Soybeans & Solar Panels: The Decline of American Farming

"When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money." - Cree, Native American Tribe

There are two things I have observed over the course of my 55 years on Earth that continue to boggle my mind and break my heart:

The people who teach our children and grow our food are treated as the scourge of the earth.

Just reading that should upset you. We desperately need teachers, and we need to eat. So why do we treat these two vital professions as afterthoughts, as beasts of burden to exploit?

Teaching is a profession that deserves its own article. But something more insidious creeping through our growing fields will cause the grumbling bellies in our school lunchrooms to growl even louder.

More and more farmers are saying, “Screw. This. Life.”

We rarely take more than a minute to think beyond what's in our refrigerators and what we can get at our supermarket. But I’d like you to do that for the time it takes you to read this.

Farmers seem to get little respect, and why we are so dismissive of the people WHO FEED US blows my mind. It’s a backbreaking profession with low profit margins, high debt, and extensive responsibility. You’re pressured to grow more, grow bigger, grow faster, use this pesticide, and buy that machine. The USDA is on you like a cheap suit, animal activists buzz like mosquitoes, and you must deal with drought, carbon emissions that you may soon be taxed for, and feed prices that keep rising. The younger generation isn’t excited to work in the fields, looking to do anything else. You try to hire, but nobody wants that work either. You could hire migrants, but that becomes another issue.

In addition, Big Ag, like anything else with “big” in its name, is about profits—profits above people. The farmers who do the actual work are tasked with following the protocols to keep them compliant. Farmers are squeezed in every direction.

Some farmers decided that dealing with cattle and multiple crops was too burdensome. So when ethanol production required corn and soybeans became a hot commodity, many farmers jumped at the chance to grow these crops that were paying big bucks. With soybeans, nearly 90 million acres of farmland that used to grow multiple crops to put on our table is now growing a crop whose main purpose is to feed livestock, not people. This is an 18% growth in 20 years. Even worse, the U.S. exports almost half of what it produces. Due to the high levels of estrogen found naturally in soybeans, many people can’t or won’t eat soy or products made from it, lowering the number of people it could be feeding even more.

Some farmers returned to multi-crop farming due to competition, price gouging, and the degradation of soil health. For them, the corn and soybean deals lost their shine. However, some farmers felt the growing pains of switching to or adding these crops would ultimately pay off for them. Further, attempts to reverse damaging farming practices on environmentally sensitive land led to the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmland owners to not farm the land. Great for allowing the land to heal, but these actions have resulted in a great loss of food for the masses.

The general population has no grasp of the expanse of the agriculture industry, but considering that only 10% of the U.S. population grows its own food, you may want to try. If you live in a city of a million people, that means that only 100,000 people are growing food, and it's for their own consumption, not to share with you. You may find it fun to go down to the farmers market and get fresh goodies from local growers who sell, but rest assured, even those growers take care of their families and friends first. Other growers are growing strictly to feed themselves. If they live in urban areas, they are limited to what they can grow out of their limited space, and unless they are vegan, they rely on farmers for dairy and meat. So, just using that example, 900,000+ people rely on the food farms provide.

However, the U.S. currently has a population of nearly 336 million, and that’s what we can count. So, farmlands are feeding over 300 million people. Any loss of crops is a significant loss to feeding this country. But what can be worse than a crop that doesn’t feed even a small percentage of the population? A crop NO ONE can eat. And that’s solar panels.

I first heard of this while visiting relatives in a tiny Southern town. I hadn’t been there in years, and my aunt was showing me around. There was a stretch of acreage that was covered in solar panels. I remarked how out of place it was, and she said that after growing food for generations, the owner decided to take a sweet deal to turn his farm into a solar farm. We agreed that why wouldn’t a farmer do that, considering how brutal and thankless the industry is, and we wondered how many other farmers would do this instead of feeding people.

As people continue to demand more electricity for every home and every gadget, green energy, especially solar power, is a viable market from a source that powers our entire existence. On the one hand, harnessing it as much as possible is excellent. We can develop that industry and market in the U.S. The panels can be built and distributed here, creating jobs with a source of power that isn’t dependent on a foreign country.

But the trade-off is that all of those panels have to go somewhere. And since no more land is being created, farmland is a target. Whatever money is being offered to a beaten-down or fed-up farmer is a drop in the bucket to the billionaires financing the industry. The farmer doesn’t need a large labor team or machinery to finance or deal with animals. No chemical companies to fight or inspectors to make you sweat. Just keep the panels clean and collect a check. Getting exact figures for this changeover is tough but a growing concern. Even the farmers doing agrivoltaics - part land, part solar - it's reduced labor and more money for them…but less food for us.

What would you do if you were a farmer? You can grow more than enough food for yourself, have your own animals, and already have a network of people you can barter with for things they have that you want. You have all the equipment to continue to do so into the future. You have relieved yourself of the burden of feeding a country. The average American, seeing their choices dwindle and what is available skyrocket in price, finally acknowledges your existence.

But now, you care as much about them as they did about you when you were being broken physically, mentally, and financially. Who tried to champion non-GMO, organic, tried to avoid the harsh chemicals until you no longer could afford not to buy in. They wasted so much of the food you grew, anyway…right?

I don’t know if every farmer who has walked away from the business feels that way. And I am not just referring to those who have literally walked away, abandoning farmland - almost 30 million acres of it. But if they do feel that way, I can’t blame them. You shouldn’t either.

What about the retired farmers or those who have passed away and their families sold the farm? A billionaire like Bill Gates may buy that land. Mr. Gates currently owns 275,000 acres of farmland, making him the largest private farmland owner in the U.S. What would a tech guy do with farmland? We don’t know yet. But his foundation has worked with a company named Apeel Sciences. Apeel Sciences has introduced a food additive controversial enough to where some food chains have announced they would not carry foods treated with it. Right now, we consumers can choose not to buy produce, meat, and dairy with pesticides, additives, and farming habits we don’t like. But consider that as farmlands are abandoned, bought by non-farmers, and some only growing soybeans and maintaining solar panels, it’s only natural that our food choices will continue to narrow and get more expensive.

We may soon not have a choice but to consume whatever is available. Whatever Frankenfood they create in a lab, using whatever chemical is most cost-effective regardless of side effects. Animals treated with whatever drugs to reduce diseases as they get treated with degrading care. All for a population dependent on someone else feeding them, who continue to produce dependents and demand more energy.

We will have no say or control over what goes into the food, and they don’t care what it may do to us. They don’t care now. The food-related diseases that have exploded since the 60’s and 70’s resulted from humans being guinea pigs for things like margarine, vegetable oils, and processed foods laden with sodium and sugar. Goods sweetened with man-made chemicals like saccharine. Mass production and demand for meats results in animals being treated less humanely, spreading diseases that demand more antibiotics. Their stress, anxieties, and by-products of the drugs pumped into their system are getting passed on to us…along with the occasional pandemic.

Remember - whoever controls the food controls the people.

Support your local farmers. Join a food co-op. Better yet - start growing your own food.

Start doing it now.