Nationalization-of-Farming

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THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE FARMING INDUSTRY

There can never be enough food. If America were to reach a point where there was an amount of food capable of eliminating hunger within our borders, the need for food supplies around the world is never-ending. For this reason, we should nationalize farming. Farming is a subsidized industry with many faults and abuses. Our government has attempted to support crop prices by controlling how acreage is planted. This has been done partly with acreage set-asides and some other land-idling schemes affecting some 60 million acres annually. The affect these programs have had on prices is minimal because global competitors take advantage of our cutbacks and reap the profits we “set aside.” All the while this manipulation of supply and pricing has been going on, there is starvation occurring in nearly every part of our world. We are blindly allowing the rain forests of our planet to be destroyed in the name of progress. This is done in part to allow farming of those areas to feed the indigenous population and for commercial development. We are allowing this to happen even though the oxygen we breathe and the weather systems that sustain us are derived from these types of areas. We must place a moratorium on the commercial development in these areas. However, the necessity of feeding the peoples of these areas still exists. To deal with this, we must again look at reality. In this country, we are paying farmers not to grow food. Why not pay them to grow all the food they can. This would lower our monthly food bill and create a surplus. This surplus could be used to feed those in need, both here and abroad. By doing this, we would be eliminating hunger as a human concern.

Farming is the joining a person with Nature in the birthing of new plant and animal life. The farmer should be a pampered individual in our society. It is a special person who loves this craft and who wants to commit himself or herself to farming. It is a valued and much needed craft. We must aid and pamper our farmers because farming is an art that must not be allowed to die out. It must be nurtured and encouraged at every opportunity. The small farmer should be afforded every possible aid. To facilitate this aid, a nationalized farming system should consist primarily of a marketing and distribution system. Private farmers should continue to own their land and control their operations. Within this structure, individual farmers should be encouraged to produce as much food as possible. They should receive payment for everything they produce. Our government should then market these commodities domestically and abroad. In truth, we should be able to reduce some of our monetary foreign aid packages by replacing the dollars with a steady, quality food supply. Again, this saving should be put into a general social fund to offset taxes paid by the citizenry and enhance our services.

One might question what the repercussions would be of providing food for a country rather than having them farm and produce it themselves. In many third world countries, the soil and geography does not lend itself to plentiful farming and food production. Here in America, we have a farming industry that is profitable and very much capable of mass production. Though many of the third world countries are poor and under-developed, there can still be an equitable exchange negotiated. It would be mutually beneficial to export an entire industry to another country to replace the uselessness of the land they inhabit. One such industry is the housing of prison inmates. In exchange for food, we can locate our prisons in these countries. This will actually create an industry that does not need the support of the areas natural resources. This will bring economic stability to the region, and the money necessary to bring about a slow, constructive approach to the utilization of the natural resources present to produce a thriving, stable economy that is not raping the land. These prisons will create construction jobs, support jobs (i.e. food services, medical, laundry, etc.), and businesses around the prisons will be generated. We could also start locating some of our prisons in underdeveloped countries that receive foreign aid money from us. This “industry exportation” would accomplish a number of things. For one, it would be a way of reducing the amount of money involved in a particular foreign aid package. By “contracting out” the prison system, these indigenous people would be working for the money they receive from us. We would be providing them with additional jobs. Another benefit would be that the United States would actually be receiving some return on its “investment” in these other countries. In addition, we would remove the criminal from familiar turf here in the America. This adds a greater psychological burden to the convicted criminal. If he/she should successfully escape, where would they go? In many cases, this would serve as a greater deterrent to crime than the death penalty.

Another goods and service exchange could be land rights structured as leasing packages. We could provide poor localities with food in exchange for land rights to be utilized to build vacation resorts. These resorts could be built with a combination of American and regional workers, creating jobs for both. It would be another offering for our national tourism program. It would be supported by our national transportation system. Moreover, it would be kept secure with a branch of our national Security units. This all generates more employment opportunities for our citizenry.

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copyrighted 2002

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