Wednesday, January 12, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) How will the new Food Safety Modernization Act actually impact small, local farmers who grow food for CSA’s, local restaurants and grocers? To find out, I took a road trip to Texas and interviewed several small, local farmers to ask them, face to face, how the S.510 Food Safety Modernization Act would impact them.
I spoke to Farmer Brad from HomeSweetFarm.com and captured the conversation on video. You can watch it here:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=3F59F82202D42A6E9CEFA2D1EABBFC4E
Here’s a quick excerpt from our conversation about S.510 and the small farm exemption in the Tester Amendment:
Farmer Brad: To me, that’s so un-American to say hey, you’re going to stay in this box, and you can never grow your business bigger than that. $500,000 [in revenue] is your cap.
Health Ranger: It’s destroying farming jobs.
Farmer Brad: It has made us start to totally re-look at our business plans and how we’re going to sell our food. We’re no longer going to sell wholesale, no longer going to sell to chefs or restaurants, it’s consumer direct only.
Health Ranger: So you’re actually pulling back from some of your expansion plans?
Farmer Brad: We are. We have actually, this last year as we’ve been watching this happen, we’ve been putting plans on hold, and pulling back our business… so again, that’s how this is going to affect the local food system.
Health Ranger: Right.
Farmer Brad: Because we don’t want to get too successful.
Watch the complete interview here:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=3F59F82202D42A6E9CEFA2D1EABBFC4E
If you ever wonder who is destroying America’s economy…
The answer, of course, is the U.S. Congress. By slapping onerous new paperwork and reporting requirements on small farmers (who aren’t even the source of the food problem to begin with), the U.S. Congress is forcing farmers out of business and causing agriculture jobs to be shifted to Mexico and elsewhere.
When you hear American farmers saying they are going to “scale back” their businesses because they “don’t want to get too successful” (to fall under the authority of expanded FDA tyranny over the food supply), you know the country is headed for economic disaster.
America was once founded on ideas of opportunity and that hard work is supposed to pay off. People who invest in their small businesses and grow them should be rewarded, not punished. But now, thanks to the U.S. Congress and the Food Safety Modernization Act, small farmers who find even a little bit of success selling food (because selling $500,000 worth of food is still a very small scale operation, and the actual profit on that might only be $50,000 for a full year of work) are about to find themselves punished for being successful.
So much for free enterprise in America. So much for local food production. Watch for food prices to skyrocket in the coming years, and watch as America’s local food security collapses under the iron fist of the FDA driving small farmers out of business.
But that’s what the empire wants, of course: Complete control over food production so that people are forced to buy their food from the sources Big Government tells them to. Those monopolistic sources are, of course, the powerful, centralized mega-corporations planting GMO crops and spraying them with chemical pesticides. Thanks to the FSMA, we are now living under a bona-fide system of food fascism.
But don’t take my word for it: Ask the farmers yourself! That’s what I’ve been doing, and their answers reveal a disturbing truth: America’s food security is headed South.
Watch my interview with Farmer Brad here:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=3F59F82202D42A6E9CEFA2D1EABBFC4E
And it might be a good idea to start buying some heirloom seeds while you still can, by the way. Before long, local food prices are going to skyrocket, and you’ll need to grow some portion of your own diet. That is, unless you want to eat mega-corporate “food” sprayed with Roundup and containing transgenic “biotechnology” approved by the FDA.
I bet that makes you hungry just thinking about it. GMO corn, anyone?