Quayle is selling family farmers down the Volga

by Jim Hightower former Agriculture Commissioner of Texas

After 16 years of Republican neglect our farmers are once again hit by yet another blow. Normally you would expect free trade to be beneficial for our farmers, but without proper import protections and proper export assistance, free trade is about as useless as telling a man without a gun that he can shoot as many bird as he likes.

Family farmers and smallholders have been battered by years of foreclosures and Washington incompetence and most will find it prohibitively expensive to export anything, the few who will, will likely find that their crops are selling at lower prices than before, thus depriving them of much needed income

Now big Agribusiness will probably have a good enough time for now, selling their crops to starving Russians, but what happens when the Ukrainians and Russians get their economies up and running again, well soon cheap Russian crops and Ukrainian grain will be making their way into America, undercutting all but a few big farm corps.

The Quayle administration’s slapdash approach to trade and agriculture continues, exemplified by this darn awful plan. And that’s not even getting into the other consequences of which I as a humble farmer am not adept to address.

This is Jim Hightower signing off.