AGRICULTURE

Industrial farming with all its pollution and chemical additives to food product is a chronic drain on the United States economy through clean up expenses, health costs, and subsidies. The United States government does little to support the real farmer. In 2005 70% of Federal farm subsidies in the United States went to a mere 10% of producers (industrial farms) while the rest is divided among traditional family farmers. The environmental impact of industrial farming ranges from contamination of water, ground, and air to untold medical problems in consumers from the diseases and excess hormones in slaughtered feed animals. Massive piles of waste manure continually infiltrate drinking and recreational water ways through ground water and poor environmental practices meant to trim costs and maximize the profits of an industry that can be more profitable for its executives than banking.

US federal industrial farm subsidies encourage overproduction of basic feed crops such as corn and soy to keep prices low. In turn, these subsidies make up for the lost profit potential of the crops if they were grown at a healthy, sustainable rate. These cheap feed crops serve the industrial farms with bargain prices to sustain their animals. With feed being one of the highest costs in industrial farm overhead, this effectively works out to the tax-payer providing up to 10% of their operating costs. But just think, if these farm CEOs were even richer, they could provide their pocket law-makers in Washington with even further bribes and kick backs. And so they do. Another of several subsidies is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program which pays for environmental clean up and conservation. Billions of tax-dollars annually are being spent to pay for the mess these industrial farms create, leaving more profits that can be divided among themselves and their government friends. These are the same government friends that squawk at the cost of providing our troops with the armored vehicles that can withstand IED blasts while they patrol the gift-to-Washington-friendly-contractors called Iraq. Do you currently own your own business? How much does the government help you out? Cronyism - the gift that keeps on giving.

As the human race is global, so is the Evolution Movement. Of international concern, artificially low feed crop prices serve to strangle the production of such crops in developing nations whose governments cannot afford to subsidize their farmers. What do we care about some ignorant farmer living a pointless life in some place we can't point to on a map? Their ready alternative to loss-making food cops is highly profitable illicit drug production and an environment of hopelessness and despair leads to fundamentalism and terror.

The small farmer cannot take back this honorable profession from the well-connected scoundrels in industrial farming alone. That is one reason why we are here. When we force the next step in social evolution, we will abolish industrial farming and give the land back to the real farmers that can proudly trace their profession back thousands of years to the first men that saw something beyond hunting and gathering. Today's industrial farmers can only trace themselves back to the private office of a nineteenth-century sweat shop, lighting their pipes with dollar bills as the arms of small children were caught in the heavy machinery of dark, filthy manufacturing facilities.

The traditional farmers of our new world will concentrate on the large-scale crops unsuitable for indoor production and orchards of fruit-bearing trees that will ring our megapolises. All crops suitable for indoor growth will be sustained in skyscraper-sized vertical farms, utilizing waste water from sewer treatment facilities for nutrients and maintained by employed workers and hobbyists.

All meat will come from free-range animals, less fatty, tastier, and devoid of the chemicals and hormones that are currently pumped into them and into us in turn.

We are always exploring the latest ideas for efficient and healthy production of all society's needs in balance with the planet as best as reasonable. We are not cavemen and we will not return to that past. Through technology and education, we will maintain and begin to repair our world with minimal impact to our present lifestyle.

skappotis@gmail.com