American Socialism - Paying farmers NOT to grow food



Big Government strikes again.
Big Government used its' power to beat up local farmers in Imperial County, California and force them to send their water to San Diego.  Now farmers are being paid not to grow food. 



Your Tax Dollars at Work
Farmers are lining up to get paid NOT to grow food for Americans to eat

• 'The Federal Government held a gun to our heads.'
• Farmers of 30,000 acres will be paid NOT to grow food.
• San Diego now has lots of water to keep their lawns and golf courses green.

The insanity of Big Government goes on and on.

Americans need to eat food.  It is a basic fact of life.  But in a 2003 agreement the Interior Department of "small government" Republican President George Bush bullied farmers in Democratic Imperial County to send their water to Republican San Diego County.

But I am sure party politics was not involved.  Right?

Now everything is coming to a head in the courts with lawsuits over water policy.

More than a third of the water that San Diego distributes to local agencies comes from the water transfer agreements that were forced on neighboring agricultural Imperial County. Those water sales are slated to increase over the coming years reports the Los Angeles Times.

The Imperial Irrigation District governing board approved the deal on a 3-2 vote after years of arm-twisting by the federal government, including a threat by the Department of the Interior to take the water for free unless the district agreed to sell it to San Diego.

None of the three board members who voted in favor of the deal are still in office.

The board member who, after months of indecision, provided the swing vote was defeated for reelection by John Pierre Menvielle, a third-generation Imperial Valley farmer who ran on an anti-water-deal platform.

Menvielle has now quit active farming to concentrate on getting a better deal for the Imperial Valley and guarding against outside pressures that he fears could bankrupt local farmers. He still seethes over the way the federal government forced the district to let fields lie fallow so water could be shifted to San Diego.

"Basically there was a gun held to our head," he said. "We got hoodwinked into this thing."

"The 18 million people on the coast could care less if the Imperial Valley dries up — that way they could get the water for free," he said.

Out of 480,000 acres of farmland in the Imperial Valley, about 5,800 are being fallowed to save water to sell to San Diego; the district has had no trouble finding farmers willing to fallow land in exchange for per-acre payments.

In coming years, fallowing is set to increase to nearly 30,000 acres.


After all, food comes from supermarkets.
Farmers don't need water.  That is crazy talk.  So let's take the water from farmers and use it to water lawns and create water hazards at places like Torrey Pines Golf Course, San Diego (above).  Who needs farmers?  After all, food appears like magic at the market.


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