Vt. dairy farmer: ‘Workers and farmers need each other’

Vol. 87/No. 12 - March 27, 2023
Vermont dairy farmer Paul Plouffe pointed to challenges small farmers face in meeting costs of production for the milk they produce, with more dairy farmers being forced off the land.

BRIDPORT, Vt. — “There were 42 dairy farms in this area in the 1980s,” 11th-generation dairy farmer Paul Plouffe told these two Militant  worker-correspondents when we visited his farm here Feb. 5. “Now there are just eight left, after a…


‘Workers and working farmers both face common class enemy’

Vol. 87/No. 10 - March 13, 2023
U. S. farm debt in billions of dollars. After rising for decades, average farm debt has reached a record high. A disproportionate amount of this debt falls on the backs of working farmers.

MOUNT OLIVE, N.J. — “My father inherited his family’s debts, then we inherited his,” Hunter Hildebrant, 25, told the Militant at her family’s farm Feb. 18. Together with brothers Roy and Forrest, and twin sister Aspen, she grows tomatoes, onions,…


Build worker-farmer alliance to fight for our class interests

Vol. 87/No. 9 - March 6, 2023
Socialist Workers Party members Ellie García and Joel Britton with farmer Will Scott in Fresno, California. Britton participated in National Farmers Union convention, talked to working farmers about need for a labor party, based on the unions and worker-farmer alliance.

Socialist Workers National Campaign Statement issued by Ellie García Feb. 21. Exploited farmers and ranchers face skyrocketing prices for fuel, seed, fertilizer, equipment and other inputs today. At the same time, capitalists reap vast profits from land speculation, driving up…


Drought crisis is result of profit system

Vol. 87/No. 5 - February 6, 2023

Statement issued Jan. 25 by Ellie García, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from California in 2022. Working farmers are victims of conditions over which they have no control. But these are not primarily natural disasters such as the…


Calif. farmers face ongoing drought amid record rain

Vol. 87/No. 5 - February 6, 2023
Frank Ferreira, who grows wheat and corn on his 30-acre farm in San Joaquin Valley, California, talks to Militant Jan. 7. He said capitalist farmers, the “big guys,” who can pay for deeper wells, take out 90% of the water for irrigation. This literally leaves working farmers high and dry.

VISALIA, Calif. — Three years of drought and now floods from heavy rains have had a severe impact on the conditions and livelihoods of farmers and workers in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the most productive agricultural areas in…


Calif. farmer says ‘We need to stand with rail workers’ fight’

Vol. 87/No. 1 - January 2, 2023
Rail worker and SWP member Laura Garza with Will Scott on his farm near Fresno, California, Dec. 2. “Workers and farmers have a relationship and they can’t drive us apart,” Scott said.

FRESNO, Calif. — This Militant correspondent joined farmer Will Scott and rail worker Laura Garza to discuss the stakes for working people in standing together with rail unions in their fight against attacks by the bosses and government. We visited…


Drought, capitalist crisis hit Texas ranchers hard

Vol. 86/No. 31 - August 22, 2022

FAIRFIELD, Texas — Steers crowd under trees in parched brown pasture and mileslong lines of ranchers queue at the auction house here to sell off cattle they can no longer afford to feed. Texas faces the worst drought since 2011.…


Dutch farmers protest gov’t moves to cut their herds

Vol. 86/No. 26 - July 18, 2022

Thousands of farmers driving their tractors demonstrated June 22 in central Netherlands protesting government plans to compel them to reduce their livestock herds by 30%, forcing the scaling back or closing of a number of farms. Traffic came to a…