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Topic subjectagain
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=22&topic_id=2904&mesg_id=2950
2950, again
Posted by emil, Thu Nov-13-03 09:48 AM
...as son of a black farmer, im really not seeing your point. understood yes...dean needs to address the issue. perhaps someone should approach him and pull his card on seemingly leaving us out.

but the entire picture is much broader than that.

white farmers AND black farmers are feeling crunches. a few blacks in va/md/delaware have joined together to sell produce to cuba. not sure how that's coming, but the market is bad for all family-owned farms, not just black ones. we're already a dying breed which is why i want to run a farm myself. but shit is hard, which is why my family got out of it and leases our farm to a black soy farmer. we still drive tractors occasionally, but that's mostly for small-scale production at the crib in the 'burbs.

you're failing to realize that despite what dean does, agriculture in america is still on a downward slope. despite advances in the 'health-foods' industry, we're still left behind. sellers that deal with whole foods, inc are many times corporate themselves, or co-ops, and most are niche markets. you just can't compete in such a way living in rural virginia or idaho far removed from the high-paying niche markets in cities. add to this the fact that most kids move away from farms (remember the mass exodus of blacks from the south during ww1 and 2). it's happening again now. nobody wants that life, and older guys n gals dont want it for their children. i was pushed to go to medical school, not some polytech a&t&m. it's just not lucrative.

thas where biofuels come in. not even that, but leasing land to windfarm corps. and still grow crops underneath. we should be smart and move in those directions when applicable.