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“But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time,
wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them."
-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Among the famous speeches in American political history was one delivered on July 9th, 1896, by William Jennings Bryan at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The former Congressman from Nebraska with presidential ambitions said, “Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”
In a recent commentary concerning President Trump’s reckless tariffs, I noted that Canada is the number one consumer of the crops grown in the "Golden Belt." When our neighbors to the north stop buying American grain, our farmers won’t be able to afford to grow their crops anymore. When that happens, a member of the wealthy elite can purchase and resell the land for a ridiculously expensive price.
According to Senator Roger “Doc” Marshall of Kansas, that’s not a legitimate concern for American farmers. The Republican Senator believes farmers will support the president’s tariffs even if it hurts them monetarily.
“I think that my farmers are willing to be patriots and stand beside President Trump to make their families safer,” Marshall said on March 3rd in Washington.
The physician-turned-politician is widely regarded by DC Democrats and Republicans alike as “the Marjorie Taylor-Greene of the Senate,” notorious for sniffing out any opportunity for camera time and infamous for being a perpetual Trump bootlicker. In other words: a showman, not a statesman. The senator, who is rumored to have presidential ambitions himself, appears grossly out of touch with his agricultural constituents.
In his bestselling book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Thomas Frank writes, “Kansas today is a burned-over district of conservatism where the backlash propaganda has woven itself into the fabric of everyday life. People in suburban Kansas City vituperate against the sinful cosmopolitan elite of New York and Washington, D.C.; people in rural Kansas vituperate against the sinful cosmopolitan elite of Topeka and suburban Kansas City.”
“Patriots” or not, “his farmers” are vituperating against Marshall, whose permanent residence is within walking distance of a pristine, sandy beach – closer in proximity to Florida swampland than Kansas farmland.
Later in Frank’s book he continues, “Talk to just about any farmer in Kansas, and you will find him extremely pessimistic about his livelihood. Except for the owners of the very largest spreads, farmers simply cannot make a profit. Kansas has only about half as many farms as it did in 1950; those that remain continue to grow. A few are getting big; most are getting out.”
Perhaps Flori-Kan Senator Marshall is working less for the voting farmer and more for the Vice President, who would likely benefit should the economic backbone of the Golden Belt lose its collective shirt. In 2020, JD Vance created Narya Capital to fund tech startups outside of Silicon Valley. In 2022, Narya provided funding for AcreTrader, an app which describes itself as a "farmland real estate investment company offering low minimum, passive farm investments."
AcreTrader purchases land from farmers and transfers ownership to private limited liability companies, including numerous foreign investors. The remaining shares in the properties are then sold to the public. In many cases the former landowners continue working the farm, becoming minimal shareholders instead of owners -- precisely the scenario that I laid out in the aforementioned commentary. There are no indications that Vance has given up his interest in AcreTrader.
Clearly, Marshall is no Bob Dole, Pat Roberts, or even Jerry Moran.
In a recent interview with Reuters, Montana barley grower Mitch Konen expressed worry that tariffs will take away crucial export markets and increase the cost to grow grains. "Down here on the farm we’re already stretched pretty thin financially," said Konen, who is also vice president of the National Barley Growers Association. "It makes us wonder whether or not we can even stay in business."
Unitarian theologian James Freeman Clarke wrote, "The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election, while the statesman thinks about the next generation."
As Thomas Frank noted, Main Streets are boarding up across reliably red, radically Republican Kansas. But politicians like Roger Marshall don’t have to think about the next election, much less the next generation. Though it will hurt their economy, for some enigmatic reason, Kansans will re-elect him again and again. Perhaps such incongruous self-sabotage would qualify blindly partisan farmers as one of “The Eight Wonders of Kansas?”