People who think the government should regulate nothing will probably see corporate agriculture as no concern of theirs at all. Corporations do things cheaper and better. They always take the high road. Why should the consumer be concerned about monopolies in the production of food? Bottom-line is always what is cheapest... See, I do know the arguments.
So why should anyone care about having laws that limit corporate farming? Do most of us care from where our food comes? I guess if you trust corporations, you will see the following statistics as encouraging
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Four corporations control 82% of the nation's beef cattle market
Five major packers control 55% of the hog industry
Small farms comprising 94% of all U.S. farms receive only 41% of all farm income
There are 300,000 fewer farmers than there were 20 years ago
Five major packers control 55% of the hog industry
Small farms comprising 94% of all U.S. farms receive only 41% of all farm income
There are 300,000 fewer farmers than there were 20 years ago
Is this a problem? We see the same increasing concentration of money in a few hands throughout this country and some see that as good. Agriculturally are we returning to a time of sharecroppers and landowners? Should it matter? Can we change it if it does?
In the United States Midwest, farmers saw this as being a problem and did something about it. They created anti-corporate farming laws. The following site, from Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, gives the general rules in each of those states--Anti Corporate Farming Laws in Heartland.
I can just see some of my reader's ears perk up... environmental was in that... Must be communist. Maybe American Civil Liberties bunch. Gonna ignore everything they say. Well, I learned some states had such laws from a big rancher, who thought they were a good idea. The law was seen as a way to keep families running those ranches. The goal was to keep owners living on their own land. It also helps to keep agricultural land prices more oriented toward the actual productive ability of the land.
High land prices might sound fine to those who think every rancher or farmer secretly wants to retire to Hawaii and sip coconut juice, but in reality many of them want to stay working the land. They want their children to someday take on the mantle of hard work and long hours but also the feeling in pride as they dismount from their tractor or horse to step onto their own ground, to be people who know they produce a product that feeds not only this nation but is one of its biggest exports to the rest of the world.
We better think long and hard if it's really okay to find all of our food production in the hands of a few corporate bosses. No doubt, some things big companies can do better and more economically, but it also puts power into the hands of a very few people and leaves everyone else having to trust that the prices will remain affordable, the product healthy, and available. Where it comes to food, that all should be of more concern than when it's DVDs.
At one time, people grew a lot of their own food. They knew the family who raised pigs and when they would be butchering. Today most people are dependent on supermarkets for food, and they have no idea from where it comes. Do the hormones that are used in our meat matter to our health? Grain-fed tastes better and is tenderer, does it matter that grass-fed has the same Omega-3s as salmon? Who needs that anyway? And on the hormones, they withdraw them some time ahead of butchering; so maybe it's okay... Who exactly is it who is checking to be sure?
The questions go on with often no answers we can trust because we have removed ourselves from the food chain other than to turn over dollars to a store. It's as though food has become something we don't have to think about, not who produces it, not its safety, nor even whether it'll always be there.
The trend among Republicans is to see all government regulation as bad. Bush has appointed heads of regulatory agencies who often were (and will be again) part of the very corporations who would be impacted by any safety regulations. Is it any surprise that there are less and less people working in those agencies? That they fight against anything but very limited oversight of the products they are supposed to oversee?
So when corporations raise your food and decide how or if it's inspected, what is your guarantee anything is safe?
12 comments:
An even greater problem is the poisoning of our food supply. So much is coming from China and other countries, produced and shipped here with little or no quality control because the Bushkies are so anxious to increase international trade, especially with China, regardless of the financial, social, or health costs to Americans. Just more of the greedy, evil empire we continue to tolerate and that our Democratic controlled Legislative branch seems hopeless or hapless to do anything about. If the trend lines continue, this will put even the big corporate farms out of business. That will probably happen about the same time that we start dying off by the thousands from poisoned food from China.
Rant over...
Of course I probably disagree with you as to the reason there are 300,000 less farmers. There are so many regulations particularly environmental rules that only big companies have the profit margins or the ability to raise capital to abide by them that many farmers have had to sell out. Every family dairy farmer that I personally know has gotten out of the business because of all the rules about water pollution and having to install methane digesters and workers comp costs and such.
And if you are referring to me as one who ignores what is said because the ACLU is involved that is not me. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while and once in a while the ACLU does something that is just and proper. Maybe 1 out of 100 cases or so. J
Your link is not working but I Googled the Community legal defense fund.
They look like the typical American crowd of “I have mine, now screw the rest of you”. What do you have against Walmart. What do you have against genetically modified crops. Humans have been doing this in one form or another for hundreds of years. What do you have against an animal ID system so we can track diseased cows. These people sound like the same crowd that protests at the World Trade Organization meetings and wants to go back to the 1800’s or something. The one premise that I agree with is not using eminent domain for a private project.
And as the President announced this week regarding inspections of foreign (Chinese) factories and products, you will see that republicans are not all about deregulation of everything.
How is trade with China Bush's fault? Remember a president we had named Clinton that was taking illegal campaign contributions from China and was selling them missile technology. The hate for W by the left in this country has blinded them that almost all politicians regardless of party have been making some major screw ups when it comes to food, energy and imported products. Like Ethanol which has raised food prices since we now have a food crop going into our gas tanks.
I am not surprised you would defend Bush, ingineer. I don't defend what Clinton did and expressed my opinion on this topic, not repeating it. I did fix that link. Thanks for telling me about it. It was a list of the states and what they have individually done-- not feds but states.
I do think more Americans can see the fox has been guarding the chicken coop with the bushies. You believe that there is no need to have anybody regulating anything because corporations will do a good job. I disagree.
