Nothing is more fundamental than food. Food, water, shelter…three facts of life so immutable and so irretrievably linked that no machinations of human ingenuity or stupidity can separate them. Lose one, and you lose it all—no food, no water, or no shelter equals no Life.
If you ate today—you have participated in agriculture. Food producing agriculture is under incredible stress and outright attack from every direction. It is time to raise the alarm. We can no longer afford to ignore or abhor the most fundamental facts of life, or turn our noses up at somebody else’s food choices because an elite few are able to extort their basic necessities out of an agricultural system that they don’t have to see, don’t have to support, don’t have to participate in—heaven forbid they get their hands dirty or have to witness something as messy and icky and politically incorrect as food being made.
In a complex world it is easy to lose sight of the simple facts of life. Easy to be confused by an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies with ostensibly good intentions—EPA, USDA, FDA, APHIS[1], their offshoots, their duplicative counterparts at the state level, the county level, the local level. And then there are the international levels with global nongovernmental organizations all mixed up with the quasi governmental, and fully governmental. All of which harbor so many hidden agendas that not even the Big Bullies who have clawed their way to the top totally understand it, much less see the ultimate destruction sown by the distance and obfuscation they shove between people and food—the rising ignorance of the masses who know nothing of reality or where food actually comes from.
A mere two percent of Americans make any part of their living in agriculture—a good part of those are producing commodities which are a long ways from food. Less than one percent of our population has any real knowledge of what it took to put the food in your mouth this morning, or how to do it again tomorrow morning.
Think about that. Think about what that means for your security, your very existence, the health of your children… Do you know how?
With ninety eight percent of the population now generations removed from the land, with an educational system whose last priority is to teach them where food really comes from, it shouldn’t surprise us when not only are high school Ag Education classes being eliminated, but also money for agriculture extension programs.
Newsweek’s “The Daily Beast” blog about the “20 Most Useless Degrees” included agricultural and food-related degrees in four of the top 20. The writer of the story labeled horticulture (number 2), agriculture (number 3), nutrition (number 10) and animal science (number 20) as the most ‘useless’ degrees a modern student might pursue.”
Suppose that the worst case occurs. Imagine with me a situation wherein Big Nonprofits like the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Sea Shepard, Mercy for Animals and their minions are successful in destroying animal agriculture; wherein the Sierra Club, Earthwatch, and their ilk team up with the Environmental Protection Agency to stop the use of fossil fuels and successfully quadruple the cost of both conventional food production and energy for heating and cooling; now take the combined disaster that is Big Enviro and Big Animal Rightist and fold in the collusion of Big Ag, Big Food, Big Unions and Big Government. What if the Big Collusion prevails in making it illegal for anyone to get food directly? What if every bite in America has to come from your local Big Box store where the appropriate certifications, inspections, subsidies, taxes, and tariffs have been duly distributed to the Big Trough?
That nightmare scenario could end with our economy in a tailspin because the price of food becomes astronomical. Already too many are forced to survive on the cheapest, most over processed and nutritionally compromised food. Land would become degraded and invaded by noxious weeds and unhealthy negligence. Animals would either be dying of overpopulated starvation or being killed off in government ordered mandates (it happened before, it can happen again[2]). The populace would be frantic, everyone would be sick, babies would start dying stunted and brain damaged from protein and nutrient deprivation…and nobody will know how to fix it.
Another aspect of that nightmare would be that we are now importing so much of our food from other countries, and that our domestic food distribution system is so consolidated that any political or natural disaster can have almost immediate consequences. Disrupt the food chain and all hell breaks loose. The wise man was right; the difference between civilization and savagery is about three days. When available food in cities can be measured in days and not weeks, what happens when food doesn’t arrive? We see it around the world already. Riots erupt. People panic, and people die. Some die of territorial violence. More die of slow starvation. Either way it is brutal.
