The not-so-jolly green giants

"Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in their shoes." Thats a good quote to live by, but unfortunately for most small farmers in America today, the majority of large farm owners are not willing to walk a mile in their own shoes, let alone someone else's. While small farmers trudge all day long under the burning sun, working and trying to earn their bread, large scale owners sit in their well-lit, air-conditioned offices, while thousands of migrant workers work on their fields for wages that even the most desperate of americans would be reluctant to accept. Because of their imported labor, repression of plant genetics, and harsh industrial standards, the "giants" of our food industry make life difficult for your average farmer, and harm our food production industry as a whole.

Most people do not realize, but in order to produce most meat products that we eat on a daily basis, farmers must abide by an extremely strict set of regulations. Don't get me wrong, on the surface this sounds fantastic. "How could anything that controls food production be a bad thing?" you might ask. After all, the standards are there to keep us safe. While this is true, it does not actually play out like that in practice. Scale is the important factor. A company that produces 100,000 chickens cannot promise the individual quality that a farmer who produces 500 can. (Chickens are one of the few products that do not have as strict regulations.) An example of these oppressive regulations in action is the story of a farmer in the midwest, told in the book, "The Omnivore's Dillema". He wants to start a buisness of selling pork, so to satisfy the standards he had a state of the art barn built, complete with every tool needed to run a pork production buisness. Not a month later, he was shut down for not having an office for the government inspector. For the scale he was producing, this is truly rediculous. This is just one example, the goverment cannot expect small farmers starting off to abide by the same regulations as established mega-coorporations. There is nothing just, nothing O.K. about that.

Imported labor is just a blatant reminder of how decidedly un-american our food production is. Not even to mention how difficult it is for little guys to succeed (the american dream), most farm workers are no longer even American. These men steal jobs from Americans, and come in and take over our own American communities. And our companies continue to hire them for the lower wages. We get back what they put in, lower quality and lower sanitation for these lower wages. Despite all the regulations, the inside of these factories- they really are not even barns any more- is a despondant scene of gore, cruelty, and unsanitation. Far too often, a company saying they "passed" inspection is like a high school student saying they "passed" with a 64.5%. Animals are brutally mass slaughtered and stored for months before preparation. In what world is that better, and safer than a small farmer's cow, prepared openly and with individual care. How many small-scale farmers do you think have had to recall a crop of lettice for E.coli? Or a shipment of chicken for salmonela? The answer is few if any, scale is all the difference. A large corporation cannot have the same level of care for each product as a smaller scale farmer.

Not only is our nation's food industry un-american in it's suppression of the small farmer and the common worker, the genetic health of the plants and animals we use suffer as well. When do you think the last time a small farmer did not breed a cow because it did not have as much meat as another was? Similarly to the recall question, the answer is rarely if ever. The large industries breed out any "imperfections" from their products over time, but at what cost? During the time of the Native Americans, there were hundreds of different kinds of corn. Now we are down to under a score of species. This may not seem like a big deal, but what happens when disease hits our sheep population and now 85% of the sheep in the united states are dead. What happens is that hundreds of thousands of people loose their jobs, and the wool industry tanks, along with any stores invested in it, or any people invested in it. That is an extreme example, but the point is that a lack of genetic diversity has no real benefit, and plenty of potential consequence.

It is abundantly clear that the current situation is not acceptable. Honest, hardworking, farmers are being edged out of our food production industry by giant coorporations and their $6 an hour labor. I challenge you, each of you, to get involved. Whether it is something as small as buying local produce or not buying meat from large companies, or even something larger, like starting a petition to the government, your contribution to the plight of small American farmers will be impactful, and extremely appreciated. Thank you.