A Follow Up to Yesterday's Post...

Yesterday I wrote about the $313 crop base payment that we were going to receive. Politics, subsidies, and current farm policy aside it really is money that we weren't planning on getting. In fact when I went in to sign-up the women at the counter actually said something along the lines of, "it's not a lot of money, but its nice to get something without having to do anything". Of course that isn't an entirely true statement because people are giving something to receive this payment...

Well, to be completely honest it is money that we weren't expecting to get and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the whole subsidy thing. All of those things were churning through my mind lately and it seems they were running through my wife's mind as well because we have kind of come to the same conclusion.

If this is money we weren't expecting to get why don't we take the opportunity to give instead of just buying something for ourselves or for our farm. It might seem like a little out of the box, but we like the idea! I'm not completely sure what we will come up with, but since we are involved in this farming thing my vote is to buy some animals for people through Gospel for Asia.

**I should mention that I'm not advocating that everyone does this with their subsidies, that is up to every ones own viewpoint ... this is just something cool we could do because ours really isn't that much

The Global Food Crisis and Small Farms

So, what is the deal with the food crisis? Is it real ... is it something that can be fixed ... is it just a scare tactic made up by certain groups ... is it caused by our growing ethanol industry ... what exactly is the deal?!? This current/impending food crisis is something that I'm hearing a lot about lately on the news and in the blogging world. People are talking about it because of the food shortages in third world countries and because of the rising food costs here in the United States.

Yesterday I ran across the video below on one of the blogs I frequent. It looks like I'm a few days late posting it, but it was still an interesting video because it features the head of Compassion International talking about the food crisis. I love what Compassion does and have supported it various times, but I'm still curious about the food crisis ... is it something new in the third world countries, or has it been around and the same for quite a while.



The other thing that pops into my head when I see news reports on the food crisis is what small farms have to do with a lack of food. Should we have more small farms? Should the small farmer sell/rent their land to bigger farmers who can farm "more efficiently"? Can the small-scale farm make a large impact in a food crisis?

Those are all questions that I don't really have concrete answers for, but I would be interested in hearing what you take on the matter is. One way I do believe small farms can help the problem is through organizations like Gospel for Asia. This organization offers us opportunities to buy farm animals (chickens, rabbits, goats, etc.) for people in developing places so they can produce food for themselves and for sale. This is an organization I love to support and think they have a great model!