Reckless extractionism

Ed “Sonny” Hartl walks through his field full of corn ruined by recent floods Monday, June 16, 2008, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Much of Hartl’s more than 100 acres of corn was under water as flooding from the Cedar River recently inundated his land. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

I want to say thank you to the folks at the Times Republican for giving me the opportunity to speak my mind all these years.

After reading that one in ten Iowans are facing hunger and one in six children do not know where their next meal will come from; that John Deere and Firestone are going to lay off workers because farmers have slowed down purchases because of low grain prices, I felt compelled to respond to Sen. Charles Grassley, Rep. Randy Feenstra and Barb Kalbach President of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI) concerning their ideas for the new 2025 Federal Farm Policy.

All three writers failed to make a connection to those hungry Iowans, those laid off John Deere and Firestone workers due to the 71 year old reckless anti-human, anti-nature and anti-democratic Federal Farm Policy since Roosevelt’s New Deal Farm Policy was scuttled in 1953.

Now I didn’t expect Grassley to admit to the stupidity and irrationality of past Farm bills since 1953 because many contain his fingerprints! Feenstra is just a young pup who wouldn’t know a good farm bill from a bad one. However it was a philosophical and a psychology blunder when Barb or ICCI failed to acknowledge the systemic problem of cheap grains and livestock prices at below parity pricing at the farmgate. Plus when Barb talked about SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) not mentioning that workers need a living wage which would reduce the need for government assistance was a huge misstep!

An historical context is needed to unravel failed land use problems whether we are talking about agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining or oil exploration. The major land use problem facing the world is unfettered reckless extractionism. Whether its agriculture and topsoil loss, destruction of old growth forests, overfishing of the ocean, Strip mining and aggressive oil exploration polluting oceans and land. Plus species extinction is wreaking havoc with biosphere balance.

Can our policy makers just once admit reckless extractionism and humanity’s relentless search for raw material wealth is the source of all human conflict?

The path of reckless extractionism in America is laced with a legacy of extreme and calculating cruelty! Think of Genocide, slavery, species extinction. Revolutionary War, land theft and the war with Mexico, the Civil War, and assorted coups with small nations called the Banana Wars and much more.

Skipping lots of history and just looking at grain commodity production here and around the world you find hunger and starvation, extreme poverty, most nations suffering under debt burden, massive human migration from rural areas flooding cities creating huge slums, tens of millions of small business closing their doors, land and wealth concentrated into fewer hands all because of deceit, market manipulation, deregulation, the thirst for trade dominance not cooperation and wars.

So using logic, if the past 71 years were good farm policies why have so many farm families left the land? Why have we seen millions of small towns business shuttered?

Were those farmers and small business folks just lazy and stupid and incapable of doing their jobs and deserved their fate? Or was there something more sinister and deceptive at play?

Why in shaping Federal Farm Policy a price support system that matches price with inflationary costs for new technologies so despised by those who design farm policy? Why is parity pricing so ostracized and not included in Federal Farm Policy negotiations? Why is a living wage so ostracized by those who sit on seats of power?

We know the problem of fair pricing for farm grain production and low wages is an historic process of market thievery and injustice by reading ancient Hebrew texts. In Leviticus Chapter 25 they talked about the practice of loan forgiveness called the Jubilee year. Every 50 years, loans were forgiven and land returned to the original owner! So market price and unfair wages was a huge systemic problem for those ancient Jewish people just like today for the world’s farmers and workers.

There is much to unravel so I am going to end my letter with this psychological observation! The current price of corn is $3.83 a bushel! That is like a hoodlum throwing a can of white paint on a brand new John Deere Combine.

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Larry Ginter is a retired farmer from Rhodes.