Dew,
Apparently you drew the wrong conclusion to my post, considering of all that post here, I have from personal experience seen what the agricultural misadventures and the constant struggle against Mother Nature’s impact on this industry can create. By my statement that I would prefer not entering into a debate was my meager attempt to avoid some very dark days in my life’s journey. Losing my father and then within weeks have the boll weevil destroy our cotton crop and the only source of income for a 39 year old widow with four kids, can truly make for some bad memories. Having my mother make my new school shirts out of flour sacks and my pants given to me as ‘hand-me-downs’ by the local banker’s wife, whose son was away at boarding school, aren’t memories that I like to revisit. During this period I would have wished that Monsanto had a solution to this scourge. But then if it had, my little neighboring town of Enterprise, Alabama wouldn’t be recognized as the only city in the nation with its down town monument being dedicated to an insect. In the south, most court house squares are reserved for statues dedicated to confederate ‘hero’s’, but not Enterprise.
The history of our nation is replete with the misadventures that we have applied to one industry that should have remained a strong part of our national heritage…..that being agriculture. But from the very beginning of our independence and the immediate treatment of a group of western Massachusetts farmers, led to the realigned of our national government system. Then the forced slavery applied to maintain our southern plantation system, didn’t turn out that well. Then skip ahead to the first ‘forced’ migration of huge numbers of our citizens was the Dust Bowl that ‘we’ created by turning mid-western land into plowed up fields with no permanent ground cover to avoid the ensuing ‘dust’ storm. All the Okie’s, including the Joad family, could have taught us a great lesson, because ironically the very region that all these sharecropper moved to create the next ‘food bowl’ is now suffering a major decline… only this time it’s the lack of water. This time it really isn’t the issue of ‘having’ tillable farm land, rather tis the lack of water that is adding to the decline of our nation growing the required amount of food to feed our population. Currently in the Joaquin Valley, there is over 100,000 acres of former productive farm land lying fallow because of the lack of water.
One thing that history is clear as to what is a permanent trend is the migration of various industries and the applicable work force for that industry. Once the textile industry moved from the New England states it has never returned -- Detroit is no longer the auto manufacturing capital and no matter how politicians tout that it will return -- this will not happen. (IMO)As IJ points out………Brazil is now quickly becoming the center for vast acreage of former jungle being turned into farm land. Just to get a grasp of this situation --go to www.bunge.com – see what our food industry leaders are doing to take down the last vestige of farming entities here in the US. Sadly, our government is using our tax dollars to NOT grow crops. Just outside Houston, in the small town of Brookshire, one ‘farm’ owner gets over $9.3 million dollars a year in federal subsided funds, NOT to grow rice. The former ‘cheap’ farm labor, from Mexico and other Latin America countries, is now headed south for work……..we will have more and more farm land turned into non-productive land as there is no labor to harvest anything……….our former ability to grow our food will be another New England landscape of vacant plants/farm fields. And we, our nation --we as a world population had better hope that Monsanto can keep ahead of the new Mother Nature offerings that will confront our world’s ability to feed our population. And another concern is the supplier giving us safe food --check in your local food stores……..and see where our food is coming from and ask if we can trust the food coming from China. So please understand…..I’m not concerned with just ‘who” will get the food –because the WHO are US as with all the farm land needed to supply our needs, we have abdicated our ability to do such. We as a nation are all subject to being the next Joad family, as Juan Valdez is now in charge of more than just our coffee supply. |
