Maggie's Farm

This was one of the things I looked into last year as part of a larger article: the fatality rates in the armed forces. ( http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2006/08/military-elites-and-you.html )

The stunning thing is that even with two conflicts going on, the death per 100,000 rate is lower than it was from 1980-92, and only up marginally after the 'peace dividend' cut the armed forces in size. Even in 2004, one of the years with highest casualty rates in Iraq, death from combat ranks below death due to accident and disease. Out of all deaths in Iraq in 2004 only 15% were due to combat, the other 85% were due to non-combat causes. Of most interest is that disease is an invariant in the modern era, and that even with more activity in far off lands and combat, death due to illness stays at a stable rate. Even when re-balancing in case the combat deaths were not figured in, this remains the case.

That is never put forward by those doing the statistical work for political output and lags by a year or so to get full statistical values across the armed forces.

Even more amazing is that the WaPo in 1999 did a survey of Military Elites, Political Elites and your Average American to see what the accepted casualty rates would be to them that the Nation could withstand for three different scenarios: Stabilize the Congo, remove the Iraqi WMD threat and Defend Taiwan. In each and every instance the Elites underestimated the willingness of the American Public to have lives die for the policy of this Nation. That is a stunning rebuke to those who push Vietnamphobia on a continual basis. Of course once the test is actually put in place with Iraq, we find the political elites squealing at such low numbers, the military sucking it up, and the American People volunteering to sustain the Armed Forces continually and consistantly at its force levels. Apparently the Elites are surprised by the pragmatism of the American People. Even Gen. Clark knows this and should know better than putting a defeatist attitude out in his political maunderings. He thought it was great that he didn't lose anyone (nor accomplish much) and was proud of his zero casualty conflict and was a bit deflated when Americans who were polled thought that nearly 200 Americans had died and accepted *that*. The man is unable to learn.

I am damned proud of the US Armed Forces for doing an impossible job, with meager supplies and so much naysaying.

Never have so few, done so much, for so many, to so much disdain before in history.

The American public is not infantile about war. Perhaps we can get a political class that can learn from us, instead of trying to teach us otherwise. It is they that are out of step with America now... and such things do not last long in this world.

The major shift of the Nation from major agricultural employer to one of industrial employer had happened by 1925. That marked the shift of the relatively poor and rural livelihood from multi-generational families to the start of the 'nuclear' family in the ensuing decades. The reasons for this are the availability of employment and decent pay of industrial vs. agricultural jobs. Additionally the first wave of industrialization to hit the agricultural community was starting and more work labor was being done via automation. The first combines would start the movement from hand-picked goods (namely cotton, but also wheat and corn by the 1960's) that were high employment sources but at low wage. The family farm was impacted by this, also, in that post dustbowl wave to consolidate vacant farms under more industrialized approaches to farming.

Those areas where the relatively regional family farm for supporting local goods (milk, vegetables, localized meats of various sorts) and specialty or niche items would allow viability while this went on. WWII, however, saw the mass employment of young men from the farms and the need for larger amounts of automation. Many soldiers returning from WWII would utilize their scholarships and take jobs in the industrial middle class or 'white collar' area. Many did not return to their agrarian roots and a large number of family farms would be impacted by this for the next two-three decades as the pre-WWII generation left such farms in the hands of fewer and younger family members willing to take up such jobs.

The impact of the 'green revolution' of tailored crops, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer, along with high water use would further leverage advantage of the larger farms that would become what we know as Big Agribusiness. The hallmarks of this is using less labor and leveraging for greater productivity beyond what the family farmer could do as the capital for such output was beyond the means of most families. By the 1990's the large scale consolidation of Big Agribusiness was driving out the smaller farms via economic efficiencies of scale.

Areas that were not so hard hit at the start were fruits and vegetables that were not amenable to machine picking. Those farms would begin to see post-war labor shortages, also, as the black poor had, by and large, moved to urban settings for industrial jobs. While these areas were not immediately amenable to automation, the labor was still needed and bringing large numbers of people from cities to the farms was untenable as the pre-war sustainment infrastructure had shifted in outlook and the ability of a generation with no knowledge of farming to start such was minimized due to low pay.

