Mainstream media and the banksters of Wall Street would have us believe that the current crises of financial corruption threaten our health and well being.

“Financing is the blood which runs through our nation’s veins. It’s what keeps us alive,” said Lawrence Creatura, a portfolio manager at Federated Clover Investment Advisors.

I disagree and instead offer human productivity as the most likely candidate for what keeps us alive. By this I mean true human productivity, the kind that actually produces something tangible.

The products of family farms are what “…runs through our nation’s veins.” Our economy is only as strong as our family farms and please do not suggest agribusiness for a replacement.

American agribusiness, the builder of factory farms, industrialized and financialized agriculture, can only exist with cheap petroleum and government subsidies, corporate welfare. Family farms were not just self-sufficient, they produced a surplus, when they were allowed to sell their produce at a price that covered all costs, at 90-100 percent of parity.

Once we were a wealthy nation of strong family farms producing everything they needed and more, creating legitimate surplus value. Now we are a nation of a few mega wealthy individuals and a small number of corporate-owned factory farms, a few large family managed operations, and several million small farms, financed primarily by off-farm income.

Perhaps this is still too vague. An example may help.

The most important thing people produce is food. Producing food, as opposed to hunting and gathering, enabled the creation of “citizens” who “lived in cities” also known as civilization.

It has been the ability of people to produce more food than they themselves personally required, a surplus, that created the basis of wealth accumulation. Agricultural productivity, the original enabler of the division of labor, creates the foundation for all other forms of human productivity.

Once everyone could be fed by a few then everything else we attribute to civilization became possible. These few were the first farmers and given what we know from anthropology these first farmers were likely organized along family lines.

Family farms make all we know as civilization possible. This essential relationship has never been replaced.

Miners and manufacturers can go about their business because someone else provides the food. It took a lot of food over a long period of time to feed modern industrial practice.

Only recently in human affairs has industry consolidated in large enough conglomerations to enable the emergence of the financial sector that now dominates global attention.

The whole human power pyramid down from the global financial elite at the very top, down through multinational corporate controllers of essential resources, down through the world wide industrial cartels and transportation syndicates, down through national governments to local governments, family farms supports it all.

Family farms, not agribusiness which consumes more than it produces, originates the initial surplus productivity that trickles up the entire pyramid of human social organization. Human society is nourished from the bottom up, not the top down, and current financial practices have been just another consumer, not producer, of what keeps us alive.

What we are being inundated with from mainstream media are symptoms of a far greater emergency. Financial and industrial interests have grown larger and more needy while taking more and more from the family farms.

Over the past 200 years, especially here in the USA, family farms have been driven beyond their limits to survive. Whenever possible the same destructive practices have been exported world wide.

The productivity of family farms has been damaged, not supported and enhanced, and the subsequent loss of surplus productivity threatens the entire pyramid, especially those at the top being the furthest from the source.

All the world’s financial markets, which in essence are merely gambling parlors betting upon ever increasing productivity, can no longer cover their losses by taking more from the family farms.

Remember, the family farms are not just tapped out, they themselves have now been forced to function under losing circumstances, in the USA ever since 1953 when the Steagall Amendment was allowed to expire.

The Steagall Amendment insured that farm raw materials were supported at 100 percent of parity so that the actual cost of production was covered. This kept the most productive segment of human society employed.

From 1943 to 1952, we had economic stability. Farm raw materials were supported at 100 percent of parity.

In 1953, the Farm Act of 1953 took over with sliding parity, 60 to 90 percent. The corporate presidents and academics who made up the Committee for Economic Development (CED), recommended the elimination of one third of the farm population within five years by enforcing low parity pricing.

The CED, an independent, non-profit, non-partisan think tank based in Washington, DC, played a key role in garnering support among the American business community for the Marshall Plan. Marshall Plan aid was largely used by the Europeans to buy manufactured goods and raw materials from the United States after WWII.

CED‘s work also influenced the Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent nation-states world wide.

Within 8 years the CED (“The Best of Business Thinking”) issued a report stating, “The desired result–one-third fewer farmers–was achieved.”

Two million farmers were moved off their family farms and into the cities to look for employment and housing while depressing industrial wages. Rural towns and communities went bankrupt and closed their schools while city schools and hospitals became over crowded.

Those who become dependent upon public charity are the dispossessed of the land. These burdens upon society were once part of those who fed it.

The banksters of Wall Street became extremely wealthy on the impoverishment of the family farm while shifting the costs of this impoverishment to the general public. They now need to once again shift their debts onto the public’s shoulders.

“Financing…” is not “…the blood which runs through our nation’s veins.” “Financing…” is not “…what keeps us alive,” it has actually weakened what keeps us alive, by weakening family farms.

Support family farms.

Peace is easier when everyone eats.

for further reading please see:
Willie Nelson Earth Economics
Family Farms Pulled Us Out Of The Depression
Economics born of the Earth
Wealth Facts
5 Rules Of Raw Materials Economics