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Trenton, KY | I am only 27 years old, so I was born in 1984 and didn't farm through the 80's. However, I have heard my dad and both of my grandfathers (both sides of my family farmed 8 miles apart) talk enough about the 80's on so many occasions that I sometimes feel like I lived through them myself! The one thing that sticks in my side more and more when the topic of conversation comes to the 1980's and for situations like this with Illinois Family Farms is the fact that there were several huge write offs in our immediate area back then. What kills me the most is that SOME of the guys (that is SOME and not ALL) who had big write offs in the 80's are some of the same guys doing the same things again, like they didn't learn from their lesson before. The government didn't realize it in the 80's and they probably won't realize it now, but we don't have to have farming operations like Illinois Family Farms in existence at all to produce grain in this world. If they really have 30,000 + acres and they were put completely out of business tomorrow, that just means that either 30 other farms could take on another 1,000 acres each or 60 farms could take on another 500 acres each, and life would go on perfectly fine. And the farms who were able to pick up another 500 or 1,000 acres should that happen would probably be guys who weren't out trying to put everyone else out of business in the first place. Or maybe the land would be returned to the farmers who originally had it before IFF came about, after all they were probably taking better care of it than it has seen in recent years. We should all be contacting our senators and congressmen about this matter, because I am sure someone from the IFF side of the fence will be telling them how the U.S. needs operations like theirs to keep the world spinning. After all, you can't keep raising the "debt ceiling" forever, it doesn't work in ANY business and I don't know how we think it can continue to work in Washington. | |
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Illinois Family Farms website
