Reply #24: They make no exemptions for small-volume producers.

[fasttense]

One of the items mentioned are GAP regulations which require a farmer to keep wild animals away. Now how exactly do you keep all the thousand of bunny rabbits and snakes out of a 3 acre field? I have my fields fenced but rabbits, frogs, toads, blue racer lizards, snakes and rodents are continually visiting. How do you keep birds from flying by? The only way is to put out poison to kill the surrounding wildlife like Conagra does. Which seems to me to defeat the purpose of growing natural produce.

I would have to fumigate with poison to ensure no wild animal might walk by my swiss chard. Corporate farms caused unsanitary and deadly conditions to be spread and then demand that the small farmer meet the same requirements that corporations meet because corporations abused the system and turned farming into cesspool management and inhumane animal control.

I'll bet you my bottom dollar that if CEOs were required to eat the produce they sold, things would change. Well, the small farmer does just that. He eats the same produce he sells to a customer, so he makes the extra effort not to put raw horse manure on the food he eats. He makes sure he washes his hands after going to the bathroom and before he picks because it might end up on his dinner table. He avoids pumping antibiotics and hormones into his chickens and lambs because his delicate granddaughter might end up putting it in her mouth.

Small farmers live next to their animals. They don't want to hear the cries and smell the diseases of confined untended animals. They don't build huge piles of sh*t in lagoons because the small farmer doesn't want to smell it next to his house. Small farmers take better care of their animals because they interact with the creatures everyday. They don't need the added hassle of protecting themselves from roosters, ewes or cows because they don't feed the animals enough, or because they beat and torture the creatures.

There needs to be an exemption for family farmers and small growers.