Posted on 12/08/2012 8:33:04 AM PST by KeyLargo
USDA chief: Rural America becoming less relevant
By MARY CLARE JALONICK Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has some harsh words for rural America: It's "becoming less and less relevant," he says.
A month after an election that Democrats won even as rural parts of the country voted overwhelmingly Republican, the former Democratic governor of Iowa told farm belt leaders this past week that he's frustrated with their internecine squabbles and says they need to be more strategic in picking their political fights.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...

That’s said until rural America cuts off the lights, fuel, food and so on.
Try us VilSACK.
Just go F yourself Tom,nobody in farm country respects your views.Why don’t you keep your piehole closed for a while?
If you read the entire article he appears to be defending rural America.
As a resident of the Pittsburgh area, I apologize for this area producing this VilSACK of crap.
Nothing more than incitement to riot in my opinion. They won - through cheating is my guess. Yet they are full of piss and vinegar and bravado in their win. Let them have it.
I’ve checked out and am preparing for a world where polls, pundits, media and political poweratti don’t matter any more.
I dunno, maybe you have a point but I trust anyone in the OBummer administration about as far as I can pick up and throw my Chevy Blazer.
Without a doubt he's a toady. But I found this comment interesting.
" It's the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it."
He’s a Dem and Obama put him where he is.Two strikes against him and then he starts talking....
Agenda 21 prefers that rural America become irrelevant.
Well, let’s just park the tractors from coast to coast next spring and see how irrelevant farmers and ranchers are. Growers could simply reduce their operations by 50%, and when the price of food stuffs soars, could come out ahead financially because of the decreased overhead. That’s the highly successful OPEC model that seems to be a-okay with governments all over the world.
Perhaps God will do the reduction in production. The Mid-West will not be out of its drought this year. Snow has been non-existent, and the winter wheat crop is already gone on the southern plains. The “Bread Basket of America” may yield only crumbs if this is a 5-7 year drought cycle.
Whuzza matter?
Do li da gun and bible pic?
Once the marxo muslim has his agenda, broken, desperate , hungry Americans will turn to the land more than ever before.... even if it is to emulate Africans and steal from the farmers.... raid, loot and kill.
If the looters come,we are ready.
People who know know thing about agriculture are now dictating how farmers grow and raise crops and livestock.
Hey Vilsak, wait til the economic collapse and then see how irrelevant the rural areas are. You moron!!
I don’t know which is worse, their hubris or their stupidity!
Go away, Vilsack-in this rural community, the tourists ran off leaving empty summer homes and RV parks and lost jobs (and bankrupt businesses) all over the place. We are starting to live without depending on them-growing our own stuff and bartering, like country people did before. If they don’t like what we stand for, let them learn to grow their own food, and we’ll keep ours ...
“rural America: It’s “becoming less and less relevant,” he says. “
Which is why they mention us more and more.
Time to starve the beast that sits on a hill in DC? embargo their sorry arses.. amazing how they speak and nothing but ill words come forth.
“synthesize all our food out of soy beans”
He must have been inspired by reading about the “totalcakes” in Ira Levin’s late 60’s novel “This Perfect Day”-they came in a couple of flavors, and the accompanying soft drinks were called “cokes”...
The leftist/socialist/fascist democrats and DC lackeys know this, which is why the vilification/marginalization/isolation of middle America will begin in earnest. The quickest way to take over agricultural, manufacturing, and energy production is to usurp the existing population with a more compliant and beholden to the government workforce. They have that workforce now, 75% of them loyal to the people handing out the freebies, and have absolutely no loyalty to the people who have employed them in the past. If the government offers them more to run your farm or ranch or business than what you’re paying them, you are as good as gone.
EXACTLY! Wasn't it Mao Tse Tung who said whoever controls the countryside will ultimately triumph? (For precisely the reasons you cited!)
“The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution”.
Thomas Jefferson
Just out of curiosity, where did this prof think the soybeans would come from? Was some guy named Jack going to climb the giant’s beanstalk to get them?
An overload of phytoestrogens from soy will wreak havoc with the human body.
Also, soy requires more processing (and more this more agriculural industrial infrastructure) for those "natural" foods -- tofu, oil, "soymilk" etc.
You can get REAL milk and REAL meat from a cow -- no processing required!

Yes...this really is Obama's Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack. Amazing.
"I should point out, when you talk about the SNAP program or the food stamp program, you have to recognize that it's also an economic stimulus. Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity. If people are able to buy a little more in the grocery store, someone has to stock it, package it, shelve it, process it, ship it. All of those are jobs. It's the most direct stimulus you can get in the economy during these tough times."
It’s the Chicago way, back us and vote for us or you suffer big time. All that nice farmland you own will have to be sold when you die to pay the federal death taxes too. We have other folks who are reliable voters and need benefits to sit on their butts and smoke weed.
Malcolm Smith- the prior President of what was called Rhodesia—now called Zimbabwe was required to turn over his farm to the blacks in Zimbabwe this week by the government there.
President of Zimbabwe also called for complete nationalization of all businesses there which are foreign owned in any degree. “it is time for the locals and natives to run their own country without outside help”.....
They have already turned the productive farms-—which once produced enough food to export millions of tons to other African countries-—into non-productive entities and now the country IMPORTS about 80% of it’s food.
Death tax’ a death sentence to family farms, businesses?
