Tuesday, January 23, 2007
State of the Union is in no small measure the state of the farm
George Naylor, President, National Family farm Coalition
Corn and soybean farmer, Churdan, Iowa
“We need policy-not just new markets-to make sure sustainable family farms are the rule and not the exception.”
How can we be struggling for family farm agriculture when “the experts” think we would be closing the barn door after the horses are out? Fifty three years of “market oriented” farm policy written to feed the military-industrial complex with cheap labor and higher profits have clearly decimated farm communities and conveyed the impression the nation doesn’t really need farmers. Well, if “we the people” believe we do need farmers, if we do need people-oriented agriculture with economic opportunity in rural areas, and if we do need to conserve our resources for future generations, then we have no choice but to round up the horses and bring them back to a warm and friendly barn.
We need policy-not just new markets-to make sure sustainable family farms are the rule and not the exception. We need policy to rationalize our whole economy by internalizing all costs into the prices of things we buy with conservation of energy and natural resources guiding our way. Otherwise, multinational corporation’s vision of using the WTO to go to other continents for our labor, energy, and food will lead us to a planet and society burned up by waste and war.
A new vision has developed of sustainable family farm agriculture where “food sovereignty” (where each country retains the right to determine its food and farm policies to meet its citizens’ needs rather than those imposed by international trade agreements) gives us the power of policy to create an agriculture that serves “we the people” with an emphasis on environmentally sound locally produced food. The next farm bill can internalize costs with real price supports,
From Farm Aid.org