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Purveyor

(29,876 posts)
Sat Dec 8, 2012, 04:51 PM Dec 2012

USDA Chief: Rural America Becoming Less Relevant

WASHINGTON (AP) — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has some harsh words for rural America: It's "becoming less and less relevant," he says.

A month after an election that Democrats won even as rural parts of the country voted overwhelmingly Republican, the former Democratic governor of Iowa told farm belt leaders this past week that he's frustrated with their internecine squabbles and says they need to be more strategic in picking their political fights.

"It's time for us to have an adult conversation with folks in rural America," Vilsack said in a speech at a forum sponsored by the Farm Journal. "It's time for a different thought process here, in my view."

He said rural America's biggest assets — the food supply, recreational areas and energy, for example — can be overlooked by people elsewhere as the U.S. population shifts more to cities, their suburbs and exurbs.

"Why is it that we don't have a farm bill?" said Vilsack. "It isn't just the differences of policy. It's the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it."

MORE...

http://news.yahoo.com/usda-chief-rural-america-becoming-less-relevant-132242974--finance.html;_ylt=AjrYv9aNk5_rhCQjd82XoeG3scB_;_ylu=X3oDMTQ2YWx2YmdhBG1pdANMYXRlc3ROZXdzIExpc3RpbmcEcGtnA2I2MzY5OGRiLWU1ZjgtMzdlOS1hMDhiLTFkNGQ0OTk1NDg5OQRwb3MDNTIEc2VjA01lZGlhU3RvcnlMaXN0VGVtcAR2ZXIDY2ViNmYwMTEtNDE1NC0xMWUyLWE3ZmQtYWQ3NjVjMDgwZGM0;_ylg=X3oDMTFlamZvM2ZlBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAMEcHQDc2VjdGlvbnM-;_ylv=3

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jody

(26,624 posts)
1. Vilsack ignores the real battle between small agriculture businesses and agribusiness.
Sat Dec 8, 2012, 05:08 PM
Dec 2012

Visit the Farm Subsidy Database and see where your tax dollars went.

"The database tracks $240 billion in farm subsidies from commodity, crop insurance, and disaster programs and $37 billion in conservation payments paid between 1995 and 2011."

Tax dollars go to the big and only pennies to small agriculture.

SoCalDem

(103,856 posts)
2. More and more "farms" are factory/corporate farms and they have their own brand of subsidy
Sat Dec 8, 2012, 05:12 PM
Dec 2012

There has been a great shrinkage in true family farming, as retiring farmers sold out to developers.

Farming (like we saw in the movies) has been eroding for a long time. Farmers sent their kids to college or into business, so the old model of inherited farms continuing through the centuries is probably no longer the norm.

I am from Kansas, and all over that state there were farms that had houses built on them for the sons & daughters as they married, and all continued to run the farm...until they started going to college and decided they did not WANT to run the farm when Dad/Grandpa passed away....and at some point there are just too many heirs to squabble about the land.

Once the land becomes corporate, everything changes.

Ligyron

(7,592 posts)
5. There's much to agree with in all the responses, but...
Sat Dec 8, 2012, 06:25 PM
Dec 2012

I think yours has the most explanatory power as to why those family farms are really sold.

"...and at some point, there are just too many heirs to squabble about the land."

How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm anyway ...

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
9. That is same changes I saw when going back to visit family in Iowa. They are also ignoring that
Sun Dec 9, 2012, 02:08 PM
Dec 2012

people are moving away from corn/soybean based food - meats to the kind of foods that are grown in California and the kinds of foods that are in our private gardens.

Vilasik is right - the rural area needs to begin to recognize the change in the way we live. We do not want to play with Monsanto any more.

moondust

(19,917 posts)
3. Blame corporations.
Sat Dec 8, 2012, 06:00 PM
Dec 2012

Last edited Sat Dec 8, 2012, 07:53 PM - Edit history (1)

Many once-thriving small towns and rural economies based largely on family farming and small-scale manufacturing have slowly become ghost towns as jobless rural folk have had little choice but to follow the jobs to the cities where the corporations that ruined their local economies planted their facilities.

