From the February 1932 issue of Survey Graphic:

Where do most of the unemployed live? If you go through the smaller communities of New York and Connecticut you will find no starvation, no evictions, few people who have not got an overcoat or a pair of shoes. And if you go into the farming areas you will not find people starving on the farms. On the contrary. There is suffering, there is deprivation; but in the smaller communities and on the farms, there is not the same kind of being up against it, of not knowing where you are going to sleep tonight or where you are going to get the next meal that you find in cities. I venture the assertion that at least three quarters, and probably more of the dependent unemployed throughout the United States today, are in the cities.

Are we not beginning now to visualize a different kind of city? Are we not beginning to envisage the possibility of a lower cost of living by having a greater percentage of our population living a little closer to the source of supply?…

We hope blindly that government in some miraculous way can prevent any future economic depression, that government or some great leader will discover a panacea for the ills that have been hitting the world ever since history has been recorded….

From the October 1932 issue of , Survey Graphic:

“Half of us live in or within twenty-five miles of ninety-five metropolitan cities. And we live badly. They are obsolete.”

I came across the above quotes as I was doing research on America’s historic homestead communities. During the darkest depths of the Great Depression, food was becoming scarce because of a drought, and because of the cost of transporting it to urban areas. As the economy heaved and then buckled under financial pressure, the Federal government decided people would be better off in intentional communities that they built themselves. One such community was the Tillery Resettlement Community, one of only 15 black New Deal Era homestead communities.  Here’s a quick introduction:

In a stunning recess appointment, Barrack Obama appointed Islam A. Siddiqui, a lobbyist for the pesticide industry, to the position of Chief Agriculture Negotiator for the United States. Siddiqui is vehemently opposed to sustainable farming. In fact, Siddiqui’s organization, CropLife America, insists that man-made chemicals in the human blood stream are no big deal:

• The presence of a chemical in the human body is not necessarily cause for alarm or concern, and this information alone does not help to inform individual health risk.
• Human health risk resulting from the presence of a particular chemical is determined by both hazard (the intrinsic properties of the chemical, including toxicity) and exposure (amount, frequency, and length of exposure to the chemical).
• The presence of a chemical found in biomonitoring data does not necessarily indicate a health threat.
• It is essential to understand at what amount adverse effects occur (i.e., toxicity), and at what amount such chemicals are found in the environment (i.e., exposure point concentration) before an assessment of risk can be made.

CropLife America was one of the organizations that sent a disparaging letter to to the White House when they learned of the First Lady’s organic garden. Apparently Siddiqui is one gifted negotiator. The First Lady gets an organic garden, and the pesticide lobby gets a sweet deal from her husband. Unbelievable. And if Siddiqui and company don’t like cute organic gardens, what do you suppose he thinks about organic farmers?

Clark County Circuit Judge Jon Counsell ruled that Wisconsin’s Premises ID program violates the religious rights of Amish farmers, who believe marking their animals with the Government’s mandated alpha/numerical sequence would be tantamount to taking the “Mark of the Beast,” as described in the Bible. Emanuel Miller Jr. argued that the mandate was too restrictive and the Judge agreed. In the nine-page ruling, he noted that there was no requirement for registrants to own a telephone, making it highly unlikely that the program would be effective in the Amish community in case of an outbreak. Because people in the Amish community don’t have a phone, requiring them to have a premises ID number wouldn’t enable state, county, or federal officials to contact them any faster. In case of an outbreak, Clark County Ag agents would still have to go door-to-door to gather information. Read the ruling here>>>

Paul McGraw, the assistant state veterinarian, said he expects the state to appeal the Miller decision. If you’d like to see the ruling stand unchallenged, and save Wisconsin taxpayers some money, contact the good doctor and his colleagues, and let them know what you think.

* Robert Ehlenfeldt, DVM
Wisconsin State Veterinarian
608-837-9705
Cell 608-575-2709

* Paul McGraw, DVM
Wisconsin Assistant State Veterinarian
262-740-0574
Cell 608-516-2084

* Michael Dutcher, DVM
USDA Veterinary Service Area Veterinarian in Charge
608-334-6811
Cell 608-334-6811