Farmed Out

Why the government shouldn't be involved in growing food:

Epoch Times carried a full-page column by pediatric Dr. Joel Warsh last week titled “America’s Health Crisis: Expanding on RFK Jr.’s Plan to Make America Healthy Again.” As much as his thoughts may sound good, they still suffer from the same old government interventionist mindset. He wants a “National Emergency Declaration of Health.” Can you imagine the wrangling, jet fuel, focus groups, and lobbying that would occur with such an initiative? He suggests we should “recreate the food pyramid” with good food and pastured meat and eggs on the bottom instead of the top. You’d have to move the entire climate change, cow farts narrative to make this happen. Then yet more government mandates: corporations with more than 100 employees “should be required to offer wellness programs that include fitness classes, nutritional counseling, and mental health services.” Oh my, we’ve now exchanged one nanny for another. He wants health education taught in all public schools, regulations banning junk food ads when children watch TV, and subsidies for organic and transitioning farms. This is just a sampling of his list and much of it would indeed be good…if it were possible. But it’s not. Simply put, to get a legislative and bureaucratic push on these kinds of agendas is insanity according to Albert Einstein’s definition: “trying to solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.” I believe we are where we are in all these areas due to government micro-management; asking for government to get us out is asking for all the agencies, all the politicians, all the lobbyists, all the Happy Meals addicts, all the Chick-fil-A cultists, to do a 180. Ain’t gonna happen. So you ask “Well, it’s easy to be negative. What’s your solution?” I think when we engage in these kinds of same-thinking solutions, we obfuscate the simple and consistent argument that carries the most weight. While my plan may not sound doable either – and I admit on the surface that’s true – I think it takes a higher philosophically consistent road. And instead of trading one regulation for another, one bureaucrat for another, one agency for another, it cuts to the heart of the problem and offers a more defensible position. The most disempowering mindset is one that assumes the only solutions are from the government. Private certification, independent research, and individual choice offer much better solutions.

Leave farming to the farmers who actually know how...