VIDEOS:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1985931959001/death-tax-a-death-sentence-to-family-farms-businesses/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kmrjDiCJ-k
Those professors don't think a lot of things through far enough.
At which point, it is to be hoped your cousin asked this brain dead moron "Where are these soybeans to be used in the synthesis going to come from?"
the infowarrior
I can think of three times per day, that rural America is very relevant.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack can’t.
LMAO! I didn’t reference the soylent green because in the book I mentioned, the totalcakes were processed plant matter like soybeans, algae, etc, and only a small hidden elite class ate anything else, unless you escaped from the commie government-by boat, of course-to some islands to live-sort of like Castro’s Cuba in reverse...
Their idea of reverse it and your idea of reverse it are two different things.
The shrinking population is becoming less relevant. That is by design.
0bama’s ‘bitter clingers’ comment recognizes that there are already hold out against the progressive agenda.
Reversing it to a progressive means government farms as more and more ‘bitter clingers’ refuse to comply with the progressive program.
Food shortages ....?
Even if the population of the cities managed to get enough veggies, grain and meat for sustenance from captive blue states like California, living in the Tokyo-like crowded conditions, where no one has much contact with soil or live plants, breeds germs they will have no resistance or immunity to-it has already happened several times in recorded history, but apparently we are slow learners.
It is both mentally and physically unhealthy for humans to live in hives-we are not bees-but many people choose to ignore that because everything is so close and convenient.
The Industrial Revolution started with people abandoning rural pursuits and moving to cities where the factory jobs were. The reasons haven't changed much since then.
Today if you want to leave the city where'd you go? You need to own a property - a farm, a ranch - to live there. And if you live there you probably have to work the land too, or else what are you going to live on? Farms are not cheap; a usable farm may cost more than a restaurant in a city. Even ignoring the fact that city dwellers have no agricultural skills, they simply don't have the money - and if they suddenly get rich en masse then there aren't enough farms on the market for them all. Farms must have plenty of land, and all that land had been divided up a long time ago. They don't make new land these days.
Cities avoid this problem. They can generate more jobs (if they want to.) All kinds of jobs are available, not just pulling up on the stalks to help them grow faster. Housing is available to anyone who can pay (and some to those who can't.) As you say, it's a hive - but a hive is a pretty safe place to be at, for bees and for humans alike.
The population of rural areas cannot grow because it is limited by the size of available land. Mechanization of labor generates free hands (children of farmers) who must go to cities in search of work. Otherwise the family grows but the income from the fixed land does not. This means that the rural population is linked to the land size, and tends to shrink a bit over time because of mechanization, and because of loss of use of some old farms, and because of lack of water... all the growth is in the cities because hives are good at growth. Since that's where all the voters are, politicians cater to them and buy their votes left and right. Farmers' opinion does not matter in a democracy; and democracy is what we are supposed to have here. Democracies depend on honesty of the majority to not oppress the minority. But, as Zimbabwe demonstrates, the majority is not always honest and fair.
synthesize all our food out of soy beans
RACIST! Doesn’t he know that a slang word for Mexican is “bean” or “beaner”?
Much of my family has been very small ranchers in south Texas for well over 200 years, or are otherwise self employed-mostly smalltime sub contractors, like me-nothing big or fancy, just enough to get by, but we like it.
The large-scale farming and ranching operations that feed the masses are south of the here, where the land is flatter and more fertile-but here, on less than an acre, you can grow enough to eat and barter, and there are grocery and general stores in rural communities-we may be rural, but we’re not dumb-we know how to grab that weekend tourist fisherman looking for tackle and bait as well as stocking stoneground wholewheat flour and free-range meats for natural living nuts like me...
I live in a remote area, in spite of it being within 30 miles of SA. Enough usable property for food or livestock on a small scale here isn’t nearly as expensive as a city restaurant-neither is a rural restaurant-city property is way more expensive, but here you do have to put up with a well for water, a septic system, unpaved roads, etc. But there is no giant city service bureaucracy, either-everything in life is a trade-out, after all.
There are plenty of places for sale cheap that belonged to city people who had no agricultural skills, but wanted to rough it-they usually last until the first big thunderstorm that floods the (steep) road so they can’t get out, or the first cold winter where snow/ice makes the same road impassable for a few hours. Unfortunately, they have left quite a few empty summer cabins and homes, but at least they are gone.
I grew up on, and spent part of my adult life on a ranch-as you said, it isn’t the place for anyone who has only lived in an urban/suburban environment.
Black men cannot run Africa..... and that is without dissent, and all black.... and they havenet had one success yet. Historically speaking, they have NEVER enjoyed civilization.
One might say the :great zimbabwe”, but, I would speculate the apparent wealth, ideas and successes were probably founded on selling the neighboring tribe into slavery.
Today? They are still grounded in tribalism thus “still too close to the earth.” Actually thats still being too polite. On their own, they are not farmers. Never have been.... Never really had to. Thus warring and raiding/ when it isnt raining, is what they are all about. The way tribes get ahead is just like the tibal mentality of Islam, you get ahead by raiding.
Like Obama is doing to America today.
Sarah Palin referred to the people who grow our food and fight our wars, but as we saw a month ago there just aren’t enough of them (and the soldier thing applies to cities & suburbs as well).
General Franco won the war in Spain because the communist agitators in the cities weren’t “hands-on” working people; the countryside (which supported Franco and the generals) starved them out in the end...
So who was going to "synthesize" the soy beans?
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