Quote:
Originally Posted by Patt
I am going to save my response for a day or 2 because now is not a good time to discuss it. I am really sorry about the storms that hit you, we had some like that earlier this year that set us back badly too. I hope your corn recovers!  |
It'll work out, it always does. What you get when you farm bottomland ground in pot-hole part of Minnesota.
Only the 3rd time I've gone to the basement during a storm; probably should been in the basement the 2nd nite too, but by the time we got home the worst was over.... About 5 miles either side of me the crops were just totally destroyed from hail; corn & beans are just fuzzy bits left. Feel for those folk.
I'm not interested in changing you - or other's - view on this stuff.
I see some things you say aren't quite right - that's probably true of me as well.
I don't really understand where you are coming from - You are agaqinst things in one breath, and then for them in another. I can't get it to add up in my head.... I don't mind that you think differently or hold different views than I have. That's cool.
I'm just trying to get a handle on what your views are. Currently, nothing of it makes any sense to me.
My poking & prodding & questions probably aren't the smoothest deal around - I'm just not very smooth.
Just trying to figure out your angle.
I'd prefer 'farmer' meant more of everybody - from the gardener at the farm supply store that offered a few greens in the parking lot to my neighbor with 1500 acres of corn & soybeans to the other neighbor with 5000 acres. We're all farmers. But you seem to be creating lines of difference, talking about 'corporate farms' and those other buzz words you use. To me it seems like you are creating the friction, and talking down on certain farmers.
So, I ask my questions.
Typically here in the upper midwest, we think of gardeners growing greens for sale at the flea swaps - can actually earn a lot of their income from a small acreage of garden style crops; hobby farmers have 50 acres or less of corn/soybeans/alfalfa/few critters as something to relax at, and hire a lot of the operation out; 'farmers' spend 1/2 or more of their time working a real business of those grain & livestock crops to earn a real portion of their income; ranchers are the folks out west of us with a lot of cattle on a lot of pasture.
But, really, all are farmers at heart. If you got a 1/2 acre, or 20,000 acres of pasture & crop - I'll call you a gardener or a rancher, but you are farming just like me.
I still don't care for your buzz words that try to pit farmers against each other; and that is probably my beef in all of this.
Farm programs are icky, but govt likes to meddle with farm prices/production so much, one evil to cure another.... Your comments on subsidies seem harmful to farmers - me I sure would like an overhaul of _all_ of government subsidies to _everyone_, not just farmers. Give me a level playing field & I'd love to lose the subsidies - but that's not what you are saying; you just want to pick on certain farmers & demonize them - as I understand you....
Would be nice to lower our pesticide use; but we humans keep introducing new pests like the bean aphids, and we seem to want to feed more people with cheaper food - so we use pesticides. The 1960's into the 70's were the scary years, when whatever was applied in howevermuch amounts. We learned DDT and others could have long-term affects, and by 2010 we are using less-scary products in smaller doses. We have actually done what you & others want - less harmful chemicals, smaller doses of them. And so - you demonize those very practices that have made this a tiny bit safer of a world.... I just don't get that at all.
I can see improvemts that could be made, and there are some business practices done by big companies that I ethically disagree with - our society doesn't tho, and so we have patent laws on living beings. But I find your broad brush of painting every large business, and every large farm as evil, to be a negative in trying to bring about good change.
you pit small operations against large operations.
I don't think that is a proper or positive thing to do.
Some people like organic, specially grown food that typically has to cost a lot more and is only available seasonally. And those people have that option available. Typically this food only grows on good soil and/or with a great deal of hand labor.
Many people can't and don't want to afford that special food, and they too have their option for cheaper food. And this option is available - as our poulation grows in the world, the demand for this continues. This food needs to be produced well but cheaply, from many different types of soil & growing conditions, some of it pretty marginal.
Seems like a pretty good system right now, as big as the situation is.
I'd be scared to live in the world you want to create, with only your system, relying on only one narrow food producing system with limited growth in a world that is growing.
What we have is pretty good. we have options. I can understand you wanting to protect your options, but likewise, I'd like to protect mine.
--->Paul
