Subject: Re: The Farmer's Wife video (fwd)

From: Victor Guest <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 07:41:10 WST

I have been through this myself and saw loan interest rates for farmers
pushed to 8% over the housing loan rate. (25%)
Being aware that other people are seeing this and may be we can change
but it is a big ask.
Vic
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This was a three session PBS program that documented in a very intimate way
the efforts of a farm family to remain on the farm and preserve a home. I
recommend it to anyone working with or in farming activities, and I wish
more of our policy makers would study it and plumb their consciences. Pat
and I found it heart rending, and the multiple "Catch 22" situations were
reality for many struggling farmers. They are trying to do a "good" job
with pesticides, commercial fertilizers, growing commodity crops and
diversification with livestock. They are dedicated to their core, and
worked for pennies per hour or at a loss to farm, and held added "outside"
jobs that allowed them the "luxury" of farming. The "system" boxes them in
on loan renewal and insurance requirements of "best management practices"
that cost money (many ultimately cost them their health), whereas a
different approach would give them a chance. However, no one suggested an
alternative! Big Brother and "science" knows best to justify the rules.
They are modern day pawns of an economic and governmental system that is
worse (IMOH) than indentured servants, who can eventually work their way =
to
freedom. "We" speak of social injustice and environmental injustice
elsewhere, but the farmers are among the worst situations of the lot.

Personally, I was deeply angered by realizing this was rooted in early
government policy largely designed to accomplish what we have now, and what
the story portrayed. If you have read Wendel Berry's "The Unsettling of
America" you will get the history and most of the background. However, I
have lived through some of this until I "escaped" and my family still
consists of some "old timers" of my age hanging in there till they die or
go to the retirement home on their Social Security. It is deeply unsettling
to me to realize that we, as a people, have been evicted from our land as
surely as if we were invaded and conquered, but just more slowly with lots
of "sugar coating" from our "leaders" in elected and appointed positions.
This PBS program was very depressing to me ... imagine, FARMERS on FOOD
STAMPS! They were so busy trying to earn enough money to get by they didn't
have time, or maybe also didn't notice the option or skills, of having a
"kitchen garden." When my family went through the Great Depression before I
was born they didn't have money, but they had food on the table! The
"system" now requires lots of money to function. What a disconnect we have
with the ecosystem that works for free. It's as if we have forgotten that
there is a perpetual Cornucopia offering us a banquet and we can't see the
table.

I hope this rant doesn't offend anyone.

Dick Richardson

R. H. (Dick) Richardson                     (512) 471-4128 office
School of Biol. Sci./Integrative Biol. Sect.      471-9651 FAX
Patterson Lab
University of Texas                              =20
Austin, TX 78712
=09
"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." -- Anas Nin