Farmers along the East Coast have been hammered by drought conditions. This drought comes at a time of a drop in commodity prices worldwide. All 21 counties in New Jersey have been declared agricultural disaster areas.
Even before the current crisis, farm income nationally had plunged by nearly 17 percent in the last three years and thousands of farmers have been forced into bankruptcy and driven off their land. Many farmers describe these conditions as the worst since the Great Depression.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has responded by offering "relief" in the form of emergency loans under onerous conditions. The loans will only partially cover actual losses; farmers must prove they have lost at least 30 percent of production; and farmers must show they can repay the loan and any other loan they may have outstanding. They also have to prove they can't get credit anywhere else.
These loans will only worsen the conditions for working farmers who face an ever widening gap between their costs of production and the price they receive for their commodities, high interest on mortgages, exorbitant rents, and taxes. They are debt slaves with no prospect of getting clear until they have been squeezed dry by big business and banks, and their farms foreclosed on.
The crisis provoked by the drought is part of the normal workings of capitalism. "Capitalist domination of the distribution and sale of agricultural products turns natural disasters such as drought into social catastrophes that ruin many exploited farmers and raise food prices for working people. Meanwhile, enormous profits are reaped by the handful of capitalists who own the giant food processing and marketing monopolies and speculated on the commodities futures markets." That's what the article "What the 1987 Stock Market Crash Foretold" - a resolution of the Socialist Workers Party published in issue no. 10 of the Marxist magazine New International - explains.
The mounting difficulties that farmers face are very similar from one part of the world to another. But there is growing resistance that can be looked to as an example. From the 1,200 protesting farmers who organized convoys of farm vehicles along Saskatchewan highways in Canada demanding government action to the thousands of farmers who converged on the Brazilian capital city of Brasilia demanding reduction of their debts.
The Socialist Workers Campaign calls for forging a fighting alliance of workers and farmers who face a common exploiter and an economic system in crisis. Our campaign offers the following demands as the basis for this alliance:
Immediate cash relief for losses farmers face due to the drought;
A moratorium on all bank foreclosures on farms;
A guaranteed market for farmers' crops and livestock with an income adequate to meet production costs and provide a decent living;
Cheap credit to working farmers who need it with special preference to those most in need. No discrimination against Black, Chicano, or Asian farmers;
Guaranteed government-funded crop and livestock insurance with 100 percent protection against floods, drought, hailstorms, and other natural disasters;
End to property taxes and a sharply graduated income tax that places the burden on the rich rather than workers and working farmers;
Create committees of workers and farmers chosen by unions, farm organizations, and consumer groups to police the price and profits of supermarkets and agribusiness.
This program of action can help unite workers and farmers in a struggle for better living conditions while pointing the road forward to developing a revolutionary movement capable of overturning big-business rule and establishing a government of workers and farmers.