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Newquist + Berry + Adelstein = Property Tax Reform for Ideal Family Farms?

Dr. David Newquist and Wendell Berry both meditate on the industrial hollowing out of America’s agricultural land and soul. I do both men injustice with mere excerpts and encourage you to read their full texts side by side. Newquist sees Brown County devolving from lively and livable landscape to a dull factory exclusive of all but business:

I like wandering the countryside.  Once as a farm editor for a newspaper, I got paid to do it as I covered agricultural meetings, interviewed people for stories, and observed first-hand what was taking place in rural America.  With my commutes to and from Tacoma Park, there Is the aspect of getting acquainted with the neighborhood, learning the people and the animals who populate land I travel through. In recent years, I hardly ever see people or farm animals.  The industrial rural landscape does not include them.  And I see much less wildlife,  except for deer dashing across the road between bean and corn fields.  The wetlands are plowed over and filled in so I see no water fowl where there once were ponds.  The rural landscape has changed.  The pasture land on which cattle, sheep, and horses grazed has been converted to cropland for corn and beans, and a little hay.  The only hogs near Tacoma Park are in an incorporated complex of confinement buildings that shield the animals from observation. Their presence is evident only in the powerful smell that emanates from the place on muggy days.  (Once one of my Tacoma Park neighbors who invited some foreign exchange students for a Fourth-of-July wiener roast had to cancel and move the event to their home in town because the  odor was so repulsive and overpowering.) [David Newquist, “Where Did All the Cattle Go?Northern Valley Beacon, 2015.10.23]

Newquist is seeing the disappearance of what Kentucky poet-theologian-writer-farmer Berry recognizes as a good farm:

Modern Farmer: How can you tell a good farm? Wendell Berry: The looks of it are satisfying. A good farm is recognized as good partly by its beauty: the presence of trees, grass, good livestock on the pastures. If you go up into Holmes County, Ohio, where the Amish are thriving on farms of 80 to 125 acres, you would be impressed by the flowers in the dooryards, the beautifully kept kitchen gardens, the lawns, the birdhouses, the beehives [Corby Kummer, “Last Word with Farmer-Author Wendell Berry,” Modern Farmer, 2015.10.20].

Newquist says that by moving away from the diverse farm and specializing to suit the contract system of Big Ag, farmers gained convenience and leisure but surrendered independence:

The focus on a few crops and a livestock speciality freed up time, but at the same time relinquished self-sufficiency and integrated farms into the corporate economy. Those farmers who continued more general operations with multiple crops and livestock found it necessary to gear their operations with food processors to market their products and receive a sufficient financial return. As farming became more closely enmeshed with the corporations who bought and used its products and supplied planting and harvesting materials and machines,  farming became less and less operated for independence and self-sufficiency and more dependent on corporations to supply farming needs and sell farming output. The term family farm names a concept of the sentimental past, not the actual agribusiness of the present [Newquist, 2015.10.23].

Berry says farmers ought to be holistic stewards, not cogs in a machine::

MF: What is a modern farmer today? WB: An industrial farmer. We need to say that the countryside is suffering from want of caretakers. Farming at its best was diversified and very well done. The people who did that work here are dead or gone and their children are gone. They’re being replaced by huge machines and toxic chemicals. Industrial farming leads away from and against what Aldo Leopold called the “land community.” MF: What should a modern farmer be instead? WB: A farmer who has understood the dependence of agriculture on nature. The responsible farmer would not own more land than he or she could know well and pay close attention to and care for properly. Farming has to do with everything. We can’t reduce it to a transaction between a technician and a machine [link added; Kummer, 2015.10.20].

Berry and Newquist get me thinking about the political commentary offered by a third éminence grise of my thoughtosphere, Stan Adelstein, who contends that South Dakota is cheating its children by undervaluing and undertaxing agricultural land. Adelstein says we could find tens of millions more dollars to fund education by taxing just the 17.3 million acres of leased agricultural land (leased—i.e., not owner-occupied, not lived on and thus inevitably not tended with the same stewardly care of Berry’s agrarian ideal, but merely a patch of earth wholly commoditized) at the same rate as residential property.

I wonder if we could synthesize Newquist’s, Berry’s, and Adelstein’s thinking into property tax reform. Berry suggests the amount of land a farmer can really know, the kind of farm that would support the integral diversity Newquist says has disappeared from Brown County, is likely no more than 200 acres. Perhaps we should allow our 31,700 farms to enjoy the current reduced property tax rate (Adelstein calls it a subsidy) on their first 200 acres. Beyond that, a farm becomes an industrial complex, not the ideal family farm supposedly favored by our current property tax code. Tax those remaining industrial acres (almost 37 million) like any other factory, and watch the money roll in to pay agriculture teachers and every other teacher a competitive wage.

And maybe see a few more ambitious young people enter farming and bring some of those cattle, sheep, and horses back to small, lively farms along Dr. Newquist’s drive to Tacoma Park.

