I Pay Taxes So You Can Afford to Farm

Have you seen the latest smart-ass bumper sticker?

"I Farm, You Eat"

Leave aside the outrageous arrogance of the claim, the condescension toward everyone who does not farm, the fallacy that what most Kentucky farmers grow ends up in Kroger's produce department.

Consider instead how deformed and dysfunctional American agriculture has become in the century since the sentiment on that bumper sticker was literally true.

I come from a long line of small farmers, most of whom toiled long before the advent of federal subsidies and perverse incentives forcing farmers to fall hopelessly in debt and poison their own land to compete.

Corporate agri-business and their congressional and DoA lackeys have done a superb job of fucking over family farmers six ways from Sunday.

Those family farmers need legal, regulatory, scientific and marketing help to survive.*

But the best way to get that help is to make a compelling case for rational, economically and environmentally sound farming.

Snide, contemptuous insults don't help.

*And no, ag-giant apologist Tom Vilsack, DoA Secretary-nominee, ain't gonna do it.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.