Agriculture...
One of the great unreported stories of the last few years is about the slow crumbling of our rural economy in America. Coming from the most rural state in America, I am especially familiar with the plight those communities face. Rural unemployment has jumped over 50%, with 600,000 more rural Americans looking for work. Poverty rates are shameful -- almost 500,000 rural Americans fell below the poverty line in George Bush�s first year in the White House. Sadly, President Bush and his House Republican colleagues have consistently tried to block or de-fund measures that would help rural Americans. They slashed funding for value added grants for small farmers, they attempted to block mandatory country-of-origin labeling, they attempted to deny funding for conservation measures, like the CSP, that reward farmers who work to protect the environment, and they have consistently sided with the large corporate farms, meatpackers and processors by providing them with unfair advantages over independent family farmers. The bottom line is, though George Bush may choose his words to appeal to America�s heartland, his actions are starving it. We must decide whether we will be a country that lives in fear of the slow destruction of our agricultural base, or whether will we honestly address the reasons it is falling apart. I believe that we cannot give up on our nation�s ranching and farming communities. In addition to restoring those measures that Bush has tried to undo, I believe we can foster an economic revival in rural America. We can start by ensuring that rural entrepreneurs have access to equity capital. Rural entrepreneurs have good ideas, but too often they don�t have access to the capital they need to turn their ideas into job-creating businesses. We must also address the cycle of out-migration that has decimated many of our rural communities, which we can do through government matched savings accounts and tax credits to help create businesses with fewer than five employees. Universal health care will help rural America a great deal as well; small businesses will be able to afford insurance for their employees, and no family will worry about finding money to go to a doctor. We must also address the digital divide in rural America by making a dramatic investment in broadband technology that will reach every American. Additionally, we need a real conservation program in America. We must implement and restore funding for Senator Harkin�s Conservation Security Program, but we must also address the fact that many large, corporate Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are able to receive millions in government aid while skirting environmental rules through a loophole passed by Republicans in 2002. As president, I will close this loophole immediately and implement meaningful payment limitations for the EQIP program. We must also address the problems of concentration and integration; megafarms are getting larger, and it�s becoming harder for small farmers to make a profit. Studies have also shown that as farm size and absentee ownership increase in a community, so do poverty and unemployment. One step we can take to curtail concentration will be to institute a national packer ban, ensuring meatpackers cannot own livestock prior to slaughter. As president, I will also use authority under the Packers and Stockyards Act to take aggressive action to stop price discrimination by packers. I will vigorously enforce anti-trust laws to stop anti-corporate mergers like Smithfield�s recent acquisition of Farmland and I will restrict the amount of federal support payments huge megafarms can receive. There�s much to be done to restore our rural communities, and we must begin now, but to truly affect change, we will need a new president. We can�t afford four more years of a president who treats rural America like it�s little more than a campaign prop. Rural America deserves a president who will make a real investment in their communities. According to www.deanforamerica.com
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