Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Of course that's our tax dollars diverted into their pockets. It was back in 
the fifties I think, when Earl Butz was told to support big agribusiness for 
export purposes - help the government's balance of payments or some such. And 
... by sheer coincidence the Farm Bureau and corporate agriculture with big 
$$$ lobbyists pushing it just happened to make out like bandits on the deal. 
For the good of the country you know.

And today those subsidized crops - mainly corn, soy, grains - end up 
processed into thousands of alleged food products on grocery shelves, at low 
prices because those ingredients are subsidized up front.That's what we're up 
against in costing and pricing our local (unsubsidized) produce, uphill at 
every turn. It gets worse. Migrant labor cuts costs further for industrial 
produce, labor below minimum wage with no legal protections, and some of it 
undocumented workers living in subhuman conditions. It saves money and raises 
profits.

All this concerns me because it means we won't have millions of local growers 
supplying local food security. Because they can't make a living at it. We 
know why. We may see a lot more part time growers selling locally, and some 
will be marginally profitable.

We did three local markets in the last five days and noticed one odd thing: a 
number of our customers were digging in their pockets and paying partly with 
small change. These are three fairly upscale markets.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 8/22/2010 at 6:17 PM Ken Hargesheimer wrote:

>Here in Lubbock TX one farm gets over $100,000 per year.  It is called
>government welfare.  Vegetables farmers are not eligible.
> 
>Ken H
>
>--- On Sun, 8/22/10, Marty Kraft <martyk@allspecies.org> wrote:
>