Tumbledown agrees with Jonah Goldberg that agricultural subsidies to U.S. farmers and tariffs (and other trade barriers) should stop. ("Welfare kings ride high on their tractors," Indianapolis Star, Saturday, August 5, 2006; see National Review.) However, Mr. Goldberg is wrong about several of the details with which he supports his argument. First, it is wrong to say that agricultural subsidies "prop up the last of the horse-and-buggy industries." The "hugely energy intensive" industry ("immoral agricultural corporatism") against which Goldberg rails is neither mom-and-pop nor horse-and-buggy.
If the farmers about whom Goldberg writes are plowing with horses, Tumbledown will eat his straw hat.
Secondly, while it is true that fewer than 1 in 100 workers today is employed in agriculture (down from 9/10 of workers in 1776), this factoid causes Tumbledown great consternation, while Goldberg sees farming as a "luxury" that developed nations can easily afford to do without. Tumbledown is not alarmist, because there are signs of a revival among small farms. And today's small-scale farmers will feed Goldberg well enough when an unforseen event prevents foreign imports of food from arriving to his table in a timely manner.
I guess the difference between Tumbledown and Goldberg is that Tumbledown thinks the romance about family farms is justified and that a community of small farms has benefits that warrant support for family farming as a bedrock of our culture, while Goldberg is willing to throw them out with the bathwater that passes for farming today. Goldberg is only "in favor of farming when it's economically feasible." (emphasis added)
Tumbledown is in favor of farming. (Period!) By all means, let us farm sustainably, organically, without the environmental degredation that Goldberg decries. But for heaven's sake, let's farm! Tumbledown is such a romantic.
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