This column has generated more comments than anything I have ever written for the paper. I thought it would be obvious it was satire, but I was mistaken. I’ve heard from plenty of people who have told me I know nothing about what it’s like to be a farmer. You can follow the online discussion here. There’s even a letter to the editor here. It’s the fourth one down.
Gas prices are going up. Food prices are going up. Who is to blame for this travesty?
It’s the American farmer, of course!
Those lazy farmers, they won’t get a real job in town. A job where you clock in and work your 40-hour shift, take your two weeks vacation and cash your check every two weeks. Oh no! Those greedy little money grubbers insist on working from sunup to sundown for three seasons of the year. Then in the winter they sit around by the fire counting their money.
Farmers! Why, they’re just as bad as welfare queens. They used to get big old fat checks from the government. That was back when corn sold for $2 a bushel.
Thank goodness, the public raised enough stink about that, said taxpayers weren’t footing the bill for farm families to live like kings out there in on those gravel roads. They already got electricity and rural water, next thing you know, they’ll be wanting high-speed Internet in the country.
So the public said, “We’re cutting you off. You’ve got to find your own market for corn and soybeans.”
Then those simple-minded farmers came up with this ethanol thing. Making fuel from corn, biodiesel from soybeans. The whole idea was so ridiculous, no one paid it much attention. But what do you know, it worked.
Ethanol is in all the gasoline sold in Missouri. Agriculture groups also opened up export markets and now they ship products all over the world.
And for a pretty penny, too. Corn is selling for $5 a bushel. It was $2 a bushel for 50 years. It’s not like fuel or tractor prices have gone up during that time. Of course, the higher price means that farmers aren’t getting those government subsidies any more.
But it means eggs are $2 a dozen. I don’t know how much corn goes into a dozen eggs, but I know that’s why prices are going up. It can’t be energy costs that are twice of what they used to be. Or the ever-climbing minimum wage. Or improving conditions around the globe increasing demand for all agriculture products.
No, it’s those underworked and overpaid farmers. We shouldn’t stand for this.
We ought to demand that the government do something about the situation. As Americans, we have a right to food that’s absolutely as cheap as it can be, even if immigrants have to sneak over the border and work for poverty level wages to pick and process it.
Maybe the government will develop a national farm policy that will pay farmers to grow more grain. That would keep prices artificially low, create an abundant supply and keep milk prices more reasonable.
Something reasonable. That’s all Americans want.
