Corn and hell

By RON DEVERMAN

Jim Schwab. Raising Less Corn and More Hell: Midwestern Farmers Speak Out.
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Pp. 301 with appendices and index. $24.95 (cloth).

Raising Less Corn and More Hell offers the touching and often angry testimonies of farmers caught in this nation's worst agricultural crisis. Iowan Jim Schwab, author of many articles about farming and farm problems, provides a series of interviews that detail the reasons why so many farmers have been forced to give up their unique way of life and why the rest of us should care.

Reading Schwab, one understands how farming is a cantankerous business. Farmers are continually affected by weather and burdened by risk as they labor 60 to 70 hours a week. For their efforts, they see commodity prices drop while they face escalating financial obligations. Merle Hansen, farm adviser for Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign, notes that farmers cannot price their products. They are victims of a marketing system that is influenced more by corporate takeovers, terrorist attacks and presidential elections than by what happens in their fields.

Schwab reveals how the farm crisis has been accelerated by the ineptitude of economic and political institutions. These pages are filled with accounts of inexperienced loan officers, bureaucratic snafus and a national farm policy completely insensitive to farm life. According to Iowa farmer Gary Lamb, many farmers believe there is a deliberate conspiracy to eliminate small farms.

One understands Lamb's point in reading the story of Elmer and Pat Steffes, who used to operate a grain and dairy farm in Audubon, Iowa. They managed well for over 20 years. In 1979, two of their sons died of leukemia. With outside bills and interest rates mounting, they were pressured by creditors. One afternoon they came home to find bank directors and inventory brokers inspecting their farm. Within 30 days, the National Bank of Audubon claimed the Steffes' livestock and machinery, which had served as collateral for their $168,000 debt.

Interestingly, in the late 1970s lending institutions had encouraged farmers to expand their operations by assuring them that economic conditions were good. My father and I faced similar encouragement in 1981 when we considered buying 160 acres of land adjacent to our existing farm in Menard County, Ill. The asking price was about $2,800 per acre or $448,000. At 19 percent, the interest payment alone would have been more than double the profit the land could produce in a good crop year. Yet this was a typical land deal banks were negotiating with Midwestern farmers at the time. As a result, by the early 1980s farm debt was well over eight times as large as net farm income. High interest rates, land devaluation and tighter credit forced many farmers into foreclosure or bankruptcy.

Reva and Francis Crooks provide a telling example. They had only $1700 in debt on their small dairy farm. So the Farmers Home Administration agreed to loan them $63,000 for a new milking parlor. The local Production Credit Association (PCA) agreed to lend them money for additional dairy cattle. When the milking parlor was built, however, the PCA wouldn't provide the promised money. Overnight, the Crooks were strapped with a $63,000 debt and no source of extra income. They were forced to sell.

Part of the problem, however, has been that farmers traditionally do not get involved in politics. But true to the book's subtitle, Schwab shows how reticent farmers have been galvanized into action by the failing agricultural economy. Advocacy groups such as Farm Unity Coalition, Groundswell, COACT and Illinois Farm Alliance were established as farmers realized that Washington politicians were not representing their interests. Farmer responses have ranged from operating food pantries and crisis centers, to being advocates for families about to undergo foreclosure, to speaking at rallies about ineffective farm policies, to running candidates for Congress.

The most dramatic example of activism Schwab cites is the story of Pete Brent and Tony Bos. In spring 1984, they protested Reagan's farm policies by traveling to Washington in an old tractor and manure spreader which carried an outhouse christened the "traveling White House." As Brent and Bos arrived in Washington, the media and the police greeted them. Their antics drew national attention.

Schwab's book doesn't explain why anyone would want to be a farmer in the first place. There is little sense here of the heritage people feel as farmland is handed down through generations. Nor does the reader hear the resounding joys or harsh challenges of living close to the countryside. Mingling their hopes in the ground's fate forms the essence of farm life. However, it explains why the effects of the current crisis are so devastating to them personally as well as economically.

Schwab does offer a glimpse into the anguish. Mary Beth Janssen, a Rudd, Iowa, farm wife, tells of the tremendous emotional stress farm children feel — for example, the young boy who hides his toy tractors at night so the banker won't take them away; or the little girl who cannot understand why her dad must sell her pet dairy cow. Their emotional distress is mirrored in their parents, many of whom seek counseling for stress-related illnesses or severe depression.

In the last section of the book, Schwab profiles agriculture's new leaders. These are more encouraging stories, since farmers desperately need strong voices in Washington. A perfect example is Wayne Cryts, the Missouri farmer who became nationally famous for illegally removing his soybeans from a bankrupt elevator in 1981. Cryts went on to become a leader in the American Agriculture Movement and was elected to Congress in 1986. He and others are working to develop a farm policy that would bring profit back to farming by assuring farmers a fair market price above their production cost.

Anyone who wants to learn what has recently happened to American agriculture should read this book. It proves that when our farmers suffer, America suffers.

Ron Deverman, an environmental engineer and technical writer in Springfield, is a published poet and the former chairman of Illinois Writers Inc. Ron's father continues to manage the 110-year-old family farm in Menard County. Ron was a victim of the farm crisis after farming for over 10 years.

June 1989 | Illinois Issues | 31