In his latest Farm and Food File column, Alan Guebert observes that one self-selecting sample of farmers in Iowa and nationwide leans toward Republican Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, two men who have done and said virtually nothing related to serious agriculture policy. The survey found no more than 6% of farmer respondents in various subgroups saying that farm policy was their number-one issue in the 2016 Presidential race. More respondents prioritize “the way government in Washington operates,” the deficit, the economy, terrorism, and, among Democrats, climate change and income and wealth inequality.
Guebert says farmers’ willingness to elect candidates without experience or interest in farm policy creates “a policy vacuum that Big Ag is very happy to fill. Today, more than ever before, just a handful of farm and commodity groups drive nearly all policy discussions at the local, state and federal level.” Abandoning country-of-origin labeling, fighting the Waters of the U.S. rule—fascinating!
The survey to which Guebert refers may also carry a practical caution for South Dakota Democrats who frequently invoke George McGovern as the model for rebuilding the party.
Farm Futures invited farmers by e-mail to complete an online political questionnaire from December 7 through January 4. Farm Futures describes the economics and politics of those who responded:
The Farm Futures survey is dominated by commercial-sized, full-time farmers with a majority of the response coming from the Midwest. [It] reflects thinking of the largest 10% of the more than 2 million operations officially counted as farms by USDA.
Around 85% or more of these growers typically vote for Republican candidates at the presidential level [Bryce Knorr, “U.S., Iowa Farmers Favor Trump in Farm Futures Poll,” Farm Futures, 2016.01.18].
When George McGovern revived the South Dakota Democratic Party in the 1950s and 1960s, he tapped agrarian discontent. He didn’t just knock on farmers’ doors and ask for their vote; he went to Washington and focused on ag policy that protected lots of small farmers and thus got those farmers to vote for him and other Democrats. But the farm crisis of the 1980s kicked a lot of the farmers McGovern tried to help off the land. The farmers who survived were bigger, more corporate, and more Republican, just like the ones who answered the Farm Futures survey. They weren’t the kinds of farmers who would stage a farm revolt, even in 1986, when conditions for such a pitchfork revolt were ripe. As South Dakota Republican thinking machine Tony Venhuizen observed following his party’s 2014 triumph, the decline of family farms (hastened by his party’s Earl Butzian favoritism to factory farms) has also drained a key pool of McGovern Democrats.
Agrarian discontent wasn’t the only ingredient to McGovern’s party-building, but it was an important part that we cannot replicate in the current South Dakota farm economy. South Dakota Democrats, you can study 1956, you use some of McGovern’s ingredients, but you’ll still need to come up with a new recipe to win in 2016.
Good point! When is the last time you have heard a politician in South Dakota talk about the “family farmer” at all or at least with any intensity? It has been erased from our political vernacular in this state and throughout the Great Plains. Overtime, it sadly has answered the question “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
Many of us can at times be very critical of the Democratic Party and its direction in this state, but collectively this blog piece speaks to a challenge to all of us regardless of what school of political thought or strategy we may come from…
“Earl Butzian”…..Hahahahah…. I had forgot all about Earl. Those were some good times! ;-) If I remember right, he got into a little trouble and had to resign over an AP story which quoted a joke he told about a particular race, restrooms, shoes, and women.
Kristi Noem talks about family farms for image, to cloak her pro-corporate environmentalism in checked shirts and idyllic red barns at dawn.
Earl Butz—oh yeah, that joke.
Do you think she will run that red “checked” shirt footage for a fourth time this election year? Wasn’t that piece actually filmed on a farm/ranch down in Texas, too?
Earl Butz, the gift that keeps on giving. He definitely belongs in the Hall of Fame for former memorable Cabinet members along with the likes of John Mitchell and James Watt.
The last time family farmer words entered the picture was when we still had worms in our apples.