I had one of those 'doh' moments today.  I receive the ONE campaign weekly emails.  This weeks email was highlighting the Farm Bill and the possibility of changing it to help our nation and the world in a number of ways.  The Farm Bill actually impacts our communities and the developing world more than the name lets on.  The bill determines how much the government can subsidize farming in the US and which crops it will subsidize.  While this was helpful in its inauguration, it has since become very cumbersome and morally questionable.  The bill now encourages over-production of corn and soy and in turn penalizes farmers who specialize in what we normally think of as healthy crops (carrots, fruit, broccoli, asparagus, etc.).  This is why you can by a box of twinkies for less than a bag of carrots.  Michael Pollan has a great article about this in the NY Times.  This has a profound impact on the health of our nation.  Since most sugary substances on the market today use sugar made from corn they get the lions share of the benefits from the government subsidies.  Thus leaving poor people little alternative but to eat less healthy with fewer fresh vegetables which could be cheaper if they were subsidized.  The governments intentional price control also damages the world economy and keeps farmers in developing countries from ever getting ahead. OK so enough of Farm Bill politics...

This email from ONE encouraged people to call their senator, which I was willing to do.  But I wanted to go one step farther and write my senators!  I didn't get around to writing them until the next day and I had two nice formal letters addressed to my two senators in the envelopes ready to stamp and go.  However, while I was addressing the envelopes I began to wander if one of my senators already supported the amendments I was encouraging them to.  So I googled Lamar Alexandar and Bob Corker and found that not only did they not agree with the amendment to the bill they had already voted - 'doh!'

 Unfortunatelly the amendment was denied by both my senators ultimately it failed.

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I believe this is the legendary "Grim Reaper" at the Holmes Co. Fair Tractor Pull. For all you Tractor Pull enthusiasts out there, I believe the longest pull was around 320 ft.

Posted In: agriculture life

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For the last two weeks I had the privilege of taking a class funded by the AMERC grant. The class was titled Rural Communities and Moral Concerns. The idea is to have an immersion experience into appalachian culture. To prep for our voyage into the many different economic and cultural experiences that the Ohio and Kentucky Appalachians had to offer we read some great books dealing with faith in Appalachia, big-business agriculture, agrarianism, and the coal mining industry.

The main chunk of our excursions took place in Holmes Co. Ohio, which happens to have the largest concentration of Amish people in the world. We visited a large scale dairy farm that was very well run, the Holme’s Co. Jr. Fair where we learned the importance of 4H in rural communities (and got to see some sweet tractor pulling action – a couple of movies should be posted soon) and fill our arteries with the best fried foods the Appalachians have to offer, an Amish auction, and the farm of David Kline – an Amish Bishop and writer.

Back home in Jessamine Co. Kentucky we were able to visit a couple of small farms. One of which was making the transition from growing tobacco to raising goats! This happens to be an important shift in Appalachian agriculture since the sun is setting on Tobacco farming.

It is easy for us to become disconnected with the agricultural processes that bring food to our table. Before taking this class I was unaware of the economics, politics, and environmental issues that are intertwined with agriculture. We were able to see first hand the toll that the vertical intergration of the large agricultural firms has taken on local farms, as well as the widespread market control that large seed producers have over food production. We were also able to see the comeback of small farms in Holmes Co. where David Kline informed us that local farmers were now beginning to outbid developers for land – something that has been unheard of thus far.

My apologies for the rambling nature of this post, I hope to post more concerning the specific things we covered in this class, many of which were not even mentioned above. Also, the people that made up our class were beautiful… consider this a shoutout if any of you guys are reading this!

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