Greedy Farmers and Convenient Lies

While I had a down day during my trip in China I was able to visit a few groups on the old Facebook for entertainment. One thread in the Grain Market Discussion Group really hit me, not the subject but one of the responses. It bothered me enough I wrote this essay.

A corn processing mill in the Eastern Corn Belt announced it was closing. The comments filled up the way they do — some sympathy, some analysis, and eventually, right on schedule, the comment I knew was coming. A familiar name. A familiar tune. The farmers in that area were too greedy to sell at the price the mill needed. If they had just lowered their price expectations, the mill would still be open. The farmers killed it.

It is easy to blame the farmer. It is a lot harder to look at what actually happened to corn demand in that geography. Just over the state line, a brand new mill supplies feed to a large integrated hog operation. Just north of the closing facility sits one of the most feed-intensive livestock corridors in the region — beef, dairy, hogs, poultry. The competition for that corn changed dramatically since the day that mill was built. The market moved. The farmer didn't cause that. The farmer responded to it, the same way markets work.

But structural explanations don't feel as satisfying as a villain. And farmers make convenient villains.

This particular poster has a long pattern. Blame the farmer for not hedging when prices drop. Blame the farmer for selling too much when prices rise. Blame the farmer for planting too many soybeans, too much corn. And when called on it, the cards come out. I'm just stating facts. Show me where I said that. That is gaslighting. It has a name and we should use it.

We are in the middle of a farmer mental health moment. Social media is full of hotline numbers and reminders to check on your friends. That matters. But the conversation is incomplete as long as we put all the weight on the farmer to reach out and none of it on the people who spent years telling him everything wrong on his operation was his own fault. Calling a hotline is hard when the voice in your head sounds exactly like the people in your comment section.

The poster who blamed those farmers for a mill closing will share a suicide awareness post before the week is out. He will not connect the two. That is the part we need to talk about.