Union Farmer - Winter 2001

Prosperity? Not in farm country...

It's obvious to Paul Olson that the current North American system of industrialized agriculture does not lead to prosperity for farmers or rural communities. On the contrary. Take the little community of Taylor, Wisconsin, where Olson and his wife have their 85-cow dairy operation.

"In 1969 when I graduated high school, there were 22 dairy farms on our six-mile stretch of road. How many are left today? We're it. I'm the 3rd generation on that farm, and it looks like I may be the last. We have three grown kids who do not want to farm... That's the 'progress' we've made in the United States in production agriculture.

"In 1969, there were two machinery dealers in Taylor, two grocery stores, two feed mills, a hardware store, two gas stations, a lumber mill, two schools, two churches - the list goes on. Well, we don't have a machinery dealership in Taylor any more. No feed mill, no lumber yard. We've lost both schools and one church. What's left? Three taverns, a post office, one church and half a restaurant. The money has been swept from Main Street and landed on Wall Street. And I can tell you there are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Taylor Wisconsins right across our country. I know it's much the same in Canada.

"The last auction I was to, there were the farmers standing around talking about why this poor guy had to sell out. They said he wasn't milking enough cows. Or he was milking too many cows. I've heard the one about how he was milking the wrong color of cows. Or he'd built the wrong color of silo. Or he should have sent his wife to town to get a job. Or when his wife went to town to work that's when everything fell apart. I've heard them all.

"But you know what the real reason is? That poor farmer and his wife didn't get paid a price for all the work they'd done over the years, a price based on cost of production like any other business. And the kids really didn't want to take over, because they saw what Ma and Pa were going through."