Not Exactly Pol Pot, but Obama Does Want To "Encourage Young People to Become Farmers"
From Obama-Messiah's mesmerizing Change.gov website, the part about the Obama-Biden (Biden!) plan for rural Americans:
Encourage Young People to Become Farmers: Establish a new program to identify and train the next generation of farmers. Provide tax incentives to make it easier for new farmers to afford their first farm.
More, including a pledge to pass a "packer ban" and "encourage local and organic agriculture," here.
As the grandson of peasant farmers from Ireland and Italy, and as a guy who worked in a pantyliner factory and as a UPS truck-unpacker for awhile, all I can tell you is, Thank god I'm not growing up in Obama's America!
And for the uninitiated, there are already plenty of programs designed to identify and train the next generation of farmers. For instance, in the small, semi-rural town in Ohio where I live, there's the 4-H and FFA clubs (look 'em up), not to mention parents. And ag schools galore across this sweet land of liberty.
In any case, as Reason's Ron Bailey, who grew up on a farm, has written, there's a good reason that fewer of us than ever are living the Green Acres dream, and it's not simply because we get allergic smelling hay:
Family farms are not declining because of some conspiracy by industrial ag giants. Actually, what happened is that farmers became so productive that we needed fewer of them. In 1950, 15 percent of Americans lived on farms. Today only 1 percent of us live on farms. The meantime, the output of staples like wheat and corn nearly tripled, while vegetables nearly quadrupled. And the amount of land devoted to crops fell slightly. This dramatically increased agricultural productivity liberated many like me from farm labor so that we could do other work.
Bailey notes, "My sister stayed on [the farm upon which we were raised] and eventually inherited it. She's happy where she is and I'm damned happy where I am." Which is anywhere but a farm.
And watch Green Acres classic opening here:
