"With No Malice"©2012
A General Interest Opinion Column by an opinionated person.
Vic Topmiller Jr.
11/29/12(50)
WORDS
"All words are pegs to hang ideas on."
Henry ward Beecher.


Is it time to prepare?

One thing for sure, large corporations are buying up more and more tracts of land. Large tracts.

I think it so ironic, large corporations buy up large tracts of land, not hundreds of acres but thousands, and everyone applauds because the land in the hands of the bigger more efficient corporations will result in much better and efficient use of the land and consequently more food production for a starving world. Do you believe that? Isn't it funny how we are? I also believed that, but now I read more and more studies that conclude that the family farm is in fact the most efficient of all farming operations. One study showed that on the family farm very little land is wasted, that the best, or at least the most tillable land on the farm would be used to grow the cash crops such as soybeans or rice or corn. These crops can easily be sold to the big markets through the farm co-ops and participating with other farmers through the co-op concept can deliver large product volumes to the major purchaser and then to the consumer around the world.

But that isn't the end of the story. Extract from the local family farm the space needed for a house and barn and the rest was also in production of crops for local markets. Crops like vegetables, eggs, poultry, pork, beef, milk and milk products – cheese and butter. These products, not suitable for delivery on an international scale gave the local farmer a product to sell in the local markets and provide a fast cash product while providing a real and required service for the community.

Isn't the local farmer concept cool? You know what? Government hates these local independent characters, who think that they should have the right to plant, grow, harvest and sell without government impediments. In the past and probably still, the government has caused more small independent farm entrepreneurs to go out of business than drought or flood ever came close. You want to know what I sense? Behind every small community slaughter house or small dairy enterprise that closes down because they are overwhelmed by government regulations and bureaucratic enforcers, up the line and out of sight you will find big business pushing restrictive legislation that eliminates small time upstarts in the name of protecting the public. Consider this, the local chicken farmer somehow lets a chicken get out to a customer that has somehow been contaminated by something – how many people get sick? One, maybe two or three. Now, if a major poultry supplier lets contamination become introduced into its production houses what happens? We have a major health crisis on an international scale. And the corporation let it happen in order to increase profit and then lets the insurance company pay the legal costs.

Oh, so what about the consequences to the small farmer who happened to have a chicken slaughterhouse, even though only one or two people got sick, the whole neighborhood is aware, and he gets thrown out of business or he is shunned until penitence is paid.

There is a UN organization called "Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD. The purpose of the organization is to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by paying forest owners not to cut the forest. The money, oh, that will come from mega-rich industrialists. Now, you have billions of dollars floating around to intimidate the local forest dwellers used by conservation organizations on the justifiable pretense of fighting climate change and saving the rain forest. But, when governments begin to sell off the rain forests, whose forest are they selling and who will be the owner of the ultimate "CARBON CREDITS"?

To indicate how asinine this whole fraud is, companies are denuding rain forests around the world with the vigor and tenacity of the ant, telling the world that it is justified because of the necessity to provide rice to Asia, trees for the paper pulp mills and corn and beans for Bio-Fuels.

But you and I, we're safe from all this, aren't we? Well, no. The world gets smaller everyday.

Ever notice how property taxes keep getting higher every year? Especially if you hold property larger than your basic one-quarter acre house site. Unbeknownst to the local tax assessor (I think) this burden on the property owner fits hand in hand with the UN concept of communal housing and smaller residential footprint. All in the name of more efficient use of the land.

I had an opportunity a few years ago to spend some time in the rain forests of southern Mexico. So fascinating is the lifestyle of the Mayan people who dwell in the rain forest. How they farm and ranch is the epitome of efficiency. Every few years, they will mark out a five-to-ten-acre tract, move on to their tract with machetes and whack out a clearing. After the whole tract is whacked and lain on the ground they burn it. The burning of the dense cover adds nutrients to the soil perfect for regeneration. Soon the soil comes roaring back with a robust revitalization and produces crops and pasture of unusual proportion. Within a few years, the vitality of the soil will be used up and the process will take place in another area. In the meantime, the previous site, because it is in a rain forest, will regrow the trees and vegetation and completely heal itself. Just in a few years, already to renew the cycle. Notice, no big machinery belching carbon, no soil-killing artificial chemicals. Just traditional use of the land proven over generations.

In these USA, there is still the blood and genes of the pilgrims, who risked life and blood to have their own piece of ground – to grow their own garden. I hope there is enough of them left.

The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. Eccl: 5:12


That's My Opinion.



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