{"id":33069,"date":"2018-04-03T07:01:48","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T12:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33069"},"modified":"2018-04-03T07:01:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T12:01:48","slug":"how-the-cult-of-the-colossal-imperils-american-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33069","title":{"rendered":"How the Cult of the Colossal Imperils American Agriculture"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/articles\/how-the-cult-of-the-colossal-imperils-american-agriculture\/\">How the Cult of the Colossal Imperils American Agriculture<\/a><\/h3>\n<p id=\"deck\"><strong>Stressed-out farmers today only grow food for global consumption, and that is leading to a crisis at home.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"main-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-full-post-width size-full-post-width wp-post-image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/farming-554x350.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 554px) 100vw, 554px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/farming.jpg 554w, http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/farming-100x63.jpg 100w, http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/farming-300x190.jpg 300w\" alt=\"\" width=\"554\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shutterstock.com\/image-photo\/harvester-working-field-during-harvest-time-426421756\">Jurga Jot\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>The 2018 farm bill is currently at a standstill as congressmen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2018\/03\/28\/food-stamp-fight-kill-farm-bill-446477\">debate<\/a> proposed changes to the bill\u2019s SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) provisions. SNAP is a huge and important welfare program, one that reminds us that the USDA and the farm bill are not focused exclusively on farms, but are also responsible for a bevy of other rural development issues (such as rural energy programs, the rural housing service, and rural utilities service).<\/p>\n<p>But this pause in the farm bill process also gives us an opportunity to talk about what this bill does <em>not <\/em>usually do well: namely care for the nation\u2019s small to midsize farmers and incentivize sustainable farming methodologies.<\/p>\n<p>This deficit in focus and care is not new. The farm bill\u2019s bias towards bigness has existed for decades now, and was doubly reinforced during the 1970s by <a href=\"https:\/\/grist.org\/article\/the-butz-stops-here\/\">USDA Secretary Earl Butz<\/a> (the man who notoriously told farmers to \u201cget big or get out\u201d). Many of the agricultural revolutions we\u2019ve seen over the past few decades\u2014from small family farms to large-scale factory farms, from crop diversity to commoditized homogeneity\u2014emerged most prominently in the 1970s and 1980s under Butz\u2019s leadership at the USDA. At the time, our understanding of agriculture and its purposes were also shifting: what had formerly been understood as a local enterprise meant to feed local inhabitants was increasingly viewed as a global enterprise meant to foster trade relations and massive corn and soybean sales overseas.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How the Cult of the Colossal Imperils American Agriculture Stressed-out farmers today only grow food for global consumption, and that is leading to a crisis at home. Jurga Jot\/Shutterstock The 2018 farm bill is currently at a standstill as congressmen debate proposed changes to the bill\u2019s SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) provisions. SNAP is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[20,1912,19653,19652,5720,16732,827],"class_list":["post-33069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-agriculture","tag-food-production","tag-global-food-consumption","tag-gracy-olmstead","tag-industrial-agriculture","tag-the-american-conservative","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33070,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33069\/revisions\/33070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}