Re: Re: NY Times: In the Farm Bill, a Creature From the Black Lagoon?

January 15, 2008

Bill,

I missed the part of Betsy's post where she was criticizing conservation. To stay on point, the original post was about subsidizing manure disposal from the factory farms, not about fencerow to fencerow farming.

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't NC now home to many of the giant corporate hog finishing facilities such as discussed in this article? Could you share us the percentage of your conservation budget they get as opposed to the small operators?

One of the tenets of any civilized society is the concept of accepting the accountability for your actions. If a corporation chooses to operate a large scale facility in order to have a competitive advantage over the small producer, we call that the Capitalistic System or Free Enterprise and there is nothing wrong with that. But when the corporation uses their economic power to hire lobbyists (which the small operator cannot afford) and make large contributions to politicians to get the government to spend taxpayer money to pay for cleaning up a mess they made, that is a form of Socialism.

I am confused as to how you, at times, extol the virtues of the small farmer and at other times act as the apologist for the very system which has for years been destroying us.