FASCISM Outrage Erupts When Pennsylvania Authorities Toss 2 Farmers in Prison on 30-day Sentences
- Thread starter Cardinal
- Start date
Border Collie Dad
Flat Earther
Zeker seemed to make a distinction.
I was responding to that distiction.
gjwandkids
Contributing Member
There are a couple of different things going on here. Farmers are aging (median age is 58.7 years according to the USDA), and the East Coast and parts of the Midwest are getting very crowded. There isn't enough housing and there isn't any more land except farmland.
My parents live in Ohio and the area surrounding the small town they live in, used to be all farmland. As each farmer retired and his kids didn't want to take over, he sold out to a developer who put up subdivisions and shopping centers. Then they expanded the expressway in order to accommodate all the people buying the houses and shopping at all the new big box stores. The commercially owned farms are so large (and create so much smell of either chemicals, manure or both) that they are far away from the urban/suburban areas, and the buffer zone is increasingly becoming the marginal land that can't really be farmed by anyone hoping to make a living at it.
The Amish, and smaller family farms are easy to go after because they don't have the resources to fight back in court. The regulations are so excessive that it is NOT worth the time or effort to raise food for anyone other than yourself. We looked into it about 20 years ago and decided it wasn't worth the stress. I imagine that the regulations haven't decreased since then.
By pushing the smaller farmers out, by pushing the Amish out like this, they'll be able to develop all the areas that are currently owned by the smaller producers. I can easily see a day in which all the small farmers and communities like the Amish are relegated to something like reservations in land that the big guys don't want.
My parents live in Ohio and the area surrounding the small town they live in, used to be all farmland. As each farmer retired and his kids didn't want to take over, he sold out to a developer who put up subdivisions and shopping centers. Then they expanded the expressway in order to accommodate all the people buying the houses and shopping at all the new big box stores. The commercially owned farms are so large (and create so much smell of either chemicals, manure or both) that they are far away from the urban/suburban areas, and the buffer zone is increasingly becoming the marginal land that can't really be farmed by anyone hoping to make a living at it.
The Amish, and smaller family farms are easy to go after because they don't have the resources to fight back in court. The regulations are so excessive that it is NOT worth the time or effort to raise food for anyone other than yourself. We looked into it about 20 years ago and decided it wasn't worth the stress. I imagine that the regulations haven't decreased since then.
By pushing the smaller farmers out, by pushing the Amish out like this, they'll be able to develop all the areas that are currently owned by the smaller producers. I can easily see a day in which all the small farmers and communities like the Amish are relegated to something like reservations in land that the big guys don't want.
