STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

The Florida Milk Farmer: National Security Problem Vs. George Will or Washington D.C. Supernumerary/ Burn Out!

Yesterday, the highly touted intellectual-conservative literary writer, George Will, left the Republican Party over his disgust with Donald Trump as the 2016 nominee.

Good riddance!

Last night, I spent a lovely evening with my friends, J and N, who run a highly prized dairy farm which specializes in a certain type of milk and cheese that services an indigenous area of several thousand consumers. Today, I sat down and realized that my friends, the dairy farmers, are presenting America with a national security problem. 

In contrast, the effete George Will has been a drain on the good will of this country. The farmers are needed. George is disposable.One received countless media attention [George]. The other lives in total anonymity.Something is wrong with this picture.

Forget the fact that Farmer J served valiantly in our highly sophisticated nuclear submarines during the Vietnam War. Contrast George was AWOL/draft dodger--obtaining one useless academic degree after another in order to avoid the draft.

The fact is that in our great country, fewer than 7% of our farms are family owned.What that means is that we, Americans, will have to depend on mega agriculture corporations to supply us with our daily sustenance over the next several years. The shortage of future farmers is a dire problem for America. Fewer young people want to go into farming because it is damn hard work. [usually more than 18 hour days]!

It is so difficult to run a family farm now that most children of American farmers leave their family to try some easier lifestyle in the big cities. Worse, yet, the price of milk today is so low that it is at the same price that it was in the 1970’s. Five major family farms went bankrupt this year alone in my small area of northern Florida.

Forcefully stated, the present situation of diminishing family farms, constitutes a major national security problem [similar to that of increasing droughts]. Without the food that we Americans have grown accustomed to eat, we will find that we will have fewer fresh items to consume at our local grocery stores. More processed foods are detrimental to our health. 

The reason that farmers today cannot make a decent living is because that the ethanol we still use for gas was made from grains/corns [sugar canes] needed to feed the cows. Accordingly, the price of feed has risen to prohibitive amounts, forcing most farmers to abandon their family farms.

Yet, we no longer need ethanol in our fuel to reduce carbon emissions. In the USA, our ethanol is made from corn primarily grown in the Midwest. Surprisingly, the powerful U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley [R-Iowa] has created an unnecessary glut of ethanol made from corn; primarily subsidized by the American taxpayer at the expense of small family farmers all over the country. Now these family farms can no longer afford to buy that necessary feed for their animals [cows, etc].

In addition, it turns out that ethanol is quite destructive to our car engines which have to be constantly repaired.It’s time for the American public to wake up and insist that we can no longer take our family farmers for granted and address this issue ASAP! We don’t need ethanol in our gas tanks.

We don’t need George Will or any other Republican like him. We do need our family farms for the prosperous future of our country!