Could Idling U.S. Farm Ground Restore Farmer Profitability?

ACCOKEEK, MD – One group that got its start back in the farm crisis of the 1970s, is weighing in on today’s challenges with some policy thoughts of their own. The American Agriculture Movement was organized by farmers in Colorado in 1977 to address the impossible odds farmers were dealing with at the time. The group’s claim to fame came in 1979 when 3,000 farmers drove their tractors to Washington, DC to protest. Today, prices are only slightly higher while production and input costs have increased exponentially. David Senter is President of AAM and explains that USDA continues to develop programs to send out payments to producers without a plan to fix the problem. The fix, he says, is the development of a Land Conservation Retirement Program with a 1, 2, or 3-year option for producers to idle farm ground. Not just idle the land, but to put a cover on it to conserve and rebuild the soil while markets sort themselves out from trade disruptions and oversupply. The group was founded on the principle of PARITY, whereby commodity prices are adjusted for inflation relative to prices in 1910. According to the AAM website, 15 crops today trade at less than half of PARITY.
(SOURCE: American Agriculture Movement)