The destruction of local food producers

[Nomen luni]

X posted from another site with the author's permission. I think it's an important issue...

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Fellow LATOCER's,

I am attaching links here in Financial even 'tho it may seem that the Food thread is more appropriate.
This is about control, money and power.
Even if you don't farm , you still eat and this will affect you - have no doubt.

As a local producer of retail meat, we are about to be put out of business.
There is a USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service re-interpretation of a decade old law that will enact many fees and multiple tests on meat products going thru small meat lockers; the kind that rural communities and independent farmers depend upon.

If this rule is put into effect, many local lockers will go under.

As a beef producer, I will not be able to sell you my product as cuts, only as wholesale quarters or halves.
If all the lockers go out of business, I won't even be able to do that.You will be left buying your meat only from the few ( under 5) companies that already control 90% of the meat market.

Make no mistake; you will have few choices left to you as to where you buy your meat and from whom.

If you have not already seen Food, INC, I beg you to see it.
I beg you to become involved in a food system already under massive monopoly manipulation.

We must not allow our independent, local food system be sacrificed at the feet of behemoth companies that will dictate what you eat and what you pay.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.
If you know small farmers, alert them to this.
Contact your Federal reps (yeah, I know...BUT CALL!)

Don't let your food system be taken away from you.

Thank you for taking action,

yours,
motherearth


http://www.farm-news.com/page/content.detail/id/501134/Small-meat-plants-feel-threatened-by-USDA-s-new-regs.html?nav=5005

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid=2010/03/0150.xml

[Ponce]

Little by little they are pushing us all into a corner so that we will have to do as they command or we wont eat.......

[Nomen luni]

Yes indeed, my friend.

http://www.povertyandhunger.org/CongressCreatedDustBowl.html

[Nomen luni]

I think it's a little sad that a thread like this with implications for all our lives is getting so little response compared to others in general discussion,
for example "Genetic evidence of aliens on Earth"

Hey ho...

[Plastic]

I think it's a little sad that a thread like this with implications for all our lives is getting so little response compared to others in general discussion,
for example "Genetic evidence of aliens on Earth"

Hey ho...



I'll agree and even go so far as to say it is more important than the gold/silver manipulation, food security should be the number one priority of all. Gotta get this shed turned into a chicken coop this summer, gonna buy 30 laying hens and a few cockerels next spring if we are not all vaporized. This crap-heap mobile home on 5 acres I purchased is looking more and more like the best investment ever, plenty of room for critters and other such things that are good for eating.

Last year a herd of deer came through and ate every damned fruit tree I planted, 32 of them at 25.00 a pop. It was in the spring with plenty of rainfall, everything was lush and they targeted my damn trees.... They even ate the bark off the cherry trees and then broke them at ground level, I was left with nothing but 1 inch diamter stumps. This year however I got me some revenge.... just installed a 5,000 volt electric fence around a soon to be replanted mini orchard consisting of 20 cherry and 20 pear trees. At least inflation has'nt hit the tree sellers, the prices are still the same as they were a year earlier. *cackle*

Still want to fence in an acre out back and build a massive chicken coop to raise say 100 fryers in, but that is on the back burner for now.

If you have the land for it I suggest everyone get some food critters, chickens, goats, sheep, even a cow or two if you are up to it. The time is coming when a full belly will be worth more than silver or gold.

[Nomen luni]

Thanks, Plastic. I agree with you 100% that it's more important than manipulation in other markets.

You don't know how much I envy you. I live in comfortable rented accommodation, but I would turn it all in tomorrow for a half acre even if it meant living in a shed. Land prices are nuts here in the UK and any hope of getting my own plot seems like a pipe dream. Still, I'm applying for a US visa, so all is not lost.

[Plastic]

This place in Northern Indiana cost 31,500 but is in the poorest county of the state, the soil is too sandy for planting much of anything without major amendments added such as lime etc but trees grow well. Going to grow feed corn for those chickens on my parents land (they have 10 acres) and it is a nice rich soil.