Rural urban divide

Boulder, Colorado. Lincoln, Nebraska. Missoula, Montana. Los Angeles, California. Chicago, Illinois. Just a few examples of population centers voting in statewide policy that affects tens of thousands of acres of rural ground owned and worked by a small handful of folks. I'm not here to debate political representation, the validity of majority vote, or even crack the seal on the gerrymandering of districts. The facts are, most people are like me. They own or rent an apartment, multiple family housing unit, or single family home on a small chunk of lawn. They don't have livestock or impressive vegetable production that they rely on to feed them all winter. If they do hunt, it's not the only protein source they're going to eat on that winter. If they do understand rural issues, it's still difficult to fully grasp a lifestyle you spend 95% of your time living apart from. We are the majority.

Now all that said, I have enough first hand knowledge of agriculture that I'm not the odd urban sycophant in the YouTube comments that says God bless our farmers and make sure they don't have to pay taxes. I'm certainly not suggesting a celestial curse upon anyone in the commercial agriculture business, but it's just that. A business. And a well subsidized one. I have spent enough time hauling fat cattle, cruising across dryland summer fallow, filling fertilizer tanks, and wrestling calves to have gotten a fairly wide exposure to operations of many sizes and goals. I love agriculture and all the frustrating beauty within it, probably more than the next 7 people in line. But I don't like how we've accepted dumping out gallons of very effective chemistry on nearly every arable acre nation wide. I've cleaned my share of chemical and fertilizer tanks, and taken the safety briefs on handling them, so you won't be able to convince me "they're actually perfectly safe." Again, first hand exposure is my speaking platform.

Now, you might well rebut with, what about feeding a hungry world? I can tell you all about it. I got my land grant university degree. I know all about the 2050 population plateau and how we MUST spray Monsanto products on Monsanto seeds with John Deere equipment and John Deere proprietary guidance technology in order to do it. I politely suggest to you, gentle reader, that this is a rather large crock of bullshit. There's more than enough food in the world to feed everyone and then some. It's strictly political agendas that allow people to go uneducated and unfed. A starved and illiterate people are an easy group to lord control over. Some of my more 'THC and hemp spun pants' compadres might argue that just having calories available doesn't make them good nutrition. Sure. But I bet the child waiting to be eaten by the buzzard in that iconic photo would have preferred 'empty' calories in GMO rice to a slow and painful death of starvation.

So who's side am I on anyway? I'm not. I'd rather everyone in the world was able to burn natural gas inside their home for cooking and heat. I'd rather everyone had an abundance of cheap and reasonably healthy food stuffs. I also am appalled at the amount of brine we've dumped down "sealed" wells in the Permian and the focus on growing 400 bushels of yellow dent corn on an acre of black-land sod that could grow enough vegetables feed a couple city blocks for a winter. But, as a true believer in private property rights, if I want to change how things are done, by golly I'll just have to make my own fortune and apply my beliefs to my own ground. If you want to scatter solar panels all over yours, then watch thousands of dollars worth of toxic components leach into the soil and ground water after a massive hail event, that's your prerogative.

Now, I understand engagement comes from aggravating people and being polarizing. In spite of my sarcasm, that's not really my goal here. I'm just frustrated that people feel the desire to fall into one of two camps. Just like politics, it's either us or them, and there's no room on the ballot for a third option unless you just want to throw away your influence. It would be really awesome if we could get oil out of the ground without walking away from capped off disposal wells that rocket brine into the air 30 years later, poisoning the ground and the water on fragile and arid grazing land. It would be nice to grow an abundance of food without sitting on the commodity high horse where we pretend the convenience of a homogeneous corn supply benefits the family farmer rather than multi-national merchandizing corporations. We pretend like no-till is a sufficient burnt offering to pay for the sins of chemical application and monocropping. We know cattle don't really perform well or enjoy being covered in mud tags all winter, but damn it, what are you gonna do, just haul the corn out to them? They have to be centralized to make it work! But of course, it doesn't work because the packer monopolies screw us every chance they get on the live bids. Too bad selling meat on your own is heavily regulated and "just not practical at scale." Well that's true. But I guess I think there's a world of value in everyone having to shed animal blood in their front yard to eat Thanksgiving turkey or ham. No one's time is that valuable as a "specialist" that the economics don't allow them to have to kill one creature a year to remind them how the laws of existence work. Everyone has to die. Everyone has to eat. You ought to face the reality of both, but it's your God given right to maintain ignorance to the bitter end thanks to capitalism.

