Pollster Scott Rasmussen runs an outfit called RMG Research, and he’s been polling “elites,” whom he defines as people making $150,000 or more, living in urban areas, and having post-graduate degrees. Sounds like the kind of people we Midwesterners don’t like without knowing much more about them, and the Rasmussen poll results don’t disappoint.
The least surprising results are the finding that the elites think the rest of us have too much freedom. Not only that, but according to the poll, seventy-seven percent of the elites favor rationing gas, meat, and electricity in order to protect the environment.
Wow! Rationing meat? As the saying goes, they’ll have to pry my hamburger from my cold, dead hands. The poll results aren’t surprising, I guess. Meat has long been painted as an unmitigated evil in the climate change wars, and it seems the public relations effort is paying dividends, at least in the more affluent and sophisticated parts of the country where Mr. Rasmussen’s elites reside.
I’m fully on board with the scientific effort to disprove the idea that cows are some special sort of carbon-emitting evil, but that effort ignores the more interesting question. Why is meat the villain here, instead of cars, movie theaters, cell phones, second homes, private jets, Taylor Swift concerts, or soccer games? Ok, a couple of my prejudices are showing through here, but you get the point.
Are these elites celebrating a graduation, a promotion, or a retirement with vegetarian tacos and three-bean salad? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure steak is on the menu for them, just as it would be for you and me. Worrying about meat consumption has become a social signifier, just like fashionable political positions and driving an EV, but my suspicion is that beef is still at the center of the plate for special occasions and probably eaten by Mr. Rasmussen’s elites on a lot of other days as well.
If I’m correct, and elites aren’t being honest with themselves, another recent poll has found that we farmers are guilty of not dishonesty but rather a failure to look at the world as it is. Agri-Pulse has surveyed farmers and found that we favor both increases in farm subsidies and decreases in funding for the SNAP program. SNAP is the successor program to food stamps and is part of the Farm Bill.
This is, it seems to me a very bad look for farmers. The Agri-Pulse poll has seen quite a bit of play in the media. It should be obvious to my fellow farmers responding to the poll that many congressmen don’t have a single farmer in their district but have thousands of constituents benefitting from the SNAP program. If you want to pass a farm bill, it might be good to have the people receiving food aid and the Congressmen who represent them on your side. Although our politics now seem to center around the glory of the fight rather than, you know, winning, it seems strange for farmers to hold positions perfectly calibrated to alienate the very people you might need to increase farm subsidies.
Many farmers are convinced that combining the SNAP program with traditional farm subsidies actually decreases the likelihood of passage of the Farm Bill. Over the years, I’ve had a number of discussions with farmers who made that argument. They were expressing a deep faith in the American public’s allegiance to farm subsidies. I find this belief touching but unrealistic in the extreme.
Farm subsidies are a rounding error in the federal budget, and farmers are popular with the public, but nobody on either coast, where most Congressmen are elected, cares a whit about the farm program. They will, however, support food aid for poor people. That’s how we can pass a farm bill when the majority of Congressmen voting for the bill couldn’t tell you the reference price for peanuts or even what Title 1 is.
If we farmers as a group argue that poor people, or at least people with a lot less money than the average farmer, should have their programs cut so that we can increase federal payments to farmers, it isn’t likely to win us friends. Farmers are upset when the total cost of the farm bill makes the news, rightly pointing out that the overwhelming majority of the cost of the farm bill lies in nutrition programs rather than farm subsidies. True, but not really important to the average voter.
Farm income projections for the next few years are deeply in the red, and price protection in the present Farm Bill doesn’t kick in until price levels are well below break-even for most farmers. Farmers would be wise to keep our eye on the main prize and look for other areas to support cutting government spending.
Blake Hurst is a farmer and greenhouse grower in Northwest Missouri.
For more ag news or opinions, visit www.Agri-Pulse.com.