Free Market Agriculture

“There is hope through capitalism for the next generation of farmers.”

The Bartlett family moved to the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota in 2004 to develop a small diversified farm as a result of studying modern and historic economic systems, high-tech and low-tech agrarian philosophies, and the respective effects on families and local communities. We noticed that the current agricultural system is depopulating rural areas by discouraging young people from beginning farms while serving the Federal Reserve System and global economy more than serving the health and prosperity of people, farmers, and building local economies.

A successful agricultural system would attract more people into farming and be hospitable to small and local farms being scattered across the countryside. Rather than sending people to the cities and corporations, a successful agricultural system would repopulate and energize the countryside.

In America today there is a large agrarian movement of people who understand these things and are leaving corporate positions and cities, moving to rural areas and starting small farms for the sake of family values, personal health and individual liberty. North Dakota is an ideal rural state to host this return the agrarian lifestyle because we have the space and understand the value of local economies.

Agriculture in America today is run by the government and corporations, not the farmers. This is close to Marxist socialism and a step toward communism, which throughout history has resulted in the loss of liberty, prosperity and family values. Capitalism on the other hand is based on private ownership and private control of production.

The philosophical debate is over whether free-market Capitalism can be trusted to regulate quality, quantity and safety. Have you ever noticed that people who buy produce at a farmer’s market are demonstrating that free market capitalism works when they discern quality, safety, and the lowest price? The free market works better than government control to ensure quality, quantity, safety and the lowest cost of most, perhaps all products.

Marxists believe that because there is no God, the government must control economic systems. Christians believe that the best economic system is free-market capitalism which promotes justice by protecting the rights of people from infringement by the sinful nature of other people, including the redistribution of wealth by the government.

Capitalism encourages individual responsibility and the just reward for work. In the real world, capitalism creates more wealth than any other economic system and distributes it more justly. The free market created by capitalism also responds to the needs and wants of society quicker and more thoroughly with less bureaucratic delays and costs. The best agricultural system therefore is one where the primary concerns are freedom, justice and responsibility rather than on how much money can be legally plundered from a neighbor.

Last year our family counted over 100 corn seeds on a cob of corn, which was taken from a stalk with three cobs, which was started from one seed. That was over 29,700% return on investment! It seems to me that changes are needed in our agricultural system if farmers are struggling to make ends meet with that kind of return on investment. This also explains why government and corporations are so interested in exploiting the farmers. It is because farmers have the greatest potential of being the most prosperous people on the planet.

The good life of freedom and prosperity will return to farmers, agricultural businesses and the non-farmers (who are taxed to subsidize agriculture) as lawmakers vote for bills which return free-market capitalism to agriculture and against bills which redistribute wealth and trap farmers and local communities in the downward spiral of socialism.

But how can state legislators have an effect on federal farm programs and return freedom to North Dakota farmers? First, by remembering that North Dakota is an independent state under a very limited federal government. Second, by acting like such an independent state. The North Dakota legislature can slowly and incrementally return control of North Dakota agriculture to North Dakota farmers by refusing the federal money lures and traps which have caused the debilitating control of agriculture with its side effects on liberty, family, and the economy. In addition to benefiting from free market prices, farmers and consumers would be ahead financially as the cost of big government bureaucracy is incrementally eliminated from the equation in hidden costs. Approximately 21% of North Dakotans understand these ideas now, based on the 2008 Presidential caucus data, and as these folks teach what they know to their friends and legislators, there is realistic potential to slowly and incrementally return to the free market in agriculture within the North Dakota borders and beyond.