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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] OT Thought Provoking (or maybe just provoking:)

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  • From: Leigh Hauter <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] OT Thought Provoking (or maybe just provoking:)
  • Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 20:20:57 -0500

I'm so glad to hear that some people on this list are so happy to embrace slave labor (I mean global trade). Yes, that fan I bought for my greenhouse (and everything else electronic that all of us have bought in the last year) that came from China was cheap. Have you asked yourself why? And have you asked yourself why our great men of capital our moving our manufacturing and (yes) farming overseas? Is it to make a better America with a better living standard for all of us family farmers? Or is it because they are greedy sob's and they could care less about our country and people and only care about their own little miserable lives?

When I hear alleged family farmers talking against their own interest I am just flabbergasted. I make my living from farming. I don't have an outside job. And when cheap honey comes in from China, or Indonesia (honey that there is no way could be produced by paying a liveable wage to the beekeepers) it hurts me and my family. And when apple concentrate comes in from overseas at a price that is so low that its not even worth picking my apples. And when soybean production, which they are about to, moves to Brazil and all of those American growers go broke, I wonder what our leaders are thinking.

The French and Italians have it right. A country should be food sufficient. It should be able to produce its own food. People should be able to make a living from family farms. The truth is, globalization as it is being carried out means playing off relatively financially secure American farmers against large corporations using slave labor overseas.

If you don't believe me look what's happened to Mexico since NAFTA. Most of the Florida winter tomato growers are now out of business. Winter tomatoes have moved to Mexico. And was this good for the Mexican farmers (obviously it wasn't good for the Florida grower unless they sold their farm land to build townhouses on)? No, they were forced off their land and the land the family peasant farmers worked has been turned into agricorporations, using labor that is being paid an unliveable wage, even in Mexico.

Sure, Globalization would be just hunky dory if all things were equal. You know, wages, standard of living, safety and environmental standards, taxes going to pay for infastructure, education, defense. But the fact is, its not. Should we do away with American farming, as is happening, just because Americans expect to have schools for their kids, to have a certain standard of living, to have a safe, relatively clean society? I don't think so. And I think that any 'alleged' farmer that does should start packing their bags right now and planning their move to China, or Brazil, or Vietnam, or Indonesia, or some other equally poor country with a low standard of living, because pretty soon if the big men of capital get their way, that's the only place any farming is going to take place.




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