I took econ 101. Supply, demand, elasticity, specialization, and economies of scale are not foreign language to me. But the older I get, the more I have to question if there's really some "living organism" that is the market or the economy. Of course they're neither tangible nor alive, but you wouldn't know that for how we talk about them. "The economy is on fire. Making a lot of people rich." "The market is efficient. It knows what's best, I just got caught on the wrong side of it." Bull-shark. The economy is our finite minded way of describing how this fake store of value we call the U.S. Dollar is 'flowing' from one place to another. Which is actually just digits on a screen, backed by nothing but the belief of a bunch of people that those units actually are valid to trade for tangible goods and services. Every once in a while we can actually get our hands on a few sheets of this resume paper, (partially cotton for quality feel you see), and then we think that , "Yeap! Dollars are real!" Just as well say the same about Santa if you see a red suit at the mall in December.

Why the departure to money when we are talking about rural and urban divides? Because making a living is theoretically what everyone in the rural (and urban) area is trying to do. Anyone who tries to break into farming at any sort of scale is usually shocked by the economic barriers. Which, again, is our fancy way of saying that the people who already own or rent all the ground damn well don't want any competitors no matter how small. Unfair generalization? If you live in a farming community, I'd bet the coffee shop talk comes closer to validating that than not. Rural America is an amazing place, and I'm in love with it, but it's about as clique sick as any other group you can draw lines around. It's full of people. Good ones, bad ones, and just as susceptible to group think as a gang all wearing one color in the rough end of a big city. Except, we tend to wear a certain color seed or equipment cap. When you get into grain versus livestock, just check the footwear.

So rural versus urban. We all like to think we know better. If you draw the lines big enough, we'll forgive each other for equipment paint colors in service of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Put aside the petty discussion of combines feeding the pheasants so that you can rally together to defend growing a half section of straight corn production. That guy with the hot wire grazing pigs out in winter radishes is a kook. And he can't scale it and feed the world! Damned if that should be the goal or not, or if we're willing to pencil out adding more families to small communities all grazing pigs to see how many people we really could feed. But, the regenerative and conventional people will even bury the hatchet to shit on the millennial hipsters eating vegan! Especially if those millennial hipster dipsticks voted to reintroduce wolves to rangeland.

My point here is, there's a lot of infighting in the world. But if I draw big enough circles of commonality and convince the people inside those lines that it's us versus them, they'll let their tribal roots take over. They'll gladly fight and die in tribal wars to avoid being an outcast that's liable to starve and exit the genepool without the support of the tribe. So, it's hard to discuss us versus them when you're unwilling to take an introspective posture towards yourself and the smaller groups you identify with first. I have an uncanny ability to anger everyone. It's like a superpower if you consider being able to burn every bridge a superpower. It leads to a lonely existence. But like Elijah begging for death under the broom tree, I'd rather find myself at the mercy of the Creator in the desert than be enjoying the shouts of support from the thousands of prophets of Baal whose earthly and eternal demise would make an epic punctuation mark to a mountaintop standoff.

Many have privately suggested to me that I take things a bit too seriously. That I'm trying to draw some melodrama of Braveheart battle proportions out of every mildly heated political or religious discussion. That I am, *gasp*, inflammatory! I wished that were not the side effect of taking a critical eye to the generally accepted narratives of the day. But we have throughout history crucified, quite literally, the outliers that later proved correct. They paved the path to truth through being willing to stand. Now, I don't for a second think that I'm the enlightened one. In spite of how you may understand what I say, it does not come from a self-righteous place. I wish I could fast forward to "knowing better," but I'm aware that comes from never being done learning. Never stopping the questioning process of why I am doing things the way I am.

We all would like to think of ourselves as open minded life-long learners. But the bitter truth is, it's much easier to punch in and out, obey the laws, and live in relative peace. Fighting is hard, exhausting, and will cause you question just why you're fighting. Surrender would be easier. But, in my experience, every chick fights to hatch. Then fights for food and space and warmth. In spite of our advances in drugs and life support, every woman fights to survive bringing new life into the world, and that new life screams for breath and fights a myriad of illnesses and dangers to grow and survive long enough to reproduce themselves. I can't see how simply observing the laws of existence would lead you to believe it's anything but a fight to the literal death. It is my opinion that accepting this is the path to getting rid of the "versus" and drawing a new line around humanity that allows for a general respect and understanding. Even between enemies willing to fight each other to the death for their opposing beliefs.

So rural versus urban. I have very specific opinions on this I will tease out in other posts. Who knows how much mileage I can get out of a keyboard on this topic. But first, the foundation, and this is the one I am working from on this subject.

Honor and understanding. -C