10 Comments

  1. leslie 2015-10-24 08:52

    adelstein is/was a miner among other things. i think of lien’s acreage on the forested west-side St. Martin’s limestone ridge, treeless, bed rock blasted to pieces, dust, dust, dust, gravel trucks, trucks, trucks wind thru neighborhoods of deer, squirrels, and poor humans, and just north up that same ridge, overlooking box elder creek- their familys’, gated, arrogant castle with a view-that they own. same thing in colorado springs, ft. collins ect. miners, under 1872 law, or SD reclamation law, seem to tear it up, leave it to blow in the wind, and we pay to clean up whitewood creek arsenic, sulfide lakes, uranium wastelands, and gravel pits…eventually.

  2. jerry 2015-10-24 09:12

    Adelstein came from hard scrabble working stock from west river. That he got into another business rather than laundry, makes sense.
    I know that as an independent, I see tax increases as the only way to not only make this state run, but also this great country. For the last 40 years, we have watched as the infrastructure has crumbled, the fibers of a great society in general, have faltered and our children are left holding the bag for the gain of the wealthy. Why and how can a business set on a acres of land that has a market value of millions, and not pay a tax that is anywhere near equitable to its worth? Stan is correct, taxes must be raised on this land as it is now a fiefdom for many corporations that also get even more tax breaks with their schedule F. The Farm Bill makes it impossible to loose money as a farmer. We all need to eat, corporate ag needs to pay as their share is killing us.

  3. Bernie 2015-10-24 09:39

    http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-income-and-wealth-statistics/net-cash-income.aspx#P317e8de88a514c1baea471c1ced2d060_2_153iT0R0x41

    Nobody wants to find a pot of gold for schools and health care more than me. But like most of you, it should be found in a fair manner. Farm land is just one kind of wealth in SD. But we tax it very heavily. According to this report (see link) farmers and ranchers pay about $400 million a year in taxes. Farm income fluctuates a lot but even if it hits $3.4 billion, that is roughly a 12 percent net income tax. We don’t even tax most investments in SD. We tax small banks at 6 percent of net income and big banks at a very very small fraction of that. The ag sector is more than paying their fair share through good years and bad. Don’t kill what’s been a golden goose for South Dakota.

  4. Les 2015-10-24 09:44

    Of course, Stan is not a farmer. Stan will just push those costs onto the backs of consumers. Our cheap food policy will never allow fair taxation.

    That said, I pay more taxes on my residence than on my ag land. Not fair. Income tax as well doesn’t hit me l Iike it does a wage earner, also unfair. Wealthy people spend money. The “Fair Tax” is the best approach to fair I’ve ever seen. Tax our purchases and treat our basic needs as a non taxable.

  5. Paul Seamans 2015-10-24 11:32

    Owning property does not necessarily equate to being wealthy and able to pay higher property taxes. An example might be a young couple that is buying a farm on a contract for deed, for say, two million dollars. On the day that they sign that deed they owe property taxes on that land every year. They are no richer today than they were yesterday yet they are saddled with a yearly tax burden.

    The state needs to institute an income tax. They have always claimed that the money is just not there. If the money is there to pay property taxes then it is also there to pay an income tax instead.

  6. mike from iowa 2015-10-24 14:23

    The Farm Burro pushes big,bigger and biggest ag policies at the expense of the land and environment and farmer’s health. They also back many wingnuts and wingnut policies.

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2015-10-24 22:46

    Bernie, that’s a fascinating stats page. Do we have stats like that, breaking down income and expenses, including taxes paid, for an entire industry?

    If the ag sector is paying its fair share through property tax, I’d still like to levy that share more fairly through an income tax. The sector as a whole may be kicking in its fair share for K-12 education and other public goods, but within the sector, would we find big players getting off easy while smaller farmers pay more? Would it be fair to make the property tax progressive, assessing the first Berryesque 200 acres at a lower rate than the next 800, the next 1,000, and every 1,000-acre increment beyond?

  8. Bernie 2015-10-24 23:24

    Some policy to help beginning farmers, reward conservation, etc., would be worthy of consideration but we are so frozen in the status quo that it’s nigh impossible for most to consider anything but more sales tax. Very unfortunate. A tax expert told me a few years ago that most states are stuck with the tax system they have because today’s politicians just can’t agree on any real change and special interests are quick to kill any new ideas.

  9. Rod Hall 2015-10-25 10:51

    An income tax would hit the wealthy in ways they are now exempt. In SD, Gov. Kneip led the battle to get, for the state, and schools, a portion of this untapped wealth. Kneip’s plan was killed by two democrats in the senate. In the 40 years since the legislature, democrat and republican alike just raise the sales tax. When a widow dies her household furniture and bedding sold at auction is taxed at the current rate of 4% plus more if in a city. A farm sold at auction pays no sales tax!

  10. Les 2015-10-25 13:13

    So the farmer just buys new pickups, toys, atv’s etc and expenses it all paying little tax. Until we tax money spent as in the “Fair Tax” you will not get the revenue you are seeking, Rod. Big biz has all the offshore options of hiding income so you don’t get theirs.

    Our sales tax is so regressive as are these fees such as that wheel tax on grandma as much as they tax my over the road vehicles it is insane anyone can believe they are just.

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