Recently the federal government, through the USDA, started the process to disseminate 12 billion dollars of financial aid to farmers to offset the perceived financial ramifications of ongoing trade wars/disputes. To avoid any debate about whether it is necessary or the right thing to do, I am going to make the argument that the money is being misappropriated. Now I either have your attention, or you are fighting mad.
For most of my life, government programs have spent billions upon billions of dollars to subsidize farmers to keep them in business. Some argue it is a cheap food policy; some say it saves family farmers, others say it favors industrialized agriculture. There are even legitimate arguments about who truly benefits most from the money. It appears to me that our politicians keep throwing more money at problems to solve them, and more money does not guarantee better results. Take the war on drugs, poverty, obesity and now homelessness and food insecurity (for example). Perhaps we should try some different ideas.
I can pretty much guarantee that any farmer who was farming in 1933 when the first AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act) subsidies for farmers occurred is no longer farming. Not because it wasn’t enough money, but because they timed out in life. Federal financial aid for farmers will never save the farmer forever, because they will eventually retire or die. Another farmer will take over, so any one individual farmer is not truly necessary to feed the world. The farmer is not indispensable. But farmland on the other hand will always be needed. Will it be there? Perhaps that is what we should be saving or preserving for future generations. We have spent oodles, (it is a real word, look it up), of money trying to save farmers, perhaps we should have been saving farmland instead.
I have heard it many times; this used to all be farmland, and now I am surrounded by houses. Progress in the form of urban sprawl is real, and in good economic times it is like an out-of-control bulldozer destroying farmland and replacing it with steel and concrete. What few farmland protection programs that do exist in this country are very minimal in their existence and size and funding barely exists. We somehow managed to print another 12 billion dollars to help “save” farmers, and not one dollar to save farmland. Just imagine how much land that could’ve been put in agricultural easements with 12 billion dollars.
What is more important to protect? I can guarantee you I won’t be here in 50 years. Why are you subsidizing me at the age of 62? I have very few years left. You cannot save me; you should be saving the land I farm. What do you think my children will do with the land they inherit when I die and leave it to them per my will?
In closing, what is more important, saving farmers or saving land? This would be a good question to ask those computers we are entrusting with our future, AI. I hear they are building them as fast as permits are issued and the dozers can strip the topsoil. They better get them built quickly so I can know the answer, before it is too late! Ooh, the irony!
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