually said to represent 60,000 pig farms in the United States, when almost three-quarters of the farms had more than twenty pigs.
Over the past half century, this strong concentration on farmland ownership and wealth has been driven mostly by a combination of “everyone or get out”. USDA and Congressional Policy and Large manufacturers and companies Buy small and medium-sized competitors.
However, winners of agricultural mergers often cite their economic losers- small farms in the United States, many of which have collapse Or struggling to survive – score. They also evoke portraits of small farms marketing and Package: In reality, small red barn or animal on pasture Most breeding animals Lift indoors in large warehouses.
“The industry has shrunk so much that the industry has indeed sustained life for these rhetorical devices,” Secchi said.
Agricultural policy debates rarely attract public attention, but they shape our food system and influence our tax base. They determine the fate of thousands and farmers, billions of animals, and the health of millions of Americans Living near a polluted farm. Policy makers and agribusiness lobbyists often deploy misleading statistics because helping 2 million farms sounds good, which sounds good and generates a fair amount of voting groups’ fantasies. But this is intellectually dishonest at best and politically corrosive at worst.
