Essays from West of 98: Get Big or Get Out
“Get big or get out!”
These five words—and the mentality that drove them—are singly responsible for destroying more local economies than anything else in the last 75 years of American history.
This isn’t just a witty slogan. It was a vision espoused from the pulpit of the Secretary of Agriculture that became our nation’s overriding farm policy after World War II. This idea was first espoused by Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower. Benson declared that the era of small farming was over and crafted American farm policy to this end. In 1971, Benson’s former deputy Earl Butz became Secretary of Agriculture and would serve under Nixon and Ford until forced to resign amidst scandal in 1976. Butz was infamous, he was loud, and he was a bully. He berated farmers with the “get big or get out” notion. He decried small farms as an archaic notion of the past. He exhorted farmers to “plant fencerow to fencerow” and turn every acre of land into cultivated crops. Butz advocated to use food production as a geopolitical weapon and bargaining tool.
Today, Butz is rightly viewed by many (me included) as a villain in agriculture history. Wendell Berry’s most important non-fiction work “The Unsettling of America” is centered around the damage caused by Butz’s evangelism for this cause. But why was this bad? If a farmer grew their operation, they should make more money, right? Shouldn’t this have led to more prosperity for rural America?
Only that’s not what happened.
It is a challenge to summarize 75 years of geopolitics in a single paragraph, but in the aftermath of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, America was in a race for global supremacy over the Soviet Union. Among other things, American policymakers correctly identified food security as a path to peace (this notion remains ever true and should be considered on every level of government today). If America could feed the world, then it could bring peace to more countries, build better international relations, and contain the Iron Curtain’s spread. Hence Earl Butz’s idea of American food production as a geopolitical tool.
But what happened to the American farmer? He was pushed by farm policy to increase acreage, load up on debt if needed, invest in new technology, and produce as much food as possible. Newly affordable technology (the “mechanization of agriculture”) made this possible, where it was not possible previously. It does not take a Ph.D in agricultural economics to understand that when supply outstrips demand, prices decrease and producers make less money. Farmers then increase production to compensate for the price decline, so they make even less money. Many become consumed by their debt and their farms fail. This was the origin of the Dust Bowl, but it was also the origin of the 1980s farm crisis from which many communities have never truly recovered.
There are many troubling statistics about American agriculture. I won’t bore you with all of them. The number of farms is declining. Farm size is increasing. The average age of the American farmer is well north of 60 years. But most troubling of all is this one:
In 1950 (roughly the peak of the rural economy), the U.S. Census reported that farm families relied on the farm itself for more than 60% of their farm income. Many farm families chose to supplement their income or pursued farming as a part-time endeavor, but it was possible to make most of your living as a farmer. In 2019, the USDA reported that farm income was a mere 18% of income and off-farm income contributed 82% of farm family income. 96% of farm households relied on some off-farm income to survive.
In short, America’s leaders asked the American farmer to feed the world after World War II. They did a great job. They were too good at it. As a result, it became impossible to make a living as a farmer. When that happened, rural communities paid the price.
Next week: what if rural America could feed itself?
📷: pre WW2 aerial photo of Stamford’s business district
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.