Outlaw organic farming??? Naw, no way.

It appears that the people with the most courage
were the first to die here.
Maybe that is true everywhere
~Elena Filatova~

   ‘Landscapes of Fear’  is a truly horrifying book documenting human rights abuses and natural disasters that have plagued mankind for millenia.  The psyche of man might be constructed to always have to fear.  In the history of man, has there ever been a time that we as a species were not always on the verge of annihilation through starvation, climate changes, species die-offs, and predation by neighboring peoples?   When a people has lost fear…. might they be the most likely ones to be killed? The ones who refused to store foods during times of plenty…. the ones who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn’t.  Such ones fail to pass on their ‘brave’ genes to the future generations. So we as a species even when the going is easy, tend to exhibit irrational fears and anxiety.  But since this is part of what makes us successful as a species… we must observe and learn from this behavior. And one of the largest issues of anxiety is the political process. Just as any new despot or King will cause anxiety among all subjects until they fully understand the agenda… so we have people worried that the present new US administration in its seeming zeal to nationalise the monetary and some businesses will also nationalise the agricultural system.

    The seeming locus of this ‘take-over anxiety’ is a new bill HR875 and S425 wending its torturous way through the House.  Folks, don’t worry so much about this… the Feds are not likely to nationalize agriculture, nor will they be arresting homeowners for planting home gardens such as some people seem to fear.

   Some of the videos I have seen seem to point to some regulations that the Feds wish to implement that will regulate what farmers can put into their soil, what pesticides they can use, and what medications to give their animals. This is nothing new… once we went for a Federal system of organic standards, it was an open invitation to have people 2,000 miles away tell farmers how they must maintain their soil. We have been under the umbrella of Federal standards for about five years now…. we have had to modify some of our cultural practices to fit with the scope of what non-farming  administrators a continent away desire. We have been ‘encouraged’ to allow the grasses and weeds to grow between the plants to build up the carbon levels in the soil. Yet we are encouraged not to import additions such as manures and mulches, all of these inputs might contain pathogens or pesticide residue that would be put into the soil.  This is the kinds of regulations that the new farm bill will likely contain. Nothing new… once the people holler that they want governmental oversight on farming systems, you will get governmental interference. The only thing the farmer can do is modify his practices to suit his overseers and keep out of trouble…. any additional costs must be passed on to the consumer…. it’s the same story that’s gone on since the advent of agriculture.  It’s the ‘Golden Rule’, those who have the gold, make the rules. 

   Don’t worry about the videos such as these below….

   Now, for the record, I am all for organic agriculture, I do not go along with some who say we cannot feed the population with organics.  I also don’t like GMO at all, and would wish to keep all GMO’s out of our county. These bills would prohibit any county from declaring GMO’s prohibited in that county, but really, is this any different than the Feds always assuming control as they have done for the last eighty years? The Federal gov’t is bigger than the state governments, and can kick their butts anytime it wants to (it’s been done before).  So while there might be a great many things in this bill that I disagree with…. based on the history of our country, and the increasing Federal role in all our lives (and seemingly begged for by ‘The People’),  it is not a big stretch at all to have the Feds telling us what we can and cannot put in the soil.   In short, don’t worry that this bill if passed (I hear rumors it is already dead in Assembly) you will have to record any plant you planted in your home garden, be prohibited from raising your own meat animals of have some beaurocrate come along and tell you when and what and how you must combat insect pests.   It comes down to the landscape of fear…..just as the body has a need to defeat pathogens, and might turn on itself if kept in a ‘too-clean’ state,  we humans have a need to fear, and when most of the trauma has been taken from our lives by handing over power and control to the government, then the Boogeyman must become the government…. until the government wants you on its side and transfers fear from it to another Boogeyman.