God, Government & Small Farmers

One of Reagan's oft-used punch lines was that the scariest phrase an American could hear are the words: "Hello. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Government, he said, was not the solution; government was the problem.

I thought of this today as I read this article on the legal troubles of a family-run food cooperative in Ohio where, they say, a state agent of the agriculture department created an "entrapment" situation that led to a SWAT-team style raid on their farm near LaGrange. The gist of the dispute is that the family has run a food co-operative, which is legal as long as they do not charge money for distribution of their produce, but the state insists that they take out a retail food license. This would not only involve cost but would bring down various regulatory requirements that would put their little cooperative out of business.

The family has friends who are helping, including an outfit called The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

Pete Kennedy of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund said the case was government "overreaching" and was designed more to intimidate and "frighten people into believing that they cannot provide food for themselves."

"This is an example where, once again, the government is trying to deny people their inalienable, fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice," said Gary Cox, general counsel for the FTCLDF. "The purpose of our complaint is to correct that wrong."

Apparently this is not the first such raid in the state. If the story reflects an accurate picture of what is taking place, it should concern every American who values individual freedoms. According to one related blog post:

"Agents began rifling through all of the family's possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family's personal stock of food for the coming year."

When did government begin taking such a personal interest in farmers? During the Great Depression, when government powers over agriculture were expanded to a vast extent, much of it on the excuse that it was protecting the health of consumers. But it was also an excuse to limit the production and distribution of various types of animal and vegetable products in order to centrally plan supply and demand. There was nothing too large or too small for the FDR Administration (and administrations to follow) to regulate and oversee.

Over the years the growth of corporate farming has only made it more difficult for the small farmers of America as an incestuous relationship has grown between CorpAg and Government. Billions of subsidies flow to corporations that control seed stocks and purchases of farmers' goods, and in return CorpAg sends millions of dollars of lobbying monies and political contributions back to the state capitals and Washington.

So let us review the concept of constitutional rights: God gives individuals the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. In the Constitution We the People assign some of these rights to the government to administer on our behalf (but not to be used against us). Since government actually has no rights of its own, no "extra" rights created by God given to it exclusively, We cannot lend to government anything we ourselves do not have. Thus, if I cannot tell my neighbor, Bob, where to sell his milk or corn, then it is a damn certain thing that the government has no business telling him how, or even if, he can do it.

This is how out of whack we have allowed our system to devolve.

It was the Almighty who to our proto-parents made a covenant, saying, "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth. ... See, I give you every seed-bearing plant all over the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; and to all the animals of the land, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the ground, I give all the green plants for food." (Gen. 1: 28-30)

To paraphrase, what God has given, let no man (or group of men) rend asunder. You may not care much about the issue now, but if in the future you are really, really hungry, and you wonder to what part of the globe all the small farmers in wandered off, you may wish that we had done a better job of protecting the God-given rights of American farmers.