Editorial Comments by Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016
Agriculture is at a crossroads, and so is America. But the choice of paths that lie before us are neither clear nor direct.
When we go to the polls on Tuesday, it will be with mixed thoughts and emotions.
As the mainstream media analyze and over analyze every breaking news story, every “narrative,” every campaign “spin,” every poll, every issue that they deem important, there is much that gets left on the cutting room floor — important issues that no one really talks about, and yet they are harbingers of our future.
What they don’t talk about – of course – is agriculture. What they don’t talk about is the backbone of our economy, the original resource from which all other facets of the economy are made possible.
Take, for example, Hillary Clinton’s speech to financial institutions, where she said she dreams of one world, one economy, without borders. When pressed on that issue, her response was to say that, ‘Oh, that speech! I was talking about the energy economy, a worldwide energy grid. I want the U.S. to be the renewable energy super-power of the world.’
A convenient response to a concept that should give us all pause — in and outside of agriculture.
In talking with farm folk who volunteer for missions or projects in third-world countries where helping to establish indigenous agriculture practices and infrastructure is deemed so important, it hit me: We will be that third-world country — maybe not in my lifetime – but nevertheless that is one path on this crossroads if we do not take care to protect our farms and our farmers. Not only is their stewardship of the land vital to regional food security, but they are the place-holders for the essence of our liberty as a nation. Private property rights and ownership are the keys to our freedom as a nation, as a people.
Globalization is happening at a rapid pace. Running parallel to globalization is market concentration as mergers and acquisitions put more and more power into the hands of the few when it comes to food and agriculture. And then those ‘too big to fail’ entities are being sold off to foreign nations, like China, who already owns, according to the Department of the Treasury, $1.24 trillion in bills, notes and bonds (about 30%) of the over $4 trillion in Treasury bills, notes and bonds held by foreign countries.
That, my friends, is the auctioneer’s gavel on our national debt. True to form as a businessman, Donald Trump is talking about the national debt. Hillary Clinton is not.
Exports are said to be necessary for all agriculture commodity markets, especially dairy, and while I believe exports are important, they are not the end-all, be-all – except to the multi-national companies that view us as though they are on a satellite in space counting their dots on the globe: production units or consumption units, bars on a graph, slices on a pie-chart, numbers on a sales report, quarterly statements to shareholders.
In these third world countries I referenced earlier — where the good folk of the USA help farmers establish themselves — one of the first realizations is that when we throw cheap food at them, through exports, they have difficulty getting their own agriculture established to have the food security we Americans enjoy and truly take for granted.
Think about that for a moment. Are we not in danger, ourselves, of going down a path that could leave us food insecure?
The trade agreements that give our farmers market access to foreign markets also give our domestic market away to foreign imports. The give and the take are contrived and uneven. Winners and losers are made, created.
There is nothing fair or free about world trade because nations are losing the ability to care for and protect their own – particularly the U.S. – and we don’t even realize it. We are focused on the tantalizing allure of what we can sell … so that we are blinded to being sold-out.
The magician’s trick. Watch the elaborate thing I am doing with my left hand while I fool you with my right.
Many of these trade agreements are not free and fair trade, but rather a march forward to globalization, where the World Trade Organization and the United Nations become a higher power than our own Congress, our own President.
We saw just a tiny inkling of this, firsthand, when Congress quickly repealed the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) last March, and when the administration lifted the ban on Brazilian beef in August, and when the first boatload of beef hit Philadelphia, via JBS, just three weeks ago, followed by a rapid downturn in cattle prices here at home.
We’ve already seen foreign interests, namely China, purchase Smithfield and Syngenta, to name a few. This week, the Dallas News reported that a team of Chinese bankers and a Chinese dairy are considering a possible takeover bid for Dean Foods, our nation’s largest milk bottler that handles 35% of the raw farm milk produced in this country.
What does this have to do with Tuesday’s presidential and congressional election? Plenty.
You won’t hear Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump talk about agriculture, specifically, but listening to their differing outlooks, overall, a few things are clear and have helped me make my choice for next Tuesday.
For me, voting for a third party candidate or writing in a name like John McCain (as previous candidate and Ohio governor John Kasich did) is not an option. Neither is it an option to write in Mickey Mouse or to leave that part of the ballot blank.
Folks, this is serious. This presidential election – for all of its circus acts – is no circus. This is our future. This is the future we are handing to our children and grandchildren. I, for one, cannot trust it to a candidate who has spent the past 30 years in the political realm as a profitable public servant, and has wasted so much of that time on her own agenda with such disregard for the rules others live by as to again be under investigation.
I will vote between the two major party candidates based on what I know about their outlook on the future along with what my gut tells me about the investigations into their pasts and what it says about what they could or would do with the power of the Presidency in the future.
Neither candidate lives like we do out here in middle and rural America. But, at least one of the two candidates lives outside of the political realm.
We are governed by career politicians embroiled in endless self-perpetuation. The more paralyzed they are in their elected offices, the more power is diverted to the longstanding and quite powerful bureaucracy whom are elected by no one.
Everyone complains about the gridlock inside the beltway, like nothing ever gets done.
Wrong.
Plenty of work is getting done in Washington D.C., it is just mainly the work of career bureaucrats that exercise more control and make us weaker, tearing at our moral fabric, eating away at the base of our economy, ripping through our roots, and chipping away at our freedoms.
