On Friday, Mark started out schooling us on the economy in the context of the biofuels scam, and how it’s driving up food prices. He then touched on other aspects, such as entitlement programs, and explained how today’s politicians are mortgaging the prosperity of future generations for their own benefit. As Mark observed, “It’s breaking this country.”
Hannity looks nicer in person
.jpg)
Thank you DrWhoFan65 for reminding me of some of my early days at the U of I, which brought back, a rather meaningful understanding of exactly how American farmers relate to the World Economy. The U of I like many of America’s Universities is part of the extensive Land Grant College System that is designed to teach agriculture and the mechanical arts. As such farming was the biggest part of the curriculum, along with chemistry, mechanical engineering and computer science (we had one third of the computer power of the entire nation on the campus at the time that I attended). Despite several scholarships, summer work and kitchen duties at sororities to offset tuition, room, board and living expenses the most significant paying job that I had was operating two round barns on weekends where I arrived so early it was still dark and I left after dark. Those barns were under my complete control and my mission was to maintain order and cleanliness and feed calves and heifers separate individual experimental diets whose components were weighed out to each animal who were then also weighed to determine how their growths were affected and eventually how those diets affected the amount of milk they would produce as adults. Right next-door were some very impressive milking barns where the largest milk producers in the country were pastured, sheltered, fed and maintained. Not far from there we breed, raised and fed hogs on diets the University grew on site. We grew corn, hay, soybeans and alfalfa and what was left over was stored as silage for winter-feeding. In effect we were self-efficient and as scientifically productive as it was possible to be. This was in addition to spending a good deal of time in a farm ambulatory unit as part of the professional curriculum.
My hat goes off to the American farmer because they have always been some of the most creative and hard working people I have ever known. America can feed the world. We are about as efficient and productive as is possible. In the 1850’s 65% of the population lived on farms; today less than 2% does. It took almost 90 hours of work to produce a hundred bushels of corn. Today we do it in less than 2 hours. In fact the hybridizing of the species has resulted in yields that are over 600% higher. 22% of our population is employed in some part of agricultural related business. We pay less for a bag of groceries than any of the Europeans do. Despite some farm subsidizing, the market is primarily one of supply and demand. The result has been farm products that have historically been cheap and plentiful. Even just fractions of pennies per lb. of poultry make the difference between a successful poultry farmer and one that cannot stay in business.
American agriculture is about wheat and corn. Corn feeds our livestock and wheat, corn and rice feed people in other countries. Behind all of this agricultural success is the energy needed to fertilize, power farm equipment, process produce and distribute the produce to wholesalers and retailers that refrigerate and store it until it is purchased. When the price of fuel increases the cost of produce must also increase. Food costs and BTU costs are directly proportional.
Government controlled farming from the top down is not new. In fact it has occurred throughout history with disastrous consequences. Look at how the British forced the Irish to live on a fraction of land where only potatoes could provide the energy necessary to feed the populace. The Irish were good at it until a potato blight spread throughout Ireland within a year. They were given absolutely no flexibility by the British and millions died. Probably the most notable failure of top down mandated farming was the Great Russian famine of the 1930’s. The Ukraine was the breadbasket of Eastern Europe for centuries. The farmers very well understood how to grow what the populations needed. Under Stalin’s forced farm collectivization mandates farmers were required to follow Government edicts on what to farm and how to farm it in ways that the farmers knew would not work. Under that five-year plan farm output decreased to less than 30% of what it previously was. Farmers were arrested, jailed and killed. In addition millions and millions of people died because of direct starvation and diseases such as typhus that overcame a nutritionally weakened population. The Soviets admitted to about 3 million casualties but most historians suggest the number to be closer to 10 million.
When the US Congress demands more ethanol and artificially subsidizes American farms to dedicate more corn for fuel creation it has to inflate the cost of corn, which adds to the already inflated cost of gasoline and also adds to the cost of livestock production. Furthermore when something such as rice blight affects the production of rice in other countries the normal flexibility of the US farmer to respond is reduced because he has shifted potential US rice production into corn production for ethanol use. A government looking to reduce oil usage through subsidies, tariffs and enacted law is bound to create unintended consequences. By the time automakers meet the new mileage recommendations, automobiles will be so light you may as well be riding bareback on the engine and batteries with the unintended consequences of increased road fatalities. Had we started drilling ANWR ten years earlier the concept behind all the ethanol madness mandates could have been avoided. At the very least stop mandating its’ domestic production, the requirements for its usage and the tariffs on its importation.
I wonder if Barark Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain had spent a little time, as part of their education, using a tractor to move silage, helped in the birth of a dairy calf, used mechanical manure separators, calculated feedstuffs and the quantities to feed, or just spent some of the time that the average dairy farmer actually does with his animals, to care and feed them, if they might then better understand that farmers and individual Americans, and not politicians, know what is best and good for American farms, food supplies and industries. Certainly, it should be clear that we do not need more elites in Congress, who know better than the rest of us…and who are socialists on top of it all.