This is my nightmare. It is not impossible. Let me lay out just a few of the signs of our vulnerability that are already in motion. Even though every state in the Nation has a department of environmental quality, a department of agriculture, and state agencies to regulate every aspect of our lives, we have federal agencies…an Environmental Protection Agency that is totally out of control, a United States Department of Agriculture, a Food and Drug Administration, an Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, all of whom have taken to treating state agencies like their underlings instead of the sovereign states that our founding fathers envisioned. They don’t just regulate trade across state lines; they regulate everything inside of them. And what is this redundant heavy handed over regulation regime costing us? $1.75 Trillion dollars a year according to some conservative estimates, and a horrific unnecessary drag on our economy![3]
You would think that all of this government would be focused on regulating the biggest producers, the mass production of industrial food that constitutes most of the diets, and therefore where the highest risk of wide spread food borne contamination resides. But instead we see an inordinate attention and harassment of the smallest producers selling food to the fewest consumers. The heavy hand of regulation is being used as a tool by well connected Big Business to wall off any possible competition from local food systems.
It means that it is officially illegal for me to buy fresh milk from my neighbor. It means that we can raise the finest grassfed meat on the planet, but we can’t feed it to our own school kids. In order to be officially safe our kids have to be fed commodity meat that comes through the official system which is the cheapest junk from the lowest bidder as determined by the department of defense out of a processing system that is tailor made for failure. It means that struggling families are forced to buy cheap meat only one step above the crap served in schools and institutions at the local Big Box at $5 a pound.
This all at the same time that the country is flooded with perfectly good meat animals that are dying of starvation and disease everywhere. Why? Because a few elitist animal rights organizations with very deep pockets have convinced many that using horses for food is different than using other animals for food. They deny a rich and honorable history of horse meat in this country, and the reality of its use worldwide. Horse meat is healthy, safe, and plentiful, and is 50% higher in protein, 40% less in fat, high in iron, and has 18 times the Omega-3 fatty acids of beef. It is a fact that there are more meals of horse meat served worldwide then there are MacDonalds hamburgers. Horses are multi-purpose livestock – always have been, always will be. Horse meat fed the troops and kept the home folks from starving during World War II, and is widely consumed by most of the world today.
This is meat that could easily be delivered to that same price conscious market as ground meat for about $1 per pound, and the better cuts could bring upwards of $20 per pound as they do in Europe and Asia in ethnic, gourmet, and health conscious locavore markets.
And why can’t we use this ethically produced, over abundant, healthy protein source? Because animal rights groups use graphic manipulated images and sophisticated messaging to convince many Americans that all horses are pets, and that all use of horses for food entails horrific pain and suffering, that farmers and ranchers are evil uncaring people, and that this horror requires their donation. With such factory fundraising tactics they have managed to close all U.S. horse processing facilities in the U.S. and are doing their damdest to ensure that we can’t even sell horses to Canada or Mexico for the European and Asian markets. Their stated goal, besides making a lot of money, is to end all human exploitation of animals.
So, consider what will happen if Big Animal Rights are successful in their current campaign to legally establish that the simple fact of using a horse for food, regardless of how humanely the animal is raised, cared for, handled, killed instantaneously with a minimum of stress, as is and has for decades been, the standard for livestock processing of all species. Suppose they convince Congress that horses are special, exempt, and the law passes? How long before they are demanding that old milk cows cannot be used for food, that lambs can only be used for wool, after all there is really no difference between killing a horse for food and killing a pig for food, now is there?
Then, we have to consider the damage inflicted by the Big Environmental cartels like the cap and tax scam, and the continual attacks on food producers leasing federal lands for grazing, or their own private lands by imposing Endangered Species, or Clean Air, or any number of water grabs from “instream flow” to outright theft, to “we’ll flood you so the big city down the creek gets saved.” “All you are doing in raising food, after all. “
The collective damage done by the Big Nonprofits to our ability to control our own destinies, to govern our own private property, to determine where and how our food is produced has grown into a cancer large and insidious, only eclipsed, perhaps, by the equally invasive and dangerous metastasizing of the Big For-profits.
This brings us to the collusion of Big Ag and Big Government with an added dose of Big Unions to control the entire food market. They work to regulate all competition from small farmers and ranchers out of existence, and to ensure that the vertical integration of food production results in the highest possible corporate profits. This is, of course, all done in the name of food safety, and for the benefit of the public to keep food prices low. Food safety and affordable food are good things in themselves, and there is certainly nothing as true blue American as a healthy profit. When taken to extremes to ensure a lock on the market share, and to shut out competition, I argue that is not free enterprise. That is not a level playing field. That is Big Business making sure the entrepreneurial spirit of America’s heartland is stifled, and that they get their cut out of every bite of food that goes into the mouths of the hoodwinked public. A public that has been well trained through several generations of marketing and messaging that the only aspect of food that they should be concerned with is the price, and whether or not it carries the appropriate stamp of approval from the government.
