Market Farming

["Franklin W. Davis" <Parsons2 AT attbi.com>]

    Hi Rick...alot has been said about the tobacco business here...but noone
has mentioned the legal extortion of hundreds of billions of dollars from
the tobacco company's...Franklin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Williams" <mrfarm AT frontiernet.net>
To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 8:21 PM
Subject: [market-farming] Re: Organic tobacco?


> Rainbow's End Farms and Orchards wrote:
>
> > Poison is POISON and the growers are
> > merely profiteering from selling death!
>
> The tobacco issue has taken down at least one person who I used to respect
> and who basically sold their soul to tobacco because they were so
ingrained
> in its production that they did not care about any responsibility for the
> end user. That person was a leading spokesman for alternative agriculture
> over 30 years ago and is still with us and apparently still promoting it.
He
> could not conceive of any alternative for Appalachian farmers to grow as a
> crop and still eke out a living. But I never had the same respect for
> Wendell Berry again. He had an editorial comment in TMEN many years ago.
> Even John Shuttleworth, the owner/editor, distanced himself from Wendell
> because of his philosophy.
>
> I do support the right of the individual to kill themselves with any drug
as
> long as they are aware of the consequences. And I bet many here feel the
> same way. The difficulty is that after the decision is made, the rest of
us
> are forced to pay for the medical care and disability that may result.
That
> is where there is a conflict between the individual and the state. But
> seeing the other side of it, the truth is that smoker's, who, on average,
> die much younger than the non-smokers, is not such a drain on the
resources
> as one might think because they collect less or no social security,
> medicare, and elderly nursing home care.
>
> Probably there are a number of folks here who do not like it that the U.S.
> (or any particular country) produces and sells arms, including land mines,
> to other nations and are sometimes profiteering from selling death. But
the
> same logic applies. If we did not do it, someone else would anyway. So why
> shouldn't we get the money as Wendell would say.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Rick Williams
>
>
>
>
>
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