Comments about ‘Hundreds join AgriAdvocates campaign in favor of local farming, food’

This local agricultural movement will become more important to our livelihood as time passes. I'm glad to see it's support by our communities and farmers. Let's keep it growing!

How about we stop treating farmers as if there were special people above the rest of society and recognize them as the businessmen that they are. Actually they are people just like the rest of us and don‘t deserve the pedestal that they manufactured for themselves. Especially they don’t deserve the special handouts, subsidies and bail outs paid for by ordinary working people of America.

They complain that if they had to pay normal wages for farm labor, it would cost us a lot more for our food. Actually when your add up all the special deals, tax breaks, subsidies, price supports and other sweetheart deals, we are paying the high price for food anyway.

Farmers are not any worse than the rest of us, but when they try to make us believe that they are so special, that’s cheating in the game we call life.

It's important to note that we need SAFE healthy food. I think there are a lot of steps that need to be taken to ensure food safety on several levels. Every year we hear about something that either kills several people or makes them very sick. We all have to eat and we want the food to taste good, be affordable, and most of all, to be healthy.

Ultra Bob, You should watch the documentary King Corn and read up on former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. Mr. Butz was the man that singlehandedly changed american farming from smaller family farms that sold directly to consumers and regional markes and put them all on subsidies. See he told farmers "get big or get out" and regulated the cost of crops to the point where farms could only make money on subsidies instead of being able to charge a fair price for their crops. There is nothing farmers want more than to be able to charge an appropriate price so they can make a livable wage, unfortunately our agricultural economy now subsidizes large factory farms to produce uneatable crops (like dent corn) to excess in order to make enough money to live. The new focus people have on supporting the small local farmer helps reverse that trend by allowing smaller farms to charge an honest amount directly to the consumer for locally grown seasonal crops.

Some just don't have a clue about their food supply and how adulterated and how unhealthy processed food are.

Farmers should be put on a pedestal and treated with respect. It's not like in the past where there was a lot of local farms where safe food came from. With so much unhealthy foods from large corporate business who produce and adulterate food just to make it look good is not good food. Farming is labor intensive and a love of the land. You can't and don't move farms like you move your household goods and we must preserve all the land and farmers we can that will produce food.

We have all seen how well other countries think of their food supply and what they send us, its all poisoned and deadly. Local farmers grow food that still has nutrition and food value. Whole natural foods have all the things you need grown in them.

Overweight people wonder why they are always hungry, their bodies aren't getting any nutrients from process foods it needs. Local farmers and their food are necessary to good health.

Ultra bob is right; farming from an individual standpoint is the greatest form of corporate welfare. We've got 300 million people wanting a high protein diet. People wanting to farm had better figure out how to make money at it; the market it there. If you're farming because it's a lifestyle choice or you love the land, well you'd better get another job to support your choice.

We don't respect local farming.

Utah's sugar beet industry is gone, and most farm fields in fertile areas are now space-waste McMansionVille.

Meanwhile, as UltraBob says, we're paying through OUR taxes to support the conglomerate farmers so THEY can escape taxation.

The system is backwards.

The problem is, in our climate, I can't grow enough on our 1/4 acre subdivision lot to support our family -- and who CAN?

But I can sure supplement our diet with "clean vegetables" that I know aren't tainted.

I know a share farmer who is producing enough garden produce in Orem to supply 500 people, and he is doing it on only 4 acres. Without the high cost of machinery and fuel. And without the use of questionable genetically modified plants. We can feed ourselves, and with healthy natural food.