In an ideal world….
….this would provoke a national discussion and a “new” approach to farming. In an ideal world. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack is quoted as saying in a speech recently that rural America is fast becoming irrelevant. Now what Vlasick wants is for farmers to “get with the program” and stop bickering. Here’s the AP report:
In short, Vilsack apparently wants farmers to quit whining and stop resisting all those regulations that are good for them.
Where to start? First, farmers are right to be suspicious of government regulations because government programs is what got them into trouble in the first place. They took the “candy” to buy tractors, and silos and more land and ignored all those strings and now they can’t untangle themselves and they’re dependent upon the sweets.
Those that are still farming. Most finally couldn’t keep up with the loans and were forced off the land and make up the population of today’s rural small towns. Their children have left for the city and “opportunity”.
It’s a declining population but still a lot of people and people more dependent on the government than ever. The land is producing more but the revenue is winding up in the hands of corporations who take the profits out of the communities.
It’s a downward spiral that may be impossible to reverse. The so-called “locavore” movement is an attempt to reverse the trend but it is far too small to make an impact.
As I’ve written before, this is a far more serious problem that the energy crisis. This is about our food supply and whether we want to be at the mercy of the global marketplace. We’ve seen what happens when we let others control a valuable resource (oil); what that happened with our food?
Vilsack is right in some measure but dead wrong on the bigger picture. It’s not about resurrecting the Farm Bill. It is no exaggeration to say this is about our survival. But one thing we seem to have learned from the government and the media: when we can’t deal with the big stuff we distract ourselves with little stuff.