Now with corporate globalism I guess everybody will have to move to China or India.

 

libdem4life

(13,877 posts)
4. The WalMartization of what used to be small town Main St. through
Sat Dec 8, 2012, 06:09 PM
Dec 2012

economic "gutting" of local business, local jobs, and local revenue recirculation and local agriculture/produce has produced small Ghost Towns with a big, thriving WalMart monopoly outside each region. Prices are not significantly lower, especially in areas where there are no alternatives within a half hour drive.

This also ties back in through the corporate back door to the agriculture/local farms produce now being single-crop feed production for meat animals through agribusiness, while the US taxpayer subsidizes the actual food on the table of many WalMart/local employees in the form of Food Stamps.

The Chinese workers/cheap product angle supplants the Retail/Manufacturing sector.

Anyone who calls this Capitalism just isn't paying attention, IMHO
. Even rural folk know what happens when the barn door is closed after the cows have gotten out.

And the politics...Red States/Rural States...are the dying breed of a proud, rural culture where families, the farm, the school, the church, the law enforcement, extended families, the trust (or not) of long-term relationships and the local politics was all about We Take Care of Our Own.

I see it as the evolution of the Industrial Revolution and population shift of youth-to-the-city-for-a-good-job demographics.

Living with one foot in each State Color, I do not have the answer or any logical way to assign blame after decades of watching both Red and Blue cultures evolve.

I just know I can't stand WalMart.

bhikkhu

(10,708 posts)
6. There's a bunch of reason, but its been going on for 140 years or so
Sat Dec 8, 2012, 08:50 PM
Dec 2012

the "family farm" went into a downward spiral in the 20's, when the homestead act began to close up, and all those family farms proved to be much easier to get started than to run at a profit. In a cash economy, simply put, its extremely hard to make things work. Industrial agriculture grew out of the huge mess of the 30's, when bad weather brought utter poverty and starvation to whole countrysides.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Btv0sgqKQBI/S9aVdGqtq1I/AAAAAAAAAG8/_PHWbjdrf-s/s1600/untitled.bmp

Farms have been getting bigger and fewer for a long time, but the numbers of farmworkers have been shrinking faster. Rural America shrinks, as the rest gets bigger, so of course there's less influence. Mostly that's mechanization, which has taken over hand labor for obvious reasons - machines don't need a paycheck, and then you can sell the products cheaper, which is what most people want.

Richardo

(38,391 posts)
7. "...and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it."
Sat Dec 8, 2012, 09:59 PM
Dec 2012

The article's headline sucks.

Let's not go all FoxNews-y and react to half a quote. The RWers are already foaming at this.

farmbo

(3,120 posts)
8. They let themselves get played, time after time, by RW fear merchants
Sun Dec 9, 2012, 01:38 PM
Dec 2012

Just this year we heard breathless (and baseless) charges from RW groups that the over-reaching Obama Administration was going to:

1. Prohibit 4H kids from working on family farms (Dept. of Labor),

2. Require farmers to get CDLs for their farm trucks (USDOT),

3. Regulate every puddle on your farm (USEPA),

4. Eliminate animal agriculture (supporting Poultry negotiations with HSUS)

Of course, these charges were TOTAL BS from start to finish, but the RW Noise Machine pushed them-- hard. Sadly, with the exception of the Farmer's Union, farm groups helped to amplify the misinformation campaign.

The fact that, under Obama, both ag exports and farm income were at record levels was totally lost under the saturating din of the the Noise Machine, reliably spread through the toxic airwaves of rural America.

Then, even after the House GOP blocked the passage of the 5 year farm bill reauthorization, putting the drought-plagued Ag economy at risk, rural voters obediently turned out in November and voted-- against Obama.

Vilsack's right; they are in danger of becoming irrevelant.

Play the fool long enough and you become one.

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