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CULTIVATING SURVIVAL The crisis of the U.S. family farmer has been well publicized for years, and many exercises in public relations have seemed to attempt some relief to financially ruined families who are about to lose their homesteads to the banks. But never does a politician, bureaucrat or journalist suggest a basic solution - just lots of phony advice that assumes the victim is at fault. That is because the destruction of family farming is the deliberate intent of an economic system that now favors "agribusiness" as more profitable to corporations, evoking the dictum "Get big or get out!" Yet, a solution does exist that starts by simply remembering that, after the oceans, all life begins on the land. Thus, farmers can still feed themselves and their families even in the worst of times when the cities may be destitute. That is too easily forgotten today amid the glittering allure of gigantic acreages, big machines, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, lots of money and rich lifestyles all presented by slick advertizements. Seemingly benevolent government policies encourage banks to offer generous loans to families who imagine they too can become rich farmers - except that government subsidies to corporate farms to keep food prices low, also keep profits so low for small farmers they cannot earn enough to pay off those generous loans, so they wind up going bankrupt, selling out and looking for wage-paying jobs, and their land is sold to an agribusiness corporation. Looking back, many such ruined families might wish never to have gotten involved with any sort of debt in the first place - and they would be right, because then, poor or not, they would still own the land and so would their children instead of starving on unemployment checks while most of the industrial jobs are exported to China, India, Mexico and anywhere overpopulated people can be trapped into working for very low wages. But the Amish farmers of Pennsylvania have operated successfully ever since they came to America from Germany to practise their simple motto: "Don't spend more than you make and life will be good to you." Today the entire global economy is based on habitual debt, multi-trillions of it, impossible to manage without a steady flow of gullible victims to be cleverly stripped of their family assets by the on-going process of centralizing the wealth of the World under control of the super-rich Chief Executive Officers of multi-national corporations - the great game of robber-baron capitalism. Our willingness to play that game is one of humanity's worst mistakes because it produces only a few thousand winners and billions of losers. Even middle sized farmers who appear to be be surviving financially are struggling to pay off high interest loans to buy seed, fertilizer, pesticides and to replace worn out equipment, working to exhaustion until one bad season of drought or flood wipes them out. All of this is both tragic and unnecessary, for while factory workers and miners may have no choice if all they have is their hands and corrupt unions, farming families could turn away from the whole predatory system to live independently on their own land, cooperating with each other for their common good. Many thousands would probably choose to do so if not for the hypnotic attraction of commercial advertizing, the true-sounding double talk of politicians and their various federal regulations that dictate what farmers may and may not grow. But suppose groups of exasperated farmers and other citizens quietly organized to help each other avoid spending more than they earn by recycling their TV sets, cancelling all their commercial magazines subscriptions, trashing their catalogs, refusing to mortgage their land, instead organizing a barter network. Then, by returning to crop rotation, soil conservation renewable energies like wind power and water mills, farming and organically with horse power only for their families and communities, they could afford to say "to hell with the market". By such peaceful methods they can build a workable future for local, small scale populist agriculture for many happier generations to come. ( Send comments to me at j7t14r@gmail.com ) |
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