The D.C. fat cats are talking about "The Farm Problem" once again in Congress. The real farm problem is Congress. And the President. And the multinational conglomerates who want to trade away our future and flood our market with foreign food so they can sell their computers, Hollywood movies and "intellectual property" overseas. Although, becoming dependent on countries who hate our guts does not sound too "intellectual" to me.
Abandoning domestic production and importing more foreign food may look good on paper, but you can't eat paper ... or DVDs and hard drives. And Disney movies aren't exactly a staple of life.
The theory is that we should sacrifice our farmers and depend on foreigners for our food because we are now just one big worldwide happy family. If Chinese farmers earning the equivalent of $15 per month can produce food cheaper than our own in the fertile fields of California or Iowa, then by all means we should do business with them. Even though China wanted to nuke us off the face of the earth just a few years ago.
I don't know when we lost our respect for farmers and ranchers in this country. It seems like yesterday that we'd sit down to a bountiful dinner and thank God and the farmers for feeding us. Now we blame them for the budget deficit, greenhouse gases and for fouling their own environment. We take away their water for more important uses than growing food, like golf courses and sucker fish.
In America's eyes, farmers and ranchers have gone from being the salt of the earth to the salt in the wound. We seem to prefer foreign farmers over our own homegrown ones and want our landscape filled with wildlife preserves and subdivisions, not farms.
The nation that taught the world how to farm now wants to buy its oranges from Chile, its beef from Brazil and its grain from the lowest bidder. As a result, the heartland of America is changing from the breadbasket of the world to a basket case. We talk about homeland security and then buy that most basic ingredient of life — food — from foreigners.
I don't get it ... in one short generation, America lost its fondness for the farmer. Perhaps it's because that generation never went hungry or wondered where their next meal was coming from.
Forty years ago I remember visiting my father's Missouri folks. All they had were the simple pleasures of agriculture and each other. Security to them was a family and a garden close by. Their pump house was full of canned peaches and their cellar with jars of green beans. A freezer held half a beef with another in reserve still chewing its cud. They saved back a little seed every year, for they'd learned their lesson well.
You see, they lived through a time we call the Great Depression. A natural disaster mingled with a political one, and the crops withered right along with a generation's hopes and dreams. My grandparents were temporarily blown out of the Dust Bowl to the land of milk and honey, only to find that the milk had gone sour and hunger stung worse than any bee. America's larder was empty. People went hungry. Dinner was tightening your belt another notch.
It's hard to believe now, but it happened here, and it so scarred and scared a generation that they vowed their children would never go hungry. They didn't, and so food and the farmer were taken for granted.
I hope that terrible time will never come again in this country. I pray there will be no more world wars. But I fear when Congress discusses "The Farm Problem" in the future it will be because there aren't any. The ag schools will all be teaching marketing, Nebraska will be a Buffalo Common, there'll be no room in the condo for a victory garden, and a generation that knew how to farm will be planted in the ground or living in town, getting by on food stamps. They'd be the only welfare farmers I know.
But it can't happen here. Can it?..............Lee Pitts,author
Abandoning domestic production and importing more foreign food may look good on paper, but you can't eat paper ... or DVDs and hard drives. And Disney movies aren't exactly a staple of life.
The theory is that we should sacrifice our farmers and depend on foreigners for our food because we are now just one big worldwide happy family. If Chinese farmers earning the equivalent of $15 per month can produce food cheaper than our own in the fertile fields of California or Iowa, then by all means we should do business with them. Even though China wanted to nuke us off the face of the earth just a few years ago.
I don't know when we lost our respect for farmers and ranchers in this country. It seems like yesterday that we'd sit down to a bountiful dinner and thank God and the farmers for feeding us. Now we blame them for the budget deficit, greenhouse gases and for fouling their own environment. We take away their water for more important uses than growing food, like golf courses and sucker fish.
In America's eyes, farmers and ranchers have gone from being the salt of the earth to the salt in the wound. We seem to prefer foreign farmers over our own homegrown ones and want our landscape filled with wildlife preserves and subdivisions, not farms.
The nation that taught the world how to farm now wants to buy its oranges from Chile, its beef from Brazil and its grain from the lowest bidder. As a result, the heartland of America is changing from the breadbasket of the world to a basket case. We talk about homeland security and then buy that most basic ingredient of life — food — from foreigners.
I don't get it ... in one short generation, America lost its fondness for the farmer. Perhaps it's because that generation never went hungry or wondered where their next meal was coming from.
Forty years ago I remember visiting my father's Missouri folks. All they had were the simple pleasures of agriculture and each other. Security to them was a family and a garden close by. Their pump house was full of canned peaches and their cellar with jars of green beans. A freezer held half a beef with another in reserve still chewing its cud. They saved back a little seed every year, for they'd learned their lesson well.
You see, they lived through a time we call the Great Depression. A natural disaster mingled with a political one, and the crops withered right along with a generation's hopes and dreams. My grandparents were temporarily blown out of the Dust Bowl to the land of milk and honey, only to find that the milk had gone sour and hunger stung worse than any bee. America's larder was empty. People went hungry. Dinner was tightening your belt another notch.
It's hard to believe now, but it happened here, and it so scarred and scared a generation that they vowed their children would never go hungry. They didn't, and so food and the farmer were taken for granted.
I hope that terrible time will never come again in this country. I pray there will be no more world wars. But I fear when Congress discusses "The Farm Problem" in the future it will be because there aren't any. The ag schools will all be teaching marketing, Nebraska will be a Buffalo Common, there'll be no room in the condo for a victory garden, and a generation that knew how to farm will be planted in the ground or living in town, getting by on food stamps. They'd be the only welfare farmers I know.
But it can't happen here. Can it?..............Lee Pitts,author
