Did the Amish get it right after all?
"There is an interesting development in mainstream U.S.A that just might have significant relevance for garden farming. Record numbers of people are acquiring pets. The dog and cat business is not at all depressed by the recession. (If you are wondering what all this has to do with the Amish, bear with me.) You see evidence of the trend everywhere, especially in advertisements where dogs are shown licking the cheeks of children— this in a society that has an almost manic dread of germs. Pets are the in-thing. Apparently our society is so enmeshed in its mechanical and electronic gadgetry that the human psyche is seeking solace in real life, as in the ancient loving connection that we have always enjoyed with animals.
The modern pet craze is not limited to cats and dogs but embraces many animals, especially horses. (Now you see how the Amish are going to get into this discussion.) Statistics say there are 6.9 million horses in the U.S. involved in various activities from racing, showing, pleasure riding, polo, police work, farming and ranching. The horse business or hobby adds about $112 billion to the GNP. Horses generate more money than the home furniture and fixtures business, and almost as much as the apparel and textile manufacturing industry. In other words, while we generally think of Old Dobbin as a step backward in time in agriculture, horses are very much a part of our modern economic and social lives today.
Why this is pertinent to garden farming becomes apparent from what happened a few months ago. At the time when the national banking fraternity was on its knees in Washington, begging for money, news all over the media reported that Hometown Heritage bank in Lancaster County, Pa., was having its best year ever. Hometown Heritage may be the only bank in the world, surely one of the few, that has drive-by window service designed to accommodate horses and buggies. Some 95% of the bank's customers are Amish farmers. The banker, Bill O'Brien, says that he has not lost a penny on them in 20 years. They obviously don't have auto loans to pay off and do not use credit cards. They might not need bank loans at all except to buy farmland, which especially in Lancaster County, has risen almost insanely in price. O'Brien says he is doing about a hundred million dollars worth of business in farm loans. To further make the point, an obscure law does not allow banks to bundle and sell mortgages on farms and homes that are not serviced by public electric utilities."
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Contact MoveOn and all political action groups you are part of and have then tune into the Vilsack hearings with a better understanding of what they are really about. If you have legal skills and can donate time, you are badly needed.
the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, http://www.ftcldf.org/ Family Farm Defenders, http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/Main/HomePage the Buckeye Institute, http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/
and donate time to help these legal teams stave off disaster this year. These are people with thumbs in the dyke for all of us. Show up and bring as many people with you as you can.
If you have no legal skills, get together with friends and neighbors and have fun fund raisers (ball games, film festivals, concerts, ... whatever) and send funds to there legal groups. And keep at it.
What is happening to our food supply through regulations is set to become full-blown totalitarian with NAIS and seed regulations moving into place this year and increasing raids on small farmers selling locally - while the economy crashes. We were looking elsewhere, but we should be able to see now that Obama is opening the door wider to it.
The left has been missing in action. Let's show our farmers we are here for them and how powerful we can be when we organize. Realize that our disappearing farmers are the losing front edge of a civil and human rights battle for us all. People need to be present in large numbers for rural court cases and for cases Monsanto usually arranges to have in St. Louis where it is based and has great influence. It is time to stand up with our farmers as we did with blacks in the South. And the protests around food regulations need to rival the size of those against the Iraq war, because what we have to stop is that serious.
Watch the Vilsack hearings with a new sense of the danger to democracy and our survival he represents.
(Join FarmOn at farmon@googlegroups.com It is a list meant to grow large enough to help with funding these battles. Explain how you heard about it and why this matters to you and leave your email. But FarmOn is not a substitute for the on the ground contributions you each can make to this, through calls to organizations to get them involved, through donating legal skills immediately, through immediate fund raising.)