At the end of World War II when America began emerging as the recognized leader of the free world, this nation began an economic building process that had never been seen before. It resulted in gains in medicine, education, commerce, communication, transportation, and cultural achievement, essential elements of an improved quality of life for all. We had many hills yet to climb, and there were problems, but we were in it together.

In the mid-1940s there were four essential centers of power in America that contributed to and directed this growth: big government, big business, big labor, and big agriculture. Two of those elements are still very much in existence today.

Labor is still a factor, but not a controlling one, in certain industrial regions, primarily in the Midwest and in larger cities. Its presence is certainly diminished.

But agriculture? Every state in America has some form of active agriculture-related production in its economy. There are hundreds of trade associations representing various agriculture products and interests in Washington, D.C. Agriculture is a multibillion-dollar-per-year industry that is successful beyond measure in feeding, clothing and housing our nation's people.

But agriculture, and rural communities in general, have ceded whatever political clout they once held. The leaders representing agriculture talk tall, but when it comes to trade with China or Cuba, where were they when the steel tariffs were being considered, or the reversal of the Obama openings to trade and cultural exchanges with Cuba were happening? They were nowhere. Agriculture was irrelevant.

What do Midwest soybean farmers say about trade with China now? Was there any chance that Cuba might be a major market for rice growers?

Any Democrat running for Congress in Arkansas should advocate vigorously for the dismantling of the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Our Arkansas farmers are united in their disdain for big government, and there simply is no bigger agency of the federal government than USDA.

In Arkansas we have unelected the only Arkansan in history to ever chair the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Sen. Blanche Lincoln. We finished the job two years later by defeating Sen. Mark Pryor, who served as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture. In a well-known but unreported exchange with a prominent farm leader, one of the winning Senate candidates is reputed to have said he didn't need the farm vote to win.

We'll never know if he was correct because it is highly likely that he did get the farm vote. No self-respecting Arkansas farmer is going to get caught voting for any candidate who's not right on guns, gays and God, even when his own pocketbook is at stake. And if anyone needs a primer on which political party is right on those issues, you need more help than this writer can give you.

The reality in rural Arkansas is that the actual number of active farmers has dwindled to the point that they are in the minority, even in small towns. If we were to count the votes in rural Arkansas counties, we would see that the overwhelming majority of voters work in small businesses, some related to agriculture, or in manufacturing or governmental jobs, if they work at all.

Rural schools are big employers in small communities. Some work on farms that they do not own. These are not the people who are receiving crop insurance payments and disaster relief when crops get damaged. They don't get payments to not plant crops. They are not the people who have second homes in resort areas or take Mediterranean cruises or send their kids to expensive boarding schools and colleges driving Land Rovers.

It was 2012 when the United States lost rural population for the first time. Rural counties in America contain 15 percent of the nation's population and 72 percent of the land mass. That year an Agri-Pulse survey demonstrated that farmers did not care as much about the Farm Bill as they did other social and fiscal issues.

Their concerns centered on perceived threats from the Affordable Care Act, federal regulations, federal debt/tax policy, and threats to the Second Amendment. Farmers strongly supported Republican candidates who opposed the Farm Bill like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who called the bill an "egregious example of cronyism."

So what did the leading conservative influencers have to say about that Farm Bill? The Heritage Foundation, which seemed to furnish most of the policy papers for the Trump administration, called farm programs "America's largest corporate welfare program."

The National Review called the passage of that bill a "mugging" of the taxpayers and waste on autopilot. The American Enterprise Institute said that bill "embodied the two biggest threats to American free enterprise today: the heavy-handed central planning of statism and competition-destroying beggar-thy-neighbor cronyism."

Rush Limbaugh called the Farm Bill "Robin Hood in reverse." Is it anatomically possible that farmers are helping conservatives dog-pile themselves by joining in the pile?

The battle now is to separate the nutrition programs from the rest of the farm programs, thereby separating urban U.S. representatives, who will support nutrition programs, from their rural counterparts. This will make restructuring farm programs (read: reducing and eliminating) easier to accomplish as we gerrymander rural congressmen out of the centers of influence.

A Democrat running for Congress in Arkansas could do worse than make the dismantling of the USDA the focal point of his or her campaign. Farmers are like the evangelicals now and for the indeterminate future; they will vote Republican regardless of policy differences or moral outrage or threat of war.

Work on those voters who show up as rural voters on your crib sheets but are not actual farm owners. They share the same outrage that the farmers have for big government, and they have an actual stake in the process. It is their tax dollars that go to support those wealthy land-owning farmers receiving those government payments.

To take a play from the former president's playbook, create some hate and discontent right there in those rural communities. Ask those rural residents who do not own farms: What's in it for them? The numbers will be on your side.

Farming used to drive rural economies. The implement dealers, the chemical and feed and seed providers, the local banks providing the necessary loans were all a part of the equation. Not so much any more.

There is very little re-investment in rural communities from agriculture. Rural schools and hospitals are in decline. Rural populations are aging. The term "rural" now connotes poorer, less educated, less engaged in national debates, and isolated. Advanced technologies developed at our land grant universities have made it easier for farmers to increase yields and make profits while employing fewer workers. This is a natural progression.

The only thing wrong with this blueprint for victory would be that there is no candidate for political office who can wield the power of social media like the fellow who used to occupy the Oval Office. To create the division between voters needed to make this work requires a social media mastermind. I'm not sure anyone can successfully mimic Trump, but some will try.

A wry pundit once said, "Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass from your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

Rural America needs to become relevant again in the national discussion. Until that happens political candidates can only gauge the political winds and vote the will of their constituencies. Today that is anti-big government and thereby anti-USDA.

The senators I worked for were David Pryor, John McClellan and Kaneaster Hodges. That dates me even more.

Carmie Henry, who lives in Little Rock and has been retired for eight years, spent 17 years as Vice-President for Governmental Affairs at the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association honored him with the William F. Matson Democracy award in 2014.

Print Headline: Making rural America relevant again

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