Things l’ve learned.
I met an 82 year old farm wife today. She and her husband have a 4,000 acre farm. All their help has left. They have no farm hands any more. I asked her what happened? Where’d they go?
“Just gone”, is all she said. “Gone”.
I felt she didn’t want to discuss the causes of their predicament. A major life decision was now rolling through her thoughts. Like What’s next? I heard a similar story from another farmer, the same day. I feel a sense of woa, prevailing over them. A slow sense of dread coming.
There is a shortage of workers here. That’s why l’m here.
Other things l heard today…
Mexico is no longer buying corn from the U.S., it’s buying direct from Canada now. Japan and the EU are concerned about the EPA & Consumer Products Commission being gutted and unfunded, because if the U.S. can’t monitor GMO’s and pesticide residues, then extra testing on bulk grain imports could be tied up at the ports, which could add as much as 25% to the cost of the their shipments.
Trump’s crazy town tariff temper tantrums also concerns the Pacific Rim buyers who want our rice, but don’t want to pay reciprocal tariffs or costs associated with unpredictability.
The Port of New Orleans is no longer working 24 hr shifts because of ICE raids and labor shortages. This means products could rot where they sit. And bulk storage costs are charged by hour, sometimes terminating contracts so the overseas customers can bow out and just buy from Quebec.
An additional blow to the heartland is yesterday’s (R) decision to cut billions of school funding grants to 1,100 Community Colleges around the Nation. This money is taxpayer education rebate money to buy equipment for nursing schools, welding and fabrication classes and other technical needs. It’s being cut off this week, and will have a tremendous negative affect on training new employees. Especially in the heartland. All this education tax rebate money will be transferred instead to the richest Americans in the form of generous new tax cuts.
I had never considered other nations being so interested in our EPA. It did not occur to me that other countries are so serious about our environmental stewardship - or lack of it. Because they’re all going Green. Their citizens are more educated and are demanding clean, safe, healthy, nutritious foods.
Canada is also preparing to overtake us in Steel sales to the EU. The EU is going full steam in their global warming countermeasures, and they like that Canada is offering “green” steel, that’s made using clean, renewable energy.
Canada’s going green initiatives are already beginning to pay off.
Also this week, the Republicans killed off all solar power grants and subsidies. Which will affect hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs nationwide and will put us far behind China and the EU on renewable energy initiatives and investments. This taxpayer owned money also went to tax cuts for billionaires.
Provincial Minister Ford from Quebec says Canada will soon be manufacturing its own aluminum, steel and nickle products, and no longer exporting-importing those materials from the U.S. again, so they can avoid the Felon’s childlike temper tantrums and wonky tariff reversals.
PM Ford says this will strengthen Canada and put it in a position to overtake the U.S.’s crumbling path towards economic disintegration, under (R) management.
The untrustworthyness of the U.S. is wholly caused by a Felon-President, and will be permanent from now on, Ford says.
This is what I learned this week in South Dakota. Just gone. Gone.
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