A new Farm Bill comes along every five years or so and I am yet to witness a national dialogue or debate on it. It not only effects our national debt, but also what we eat and how much our food costs. It may determine the price of rice in Vietnam and the cost of corn in Mexico. It is our main strategy for feeding ourselves. We, as a people have never taken the time to talk it over.
Most of us, including our legislators, consider it boring, incomprehensible, and unimportant. Its out Bill,: we can make it as interesting, understandable and important as we want.
We can educate ourselves. We can learn. We can create bills that are much easier to understand and we can talk over the issues and our policy. When the Bill is easier to understand we will probably find it more interesting. We may find ourselves giving our children a better chance of eating well at lower cost!
The Farm bill is important. We would benefit by putting our agricultural policy in better alignment with our public health needs and our environmental needs. We can use the Bill to make it easier to feed our children fresh food. We could make sure that farmers got a fair price with out giving them subsidies which distort their lives and ours.
When we are willing to talk with one another, we can get the issues on the table where we can look them over.
We move toward slavery so long as we do not expand the circle of citizens who decide how we shall get the food we need and want.
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