Thursday, September 23, 2004

Fraud

When the most recent hurricane remnants drifted through here last weekend, great floods were forecast. None round here came to pass. We didn’t even get that much water but rain in the mountains can vary a great deal in a small geographical area. A few counties over there was some very predictable flooding. From news article in the Bristol Herald Courier:

“Dozens of healthy looking tomatoes will never be picked for sale either, even though they were never submerged in river water, Mr. Thompson says the water did reach their stems so they'll have to be destroyed as well.”

Why do you reckon a farmer would be destroying crops that were not in any way damaged by the recent flooding to the east of here? Crop insurance. That’s the only reason I can come up with. Acres of mono-cropped, factory farmed tomatoes (and other crops), maybe it isn’t a real good crop to begin with, maybe there isn’t a huge market at the moment (or the market is glutted and prices are low), so let’s destroy them unnecessarily, call it loss to flood damage and make us some money.

Maybe I'm just cynical.

Get the government out of farming. And most other things.

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