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Janice Phillips's avatar

I'd like to see them try and take my chickens and pigs and rip up my cabbages.

These lunatics can just fuck right off.

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Neoliberal Feudalism's avatar

The war on agricultural production, especially against small farmers, has been going on for decades and is part of an ongoing conspiracy. It's awful. Here is Gore Vidal on the topic in "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, p. 61:

“But Dyer has unearthed a genuine ongoing conspiracy that affects everyone in the United States. Currently, a handful of agro-conglomerates are working to drive America's remaining small farmers off their land by systematically paying them less for their produce than it costs to grow, thus forcing them to get loans from the conglomerates' banks, assume mortgages, and undergo foreclosures and the sale of land to corporate-controlled agribusiness. But is this really a conspiracy or just the Darwinian workings of an efficient marketplace? There is, for once, a smoking gun in the form of a blueprint describing how best to rid the nation of small farmers. Dyer writes: "In 1962, the Committee for Economic Development comprised approximately seventy-five of the nation's most powerful corporate executives. They represented not only the food industry but also oil and gas, insurance, investment and retail industries. Almost all groups that stood to gain from consolidation were represented on that committee. Their report [An Adaptive Program for Agriculture] outlined a plan to eliminate farmers and farms. It was detailed and well thought out." Simultaneously, "as early as 1964, congressmen were being told by industry giants like Pillsbury, Swift, General Foods, and Campbell Soup that the biggest problem in agriculture was too many farmers."....So a conspiracy has been set in motion to replace the Jeffersonian ideal of a nation whose backbone was the independent farm family with a series of agribusiness monopolies where, Dyer writes,"these companies controlled 96% of U.S. wheat exports, 95% of U.S. corn exports," and so on through the busy aisles of [grocery stores]. Has consolidation been good for the customers? By and large, no."

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