Family farms were put in an economic vice against high capital investment automation or niche crops that could not be properly piced by automation. Those that chose not to scale to meet the niche's own economies of scale simply went under.

Today we are starting to see the fist prototypes of robotic pickers for the remaining fruits and vegetables that have been hand picked for generations. As with the previous industrial wave this, too, will start slow but have fundamental infrastructure effects for rural life and agriculture. In California the first test-bed fully automated farm is utilizing as much of this as possible to remove the last few human parts of the farm workload. That is a harbinger, today, equivalent to the first crudely mechanized combines of the 1910-20 era was to agriculture. When this integrates with modern GPS, soils and rainfall analysis, crop analysis, pest analysis and precision spraying and watering (any robot that can keep its position and be skilled enough to pick individual fruits is extremely capable of precision spraying and watering) not only will yield rise and pick quality rise, but actual use of fertilizer, pesticides and water will drop.

Family farms for specialized markets will continue, but their economic basis will need to change to a multi-source one. Diversity of crop type for specialized goods, specialized handling, or for local markets will need more than just those things to survive. Already the first of the 'vacation farm' type is being seen in AK, MO and elsewhere, so that city folks can pay to have a farm experience for a couple of weeks. I would not doubt this moving to 'extreme farming' or some such to capture more external revenue. Additionally farms can offer future services due to land extent (solar power conversion or SPS microwave conversion), that take advantage of distributed energy capture/data capture from distant external sources. Beyond that is the 'premium' market for farm goods, where high amounts of 'value added' leads to higher profit margins for very specialized crops. Already the 'organic' concept has taken hold, but, like microbreweries, the Big Agribusiness is starting to adjust to that niche. Thus the family farm must offer things that highly automated or, in the next 20 years, fully automated farms cannot.

I do agree that these things have caused marked changes in societal attitudes not only in those directly related sub-populations, but in the larger National population as a whole.

Even worse is that the industrial jobs started to shift overseas and the economy has been shifting extremely hard since the 1970's to a 'services based' economy. This is now the leading sector in the US, eclipsing manufacturing and agriculture. As trends go this is even further removing Americans from 'hands-on' production work at factories and manufacturing plants. Those poor, rural families that moved to cities to get industrial jobs in the 1950-'70 era that did not capitalize on education or work ethic that attended those industrial jobs.

It is that segment (largely black, but also poor white and hispanic) that looked forward to good paying entry-level jobs in steel mills, auto plants and the such are now ill prepared sociologically to handle a world that is radically altering around them. That is not to say that, as a class, they are unsuccessful: the poor in America are among some of the richest and longest lived people on the planet. What this has done, however, is left a generation that feels 'left out' by the promise of a vibrant industrial America and unable to shift to Agrarian America as that is no longer a sustainable lifestyle for them.

The basic vectors of industrialization, high capital agriculture and higher education have each worked a hard toll on those populations of Americans that have shifted from rural to urban to suburban in less than two generations. And the skill sets needed in those shifts have proven to be at odds with the skills necessary to the previous generation, although the work ethic basis is the same. Only when the work ethic changes from that of individual self-sustainment and family sustainment to that of expected societal payout via government, does that break down. And that whole can of worms started with government intervention in things it has no business interfering with starting in 1909. Add those into the demographic and societal shifts going on and the mess that results is toxic.

The loss of the family farm is not an isolated event in this, just as the 'rust belt' is not, either. And both have led to great and grave social ills and problems, and they are even highly related to the feeling of dependence and disenfranchisement seen today on a National scale. They are both outgrowths of these same underlying technical and economic forces roaming the planet which we have shorn from National moorings. And treating individuals as needing 'state assistance' has turned out to be the worst solution we can put forth. To address these, IMHO, requires 19th century outlooks using 21st century tools to remedy 20th century ills.... not 20th century ills, using 21st century tools to complain about 19th century entitlements or lack thereof.