Homegrown?

The term Homegrown has a potentially new meaning.  Rather than a seasonal offering from a local farmer, it could mean grown in the USA.  Let’s face it, we sent hoards of manufacturing jobs overseas over the past 50 years in the quest to lower the cost of production by reducing labor expense and avoiding environmental regulations.  China alone now annually consumes as much coal as the rest of the world – and they do it with disregard to all environmental impacts.

Walter Ram, vice president of Food Safety at The Giumarra Companies, has warned of this ‘off shoring’ phenomenon for years.  I see labor policies and welfare practices here in the United States are to the point that there are no incentives for people to find jobs – they can sit at home and collect benefits for generations while offering nothing in return.  Without immigrant labor, many [most] crops would go unharvested.  So it appears that we either import the food itself or we ‘import’ the labor to harvest the food we grow.

We have gone from a dependence on foreign oil to almost having a surplus of Homegrown energy in the near-term.  Let’s consider becoming self-reliant in food production. We should look to alternate labor forces for farm use.  Nothing says that prisoners should only lift weights and watch daytime drama – why aren’t they required to work like the rest of us?  If we move past the Politically Correct mantra and require welfare recipients to provide some labor in exchange for their weekly check we would find plenty of labor.  If you receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) benefits, you should have to work in the food industry in return.  Our ancestors worked hard and sacrificed to better themselves – the current generation should take heed or their children will find themselves in a much worse position.

When we hear in the news that Chinese infant formula is tainted with melamine and over 50,000 babies worldwide were estimated to have been hospitalized, do we take action?  Check your garlic, it might well be from China.  Are you prepared to take the risk of what might be in those bulbs?  Is that Chinese dog treat really chicken or is it leftover fox meat from the fur industry?  I am not trying to single out China here; I am just making a point that we don’t know enough about imported foods.  So why not just produce them here with the labor force that is sitting idle for no reason?