( Read this article...)
What does it mean when farmland is worth more than what you can grow on it?
What does it mean when the Portland Pravda finally figures out what I have had the bitter experience of knowing for the past decade?
Why do I do it and why do I desperately want some ground of my very own?
So the usual topic is how farmers live off of government assistance and subsidies and now their ground is worth more than the crops they raise.... Just where is this train of thought going?
And why do I feel a continual sense of unease?
(aside from that ever present threat of aliens abducting farmers)
Posts
Years ago my Dad used to say, they should put the cities on the sand piles and leave the good land for farming. Now we are more concerned about making room to make the cities bigger. In fact we should not make the cities any bigger. Get the people out on the land farming small acreages , actually producing something off the land rather than covering it with ashphalt and concrete. I know its a radical idea but ....
ReplyDeleteGreed makes people become very short sighted and also very narrow minded. I live in Ohio. I can ride down a street from my home to an area that is now fully developed and still remember what it was like before the need to expand became the top priority. I use to ride out east on Broad Street with my grandparents to listen to the Bob White's whistle their name. I thought that was the coolest natural event to witness. I haven't heard that whistle in decades. Which is sad because those birds were a natural part of our lives.
ReplyDeleteI honestly believe that there is a problem within the mentality of lawmakers. It seems too much for them to consider what land should be used for and why having farmland remain just that is important to the overall common good of human kind. All they seem to be able to assess is the amount of money that can be made versus the amount of food we actually need to grow and the type of conditions that the planet Earth needs to heal herself.
"To preserve farmland, Oregon's cities should increase urban densities by building up instead of out." Maybe so, but to really preserve farmland and change the number of farmers leaving the field (NPI) into the opposite, and reduce the amount of subsidies, then perhaps the farmer should get a bigger share of the profits. Dare I say the highest in the chain from field to consumer?
ReplyDeleteThe mentality of lawmakers is driven by profit. As they are lawyers almost to a man (or woman), it is in their best interests to pass laws that serve to confuse any issue addressed and create more business for the legal profession. Anything else is secondary. The price of food and the use or destruction of land is not important to those that can afford a McMansion.
ReplyDeleteAs Kevin Trudeau (I think) said in one of his books about eating healthy, "It's ALWAYS all about the money."
ReplyDelete