Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Higher food prices?
There is a kind of perverse pleasure in discussing farm issues with Senator Blanche Lincoln. She has gained a lot of experience and knowledge over the years in Washington, but agriculture has always been one of her best subjects. The other day when we were talking, she just about knocked me over by suggesting that the United States might someday have a negative agriculture trade balance.
Let me run that by you a bit slower. It means that we would be buying more food from overseas than we produce here. Lincoln got a lot more graphic, just in case you missed it. She pointed out that places like Vietnam and Cambodia produce huge rice crops and that the water it is grown in is typically mixed with the local sewage. It is bad enough that the breadbasket of the world might buy so much food product abroad, but to subject Americans to this kind of indignity is unthinkable. Senator Lincoln was appalled as well.
So, the really bad news is that there is one more thing we need to watch this Republican administration over. I am still a bit concerned about bio-fuels. That adds a new bunch of corporations to profit on the backs of decent people who only like to occasionally have a meal.
(Broadcast April 9, 2007)
Let me run that by you a bit slower. It means that we would be buying more food from overseas than we produce here. Lincoln got a lot more graphic, just in case you missed it. She pointed out that places like Vietnam and Cambodia produce huge rice crops and that the water it is grown in is typically mixed with the local sewage. It is bad enough that the breadbasket of the world might buy so much food product abroad, but to subject Americans to this kind of indignity is unthinkable. Senator Lincoln was appalled as well.
So, the really bad news is that there is one more thing we need to watch this Republican administration over. I am still a bit concerned about bio-fuels. That adds a new bunch of corporations to profit on the backs of decent people who only like to occasionally have a meal.
(Broadcast April 9, 2007)