The general citizenry has long ago lost the ancient knowledge and culture around food and food production. Gone is the sense of regional differences, of the taste of the soil and the seasonal grasses of a particular valley in the steak on your plate; of the true and glorious taste of an heirloom tomato not designed for transport and packaging that has been left to ripen slowly on the vine; the decadence of thick cream straight from the cow and golden with spring grass, poured over berries; a tender cake made from stone milled flour, wildflower honey, and rich deep orange yolked eggs that can only come from chickens that are allowed to scratch out their own living amongst plenty of green forage, bugs, worms, grains and seeds. These are luxuries once expected by everyone, now known only to a privileged few who know how to nurture it, or who have the resources to seek it out, and the willingness to pay the full price of what it costs to produce such wonders.
It is in the vested interest of the Big System to make sure that anyone who is forced by circumstances to be very careful of how they spend their few dollars never regains knowledge of what they are missing. The only way the Big Coffers can stay full is if the taxpayer continues to be bilked out of plenty of dollars, which can then be soaked up by Big Ag and Big Food through ample subsidies to keep overall food prices far below the true cost of production, and the country’s bellies full of over processed, over sugared, over salted, over packaged, ultra pasteurized, sterilized, devoid of nutrition food like substances, but oh so abundant, convenient, and available to the destitute, the working poor, the lower middle class. Heavily subsidized cheap foods mean that the U.S. taxpayer is paying the full bill to destroy the nation’s health, and why we see such epidemics of nutrition related disease from diabetes and heart failure, to obesity, asthma, allergies, and autism and much, much more.
A certain segment of the population is justifiably and commendably concerned about how the producers of food and products they buy from other countries are treated. They make a big deal out of buying only those imported products that are labeled “fair trade.” But you never see anyone demanding that our American food producers be paid a fair price even though the facts are just as alarming. Let me give you one example—the price paid for beef cattle over time.
In 1970 most ranchers received $1 per pound for their Fall calves that would weigh around four hundred pounds—the highest prices cow country had ever seen. At that time a brand new pickup cost less than $5,000. It took about eight calves to buy one. Today the calf market is better than we have seen it since the early 70s, but the best you can expect is around $1.60 per pound. Only now it is going to take nearly fifty calves to buy a plain pickup comparable to the 1970 version, or over eighty calves to purchase the four door, four wheel drive, heavy duty pickup that would best fit most rancher’s needs.
Needless to say the standard of living for ranchers has plummeted in the last forty years, and the decent living you could make with a hundred cows is nonexistent today. The outfit with five hundred and up is supplementing their income with something else if they are claiming to do as well as they did in their parent’s day. I would say that the “high” price of calves today is a long ways from a “fair” price when you consider that those 1970 dollars adjusted to inflation now amount to near six dollars today. A similar scenario can be laid out for the prices that crop farmers, orchard owners, egg producers, and is worst of all in things like dairy and hogs where the market concentration of ownership and vertical integration by only a very few companies is the worst.
So why do we see so much of our tax dollars being spent by federal agents to hound the small guy? The simple answer is they aren’t about to bite the hand that feeds them, and the hands that feed them are the Big Companies who have the resources to buy influence in Washington D.C. to make sure their interests and profits are taken care of above all else. For instance, the department of justice’s focus of anti-trust measures around agriculture in recent decades has been whether the consolidation would have a tendency to raise prices to the consumers, and if it did not, the companies were able to do pretty much anything. That focus needs to change to protect producers from unfair, anti-competitive practices, to ensure a level playing field, and access to the market for producers who are currently shut out of any kind of free and open marketplace.