There is a power- and land-grab underway in this country. Most all agriculture commodities are at prolonged below-breakeven prices while the political elite is poised to push yet another trade agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership, into the mix.
Meanwhile, we have a hammer of political correctness keeping us in our place, not daring to be free thinkers. Many voices are silenced as the economic and moral decay are inextricably linked.
Take, for example, the way we accept how the government imposes ridiculous rules on what our children can eat for lunch at school. All things are connected so that local communities cannot even feed their children the way they see fit. Those rules, incidentally, create winners and losers. And in so doing, the voices of the affected are silenced.
We have a runaway EPA with the implementation and flawed interpretation of the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) legislation that threatens to create a second wave of land-grab after the market pushes a first wave of farmers off the land.
And then there is the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) and their silver-tongued Wayne Pacelle. He is campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Her animal rights agenda dovetails with the candidate and Democratic Party’s obsession with climate change — right down to the livestock and dairy cattle on our farms.
There is so much more I could say, but to summarize, consider this: Who better to tackle over-regulation, unfair trade agreements, national food security, a vital agriculture, family farms and small businesses besieged by a labyrinth of complexities foisted upon them by a government run by self-perpetuating career politicians and ever-present, accountable-to-no-one bureacrats than a business man — a man that for all of his faults, at least does not live and has not spent 30-plus years operating in the self-perpetuation of the D.C. beltway.
We need to break free of the career politician mentality and breathe fresh air and common sense into the mix as well as to toss a bit of our sensitivity and political correctness to the side to break the cycle we are in and alter the path down which we are being led.
For all of his faults, Donald Trump is the only one of the two less than optimal choices we have in this election that fits that description.
Even on immigration reform, he is the one to have the best chance of getting it done. Only after our border is secured will our divided nation have a chance to come together with compassion for the illegal workers who are here today, working hard, making a contribution and raising their families that were born here. I have listened to Trump on this issue, and I get it. He is leaving room for that conversation after the border is secured and the estimated two million illegal immigrants that have committed crimes are properly dealt with. He will consult the American people on the next move after that first important move.
Election after election, candidates promise to shake things up, bring about change, bring people together, work for the people, protect our country.
Meanwhile, the beltway fills with sludge and slow-motion sets in to the point where boots are stuck.
Instead of standing fast, I’m leaving the boots in the mud, these bare feet are seeking new ground next Tuesday.
That didn’t happen immediately, but not long after she was home, she sure did.
It was something she had worked for daily with the support of her family, friends, therapists… and a last minute pep talk from dad, Justin Burdette.
Reese was surrounded Monday by her support team of friends and family, including friends from Johns Hopkins, who came to Harrisburg to witness how much Reese loves the dairy industry and how this dairy industry family continues to support her and her family. Her ever-faithful cousin Regan Jackson and friend Lane Kummer helped make it possible to also lead her cow Pantene.
As for Reese, her family, favored cow Pantene, and all who continue to support and love her… the joy of the day and its milestones was plain to see.
“The Patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.”
Caption: The health of the dairy and livestock economies are harbingers of the economic health of rural America … and of the planet itself. Here’s some food for thought as we celebrate Earth Day and as climate change discussions are in the news and as researchers increasingly uncover 
Attendees gathered at noon to have pizza and ice cream, followed by a video on the spray gun system and comments from Worden, who has been using the spray gun system for one year, which is set up in his swing parlor on a hose reel for easy pull-down access. The gun works on the parlor air supply.
Worden has developed a “0 to 100 in 7 days” protocol, where fresh cows and heifers receive a fast minimal application of Udder Comfort through the spray gun for the first seven days post-calving. He concentrates the application to the udder floor and up the crease in one swift motion front to rear, after each milking, before fresh animals exit the parlor.
The purpose of post-fresh applications is to reduce swelling and set the cow up to fulfill her genetic potential, according to Worden. He and his wife Vanessa and sons Wayne, Mark and Eric operate their 260-cow dairy in central New York.
Lingen Dairy is home to 250 milk cows with a rolling herd average of 31,500 pounds. Cows average 94 pounds per day up to 100 pounds, and SCC runs consistently around 120,000. The farm is operated by Randy and Denice Lingen and their son Josh and his fiancé Andrea Guio Monje. Josh’s sister Hailey also helps in the milking parlor, where fresh cows and heifers are milked before moving to the adjacent Lely robotic facility.
Lingen sprays the udders of fresh cows after each milking in the parlor for the first three to seven days after calving. Then, in the robot barn, he spot-sprays, with the conventional spray bottles, any cow with an elevated conductivity on the robotic system printout each morning.
Author’s Note: It has been almost a month since Reese’s homecoming and she is getting back to the precious rhythms of life on the farm: Greeting her little sister off the bus on sunny afternoons, feeding her prize cow’s new calf, riding the gator with her grandfather, having tea parties with sister and cousins on Sunday afternoons, getting together with school friends, still attending school virtually via “Double,” her robot, even going to the dentist! Her journey continues to inspire. I am grateful for the opportunity to interview Reese and her mother and grandmother on the quiet first Monday after her arrival home Friday, March 18, 2016. Get ready to be inspired by this young lady, and by her family and the local farming community and worldwide dairy community who continue to think of her. Thank you to Jean Kummer, Laura Jackson and Jennifer DiDio for providing some of the photos here.
Ag Moos 