Most of the laws regarding dairies have been relating to what they were doing to the streams near them. We have plenty operating up here from family operations to corporate ones. I don't know what the issue was with your local dairies. Some people were pumping a lot into creeks and that just can't work. As we have more people, more need for products, we have to have more rules. It is just commonsense.
I think the reason Republicans are losing ground is they don't want to face the fact that regulation is needed given the nature of humans and profit motives. Too many Republicans have seen abortion, keeping gays in their place and the dollar sign as all that matters.
I will be writing on government regulation sooner than later as given the latest toy snafus, it seems apropos. You won't agree with it either. Good thing you only have one vote :) And your 30% behind Bush will hang together but are not enough to keep this country on the current path if the rest of us finally understand what has been happening. A lot of us are mad as hell and we are going to keep voting people out until we get some commonsense in there-- and that includes either party. Corporations have to make the profit their bottom-line and it takes government changing that. With what has been done to our regulatory agencies since Reagan's era, and now with the country so deeply in debt for this war, it's not going to be easy to turn it around
I do not believe corporations will always police themselves. I agree with inspections and monitoring, but some of the complex and silly regulations have gone way too far. I believe in making good rules and enforcing them. Not making stupid feel good laws and then only selectively enforcing them or not enforcing them at all.
And as far as dairies go we have different rules here in Cali than the 49 other states just like we do with many other things. That is why so many businesses have left California for other states.
We have our own gasoline formulas here, we have our own pesticide formulas here, we are special and it costs more to be special.
You ask important questions, rain. Even though I stopped eating beef 37 years ago, I am still alarmed by what is happening in the meat industry. When millions and millions of pounds of beef are recalled every few months, you start to wonder what the heck is going on. I wish we could get back to living in smaller communities that produced food locally. Feeding 300 million people in the US takes a lot of energy, and it's not such a good thing fewer and fewer people control food production. I don't see any solutions. I just read an article in the Oct. 17 issue of Rolling Stone "The Prophet of Climate Change" about James Lovelock. I'm pretty sure you can still read it online. The future is not a pretty picture.
Even with vegetables, we need to be alert to from where things come. We ban certain pesticides here and then import groceries from Mexico where they don't. We are ignorant often and our regulatory agencies have been gutted.
It's hard to believe you have that rigid of standards in California, ingineer given your air quality problems as well as those horrendous feed lots right along the freeway. I guess it protects the water but they are the most cruel system for fattening beef that I have ever seen. How can anything be healthy for us to eat when it's raised that way.
Americans need to develop a taste for grass-fed beef. It is healthier and when it's raised like ours, got to be better for the consumer. It's just hard to get it to the people. Americans have gotten used to over processed everything and we are paying the price for it health-wise.
i will have to look for that article, robin. Most of us are poorly equipped for coming change. Republicans and democrats are too busy blaming each other for what happens to prepare anybody for anything in case we are on a road to a huge change in life viability many places. We just think we have problems if that all comes to pass.
Los Angeles was called The Valley of Smokes by the Indians when the Spanish got here. It is just the way the LA basin is that makes it so smoggy. As for the rest of the state we have bad air quality because there are 37,000,000 people living here. We need about half to two thirds commit suicide and then the state will be ok again.
And the Harris Ranch lot is disgusting if the wind is blowing towards I-5, but again how else are you going to get beef to millions and millions of people.
We all would like life to be simpler, but it just is not going to happen unless, like I already said, at least half die off. Maybe all the Sierra Club members would want to reduce their impact on the earth and have a mass die in or something. Just kidding.
And why are we getting all those tainted products from China. Because we don't want pollution here in the US and we want high wages so we send all of our manufacturing jobs over there and we send all of our waste there and now they are selling it back to us. We have caused our own problem.
And now China is going to buy all the oil so the price is going to be very high and we cannot drill for it in the US so we will have to pay the high Mid-East prices and keep soldiers over there to keep control of it.
How is that for a Friday Rant.
You manage to turn every single topic into a slam at environmental concerns. Most people in this country would like to earn more than a $1 a day. Are you saying you'd be willing to take a huge pay cut to keep prices down here? As for drilling for oil in this country, your backyard a good place to start? Nobody wants it in their backyard but from what I have heard, we don't have enough oil here to make a dent in the need. The only solution is finding new fuel sources as well as more fuel efficient standards for vehicles. Something the evil environmentalists, like us, want. Pollution is fine with many people when it's someone else's air and water. I have heard Limbaugh say how nobody wants to pollute their own nest as though no corporation would do such a thing. Like is he kidding!?
One day we will run out of oil and then what will all the whiny environmentalists have to complain about? That is exactly why I am not that worried about it because the supply of oil is limited and in the life time of the earth the entire span of the use of oil is but a blink. Right now new freeway lanes cannot be constructed because of air quality concerns, but in the not so distant future most cars will powered by electricity and the biggest enemy of an electric car is stopping. If the environmental crowd was really forward thinking they would be doing everything they could to develop alternative fuel sources and working to build more freeways so the electric cars would work better. But instead the environmental movement seems content to be obstructionist and just delay and or raise the cost of most things by excessive litigation.
If there was oil in my backyard, I would say sure start drilling. I don't think that seeing a drill platform or two off the coast of California will cause me to put a gun in my mouth like some people seem to think in this state and in Florida where off shore drilling has also been banned.
I wonder sometimes where you get the idea that environmentalists are behind all the evil in the world. It's kind of amazing to me. So if there was a love canal in your backyard, would that be okay with you because some corporation made money from it? I don't really know how many freeways are blocked by environmentalists. I do know sometimes it's local people that don't want a freeway cutting their community in two. Maybe California is different than other places but I know up here if they said they wanted to turn the road out here into a freeway, I'd resist it. Most people do. Maybe you'd be fine with a freeway at your backdoor but most folks would not.
Environmentalists are not always wrong and industry is not always right
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