This is vegetable planting time. Farmers need your voice.

[nature-lover]

While the country is worried about protecting our population from the Coronavirus, there is another looming problem – the future of our vegetable supply.

A good friend owns a small fertilizer company. This is as close to the bottom of our country’s food chain as you can get. Orders for fertilizer are not coming in from the farmers in the southeast. The farmers are in decision mode as to whether to plant this spring. Will there be processing of vegetable crops? Will there be workers to pick? Are traditional buyers still viable? The economic forecast is uncertain and markets have shifted creating a possible instability.

Restaurants have scaled back or closed but people are now cooking more than ever before. But, will there be food to cook later this year? Not if crops are not planted. Farmers are making these decisions NOW so that we can have food in three to six months. Congress needs to focus immediately on the agricultural industry so that we have food flowing to our grocery stores. Please contact your state and national representatives to act now to ensure our food supply.

[Ms. Toad]

1. Pretty shortsighted to not plant

It's not like a shift in where we eat will decrease how much we eat.

[enough]

2. Easy to say if you're not the one trying to plan

without knowing whether there will be workers to pick crops, a fully functional food processing industry, smoothly running transport systems, etc etc. Without all these and more, a farmer can be financially destroyed very easily.

[Ms. Toad]

3. I grew up on a farm.

If you expect one crop to be unsuccessful (because the price is expected to drop, because it is too labor intensive, etc.) you shift to another crop. Where I grew up, the shift was from corn to beans, or from cattle to hogs. And back and forth, depending on the expectations.

Not planting is not a option, because most farmers live so close to the edge.

[2naSalit]

4. Have been

collaborating with my new landlord about working the garden together, she's liking the idea. Last year when I moved in, she was hoping I'd be able to help her and I had to tell her that I would love to but I had seven acres of hemp growing across the valley and would be gone a lot.

I told her last fall that I would be able to help with the garden this year. Today we spent two hours talking about it while cleaning out some of the flower beds. We decided to get it together with seeds this week and get our starter plants growing indoors so we can put them in the ground come May.

I know one thing, it will be a whole lot easier than seven acres of hemp and a gang of nonworking alleged workers and high maintenance twenty somethings. Funny, the hardest working help we had all season were folks who were at least thirty and most of whom in their 50s and older.