Squeezed on one end by low prices received for their crops and on the other end by rising costs of production, working farmers are forced to take out high-interest loans to continue working the land. This situation drives them deeper into the hole, perpetuating their status as debt slaves to the wealthy rulers, who own the agricultural monopolies, railroads, factories, and banks.

Despite a record production year, California raisin farmers wound up in worse shape, as the raisin-packing companies seek to pay them half of what they received for last year's crop. The situation facing the raisin farmers is a graphic example of the irrationality of the capitalist economic system. Thousands of farmers are driven out of business every year. Food production under the profit-making system has nothing to do with feeding people or alleviating hunger--it is organized only to line the pockets of the agriculture barons, at the expense of working people in the cities and the countryside.

The root cause of the conditions facing working farmers is capitalism. In this, workers and farmers face a common problem and a common exploiter, making labor a necessary ally of farmers in the fight against debt slavery and the profit squeeze of big business.

The labor movement needs to back farmers' struggles for adequate prices to meet their production costs and provide a decent living. They should demand an end to all foreclosures on farmers' land, and call on the government to provide cheap credit to working farmers. Committees of workers and farmers chosen by farm organizations, unions, and consumer groups should be created that could oversee prices and the profits of the capitalist raisin companies.

The labor movement should also demand that the government pay unemployment compensation at union-scale wages to farm workers who have not been paid. They should receive health care benefits as well.

These measures are key to forging an alliance of workers and farmers that can challenge the prerogatives of the ruling billionaire minority. Through such a course of struggle, with the necessary leadership, working people in the city and countryside can build a revolutionary movement of millions that will replace the rule of the wealthy owners of capital with their own government and abolish the rents and mortgages system.

A living example of this kind of government is Cuba, where working people threw off the exploiting classes by carrying out a revolution that took power in 1959. Since then, the workers and farmers government in Cuba has guaranteed the right of the producers to the land they work. Not one farmer has been foreclosed on or driven off the land since the triumph of the Cuban revolution. And in revolutionizing their own society, farmers in Cuba have joined with working people worldwide in the fight for a society fit for humanity.
 
 
Related article:
California farmers facing crisis seek federal relief  
 
 
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