[AT] History Exam, now kid memories

[Francis Robinson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "charlie hill" <chill8 at suddenlink.net>


> Farmer you are a little off base on little tractors to farm tobacco.  I 
> know
> that is still the case in the Burley belt, etc.  Down here in Flue Curred
> country the small tractors went by the wayside a LONG time ago.  If a
> tobacco farmer in eastern NC has a tractor smaller than 75 HP now a days 
> he
> uses it to mow his yard.
>

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    I'm not off base Charlie...  :-)   I just have a different set of goals 
for our future society than most folks. Quite frankly I don't really give a 
rats... err... uhh... whiskers, yeah, thats it, whiskers...   :-)   about 
the big guys. They can make needed crop changes and in many cases nurse at 
the government teat to get along. They may not not like the loss of income 
level (who does) but they have a chance to survive. Nobody in any occupation 
is guaranteed a constantly increasing income level. All kinds of businesses 
go belly-up every day and big farmers like to brag about being a business 
instead of a lifestyle.  I tend to reserve my wishful thinking for the small 
"core" family (parents and their children at home) who are in many cases 
devastated by some of these changes and have no base of larger acreage or 
other wealth to help them through. To those little guys farming is a way of 
life instead of "just" a business. The guy with a thousand acres can grow 
soybeans or hay or other crops even if it makes less or he don't like it but 
the guy on 3 or 4 acres can not make enough on a lower value crop to 
subsist. About all he can fall back on is a truck patch and if he is not 
near a large population center he has little chance of that. I know many 
others don't care any more about that little guy than I do the big guys but 
in my mind he is not only as valued as part of society as the big guys but 
is maybe even more valuable.

    I found it very interesting when the reporters with the troops were 
filming the efforts in the early stages of the Iraq war to get food out to 
the people. When they stopped to deliver food to a lot of what we would call 
the poor subsistence farmers they were told by those little farmers to take 
the food on to someone else because they did not need any food. They were 
eating as well as ever.
    It is pretty scary how concentrated in the hands of a few our current 
food supply is. I sure would like to see a zillion little producers growing 
our food instead of these big companies.
    If you have a wire wheel you can knock out quite a few spokes and keep 
going. If you build a wheel with 3 big spokes you only have to lose one to 
bring collapse.   :-)



--
"farmer"

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA
robinson at svs.net