So government agencies rubber stamp the food safety paperwork churned out by Big Food lawyers, and spend most of their aggressive instincts hounding small producers who don’t have the resources to keep them at bay. Thus, we see the Food and Drug Administration implementing a year-long sting operation complete with undercover agents and covert operations to move in and take down an Amish farmer and his family for the horrific crime of providing fresh raw milk to customers willing to pay the equivalent of $8 per gallon and up, and go through all sorts of effort to get it. We see SWAT teams moving in with weapons drawn to shut down local food co-ops and buying clubs where families band together to get the quality food they want to feed their families. We picked up a paper on the way down yesterday to find an editorial discussing the disparity between a gigantic Cargill recall with no legal action even though deaths occurred, and the prosecution of a private members only buying club that included bail of $121,000 for the founder and manager for the horrific crime of providing fresh milk to people who wanted it.[4]
We see all sorts of regulations, inspections, certifications, and fees imposed at every step to prevent the small producer from accessing the market place. And on the other end of the stick you see small, local food outlets, especially those serving inner city and ethnic markets being the target of undercover operations where some agent comes in and talks the teenager behind the counter into exchanging cash for food stamps (now called SNAP)—for which the punishment is pulling the entire store’s ability to accept SNAP payments, instead of a more appropriate bit of extra training, or at most a small fine. End result, without the ability to accept SNAP the store is forced to close creating another urban food desert, and all of their patrons are forced to the Big Box Superstore which is miles away and provides only mass produced crap, but hey, it’s cheap.
It is cheap thanks to the subsidies provided to every link in the Big Ag chain. Subsidies that make it impossible for the small farmer or rancher to compete.
The message to America’s food producers is clear. Don’t even think about charging what it actually costs to produce that pound of meat, or loaf of bread. Don’t even think about raising food in the old traditional time and labor intensive, (but oh so delicious) ways. You can’t compete. We can’t have people earning an honest living or receiving a fair wage. The American public must never find out about the tremendous taste and health benefits of Real Food.
God help us all if the last vestige of traditional food knowledge gets that message: when the last farming and ranching families become just another cog in the industrial food machine; when the last tiny percentage buys into the Big System in a futile attempt to save their livelihood; when no one is left to resist the continual pressure to cheapen it up, to get big and efficient, to do their part so that they can spill enough slop in the Big Trough to satisfy the never ending rapacity of the Big Entities.
[1] Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)
[2] In the Great Depression’s New Deal one of the first things passed was the Agricultural Adjustment Act which forced livestock owners to sell their animals to the government for a pittance. Millions of head of cattle, hogs, and sheep were killed, bulldozed into giant pits, with lye scattered all over it so nobody could use the meat. This was supposed to eliminate surplus, create demand, and raise the price for producers. But the reason that nobody was buying meat was because the economy was ruined, not because there were too many animals. It didn’t work, and the only result was that the animals and the meat were cruelly wasted in a country where people were literally starving to death. When World War II broke out there was not enough traditional meat to feed them, and the country resorted to eating horse meat. There was a tremendous glut of excess horses because the takeover of mechanized farming made them obsolete.
[3] Red Tape Rising: Obama’s Torrent of New Regulation – Heritage Foundation – “The burden of regulation on Americans increased at an alarming rate in fiscal year 2010. Based on data from the Government Accountability Office, an unprecedented 43 major new regulations were imposed by Washington. And based on reports from government regulators themselves, the total cost of these rules topped $26.5 billion, far more than any other year for which records are available. These costs will affect Americans in many ways, raising the price of the cars they buy and the food they eat, while destroying an untold number of jobs. With the enactment of new health care laws, financial regulations, and plans for rulemaking in other areas, the regulatory burden on Americans is set to increase even further in the coming year The cost of regulation has often been called a hidden tax. Although the total does not appear anywhere in the federal budget, the multitude of rules, restrictions, and mandates imposes a heavy burden on Americans and the U.S. economy. According to a report recently released by the Small Business Administration, total regulatory costs amount to about $1.75 trillion annually, [1] nearly twice as much as all individual income taxes collected last year.[2].” http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/10/red-tape-rising-obamas-torrent-of-new-regulation
[4] Food Safety is a Matter of Power – op ed column by Ari LeVaux in Casper Star Tribune, Aug 20, 2011 – http://trib.com/opinion/columns/article_3090c5a2-8757-5311-bf54-10557619b479.html
[This speech was first presented to the Wyoming LibertyFest on August 20, 2011.]
