Land & Bread. In that order

I write so much about urban and suburban issues, that I know I need to start picking up on rural issues. Everyone knows about these, right? The plight of farmers?

No we don't

Lenin famously talked about “Land and bread.”

Land for the farmers and bread for the workers.

Well, f the farmers don't have land, we won't have bread. Or any sort of food for that matter because the corporations will own everything and have us by our stomachs.

Governor “Status” Cuomo talked about the yogurt plant in Batavia in his “state of the state” address. The plant that, after millions in tax breaks (read our tax dollars that we could have put towards education, roads, or something useful to the people) went bankrupt. And the owners walked away with over $3 million of our tax dollars. What do we have to show for it?

An empty plant that is doing nothing.

And farmers that are deeply indebted to the banks from all the money that they borrowed to expand their milk production because they believed this plant was going to make them rich. They bought into the capitalist dream. And that's the only place that it wound up existing – in their dreams.

Recently I heard from a friend that farmers were dumping milk in the hopes driving the price up to $17 a hundred weight. Right now it is $15 a hundred weight. He told me that $17 means that they are breaking even. So right now, they are working themselves to debt. And the banks will wind up owning the farms or auctioning them off to the highest bidder. Usually a corporation that rents the farm out to someone and controls everything.

That's a bad deal for us.

Then there are the crops that farmers grow. I grew up in the country and worked on my neighbour’s farm. (Hard work, low pay. Even for a teenager.) We never used chemical pesticides or fertilizers. And the cows wandered out in the fields to eat grass. The fields across the street from my house were used to grow grass for hay.

Now, the cows are raised in CAFOs and the fields are well sprayed with chemicals. And the seeds are GMO. And the fields that used to be for cows to mosey around in are corn and soy bean fields. I used to see herds of deer in those fields. Now, from what I am told by hunters, there are no deer in those fields. Deer won't eat GMO. Cows do because they have no choice.

And from what I am by friends that I grew up with that farm, the GMO seeds are more expensive and produce less. When the chemical pesticides and fertilizers are included, they cost much more.

And my sister that works in OSHA looked at the “recipe” for Agent Orange (of Viet Nam war fame) and looked at chemicals like Round-up(TM) and sees almost no difference in their make up. And then there are the “safe application” guidelines (body suits, heavy duty gloves, re breathers, and full head masks) that nobody wears when applying these chemicals. This leads to another crisis.

Cancer was unknown of when I was growing up. Now I am told of fund raisers for cancer treatments and birth defects for babies. One of my friends from high school has a relative that has MS. Another unknown disease in the community years ago. I wonder how much of these illnesses are from the chemical pesticides and fertilizers?

And the other diseases that we don't know about from the CAFOs. They rely very heavily on anti-biotics to fight diseases. And all the avian flu and other disease outbreaks happen on CAFOs that have heavy ant-biotic use. And there are diseases that are immune to currently prescribed anti-biotics because of their over use on farms.

And all of these chemicals and medicines cost money that keep the farmers basically under corporate control.

And we all lose.

So Lenin knew what he was talking about with land and bread.

If the farmers can't farm the land, we don't have any bread.

I plan on digging more into farmer's and agricultural issues.

WNY has a very diverse economy and the plight of workers covers many arenas.

I think Lenin would agree.

Hopefully you do too.