farm politics

Democrat Collin Peterson sends out a request for support, saying that he has been able to represent Minnesota's seventh district as a Democrat even though it voted Romney in the last Presidential election.  While the risk of one more know nothing right winger in the Congress is a serious matter, and must be considered, we must also take a close look at what we are buying in the Peterson brand.  Representative Peterson has been more than supportive of farm law as it is, indeed, he is one of its major architects, even in the Republican House.  And it is this law, tilting the table toward the "winners" as it does, that empties out the countryside, cheapens the jobs that are left, that plants corn and soybeans on sidehills too steep for an annual crop, collects our livestock into fewer and fewer large farms, partly by insuring that grain stays cheap and market opportunities for agricultural products slim to none.  To add insult to injury it casually and carelessly cuts food stamps when people increasingly do without decent food.

Someone needs to give Representative Peterson a tour across Minnesota in this extremely wet year and point out to him that those fields that are sending the soil to the river are planted in annual row crops instead of permanent pastures and hayfields.  Where is the value of a farm policy that shuts down small and medium dairies in central and southeast Minnesota so that it can put six thousand cows on a rotating milking platform just six miles north of me?  This election will once again be between bad and worse.  Discouraging for a believer in democracy. 

Jim