When did farmers first learn that water conservation and crop rotation were paramount in keeping their land productive? It probably became common knowledge not long after the concept of private property and individually owned farms took hold, which is to say, a long, long time ago.
Whenever a farm bill starts bouncing around Congress supporters of government subsidies come out of the woodwork in favor of more sharing of the taxpayers' wealth with agribusiness. And here's one that was in the print edition of the morning paper. It wasn't in the online edition, however, the same William McKenzie editorial can be found at Kansas.com and Vindy.com.
His basic argument is that farmers need to plant crops that don't waste scarce water and don't deplete the soil nutrients. Nothing wrong with that, however his big government solution is to bribe them. In other words, he wants a farm bill that will pay them for doing what common sense told generations of farmers before them to do. It's very condescending, and it suggests that he thinks farmers aren't smart enough to do it on their own.
But what we have is a system of subsidies that has made farmers dependent on the government. Maybe this current trend of voters wanting to wean government clients off of taxpayer bailouts will catch hold and result in a farm bill that will let agribusiness be less dependent on government. There's a lot of lobby money at stake, though, so it won't be easy.
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