Word: lands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...farms still cover most of our land, consume most of our water and produce most of our food. If you eat, drink or pay taxes--or care about the economy, the environment or our global reputation--U.S. agricultural policy is a big deal...
...emergency." But in Washington, the emergency has never ended. The government still gives farmers your money--more than ever over the past decade--along with research projects to expand their yields, restoration projects to clean up their messes, flood-control and irrigation projects to protect and enhance their land, visa programs to supply them with cheap labor, ethanol mandates and tariffs to boost their prices, and tax breaks by the bushel...
...horsepower horses. And they didn't have subsidies either. In fact, most antebellum farmers opposed all federal aid to private enterprise, assuming it would just enrich manufacturing élites. The lesson of Husker Harvest Days is that modern farmers--at least the ones with most of the land and subsidies--are a new manufacturing élite. They just happen to be manufacturing food and fiber. Production agriculture is a high-tech, globalized business with economies of scale. You don't buy a $410,000 combine to farm the back...
...near Randolph, Neb. "Farms are getting bigger and more efficient, and that's not going to stop." The Environmental Working Group's farm-subsidy database shows that Ebbersons in the area collected $3 million in crop aid over the past decade. Craig used that money to snap up more land, expand his feedlot, invest in a nearby ethanol plant and buy gizmos that track his fertilizer and pesticide use and the food and drug intake of every cow. It's no accident that agriculture's productivity growth consistently outpaces the rest of the economy--or that farms with million-dollar...
Modern agroindustrialists are perhaps even more admirable than the modest ploughmen of yore. They're still family farmers who like to play in the dirt--only 2% of our farms are corporate-owned--but they also have to be land managers, soil scientists, hydrologists, veterinarians, mechanics, commodity traders, exterminators, meteorologists and highly sophisticated businessmen. The question is, Why do they need our help when they're doing so well? Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, a former Nebraska farm boy who is running for Senate, put it this way in an interview hours before he announced his resignation: "Congratulations! We celebrate your...