I am a long-time reader of your paper and appreciate the informative agricultural news and other articles. However, the opinion piece by Matt McIntosh entitled ‘Time to farm with nature,’ has prompted some very serious questions I would love to pose to him, and to you, as you have printed his opinion; vital questions which are left unasked, let alone answered.
Regarding the statement “the agriculture community seems incapable of re-prioritizing land use,” priorities by whose standards and by what criteria? Farmers who have invested their lives in becoming sustainable both in their financial as well as their ecological business are incapable of making correct decisions? Correct by whose criteria? And just whose priorities are to take precedence over others’ priorities?
Regarding the statements of the taxpayer’s willingness or unwillingness to fund “incentives for the agricultural landscape,” there is a class of people, to which Matt McIntosh seems to be a party, who have the hubris to think that third parties (themselves) have the authority and competence to pre-empt the decisions and priorities of other people.
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In this case, pre-empt the decisions of farmers and taxpayers and to impose undetermined and undefined financial, social, and long term ecological costs and risks on them while bearing none of those costs or risks themselves.
Yes, we need to protect and enhance the environment that we share, but granting the power to impose one group’s priorities on other people, no matter how well intentioned, in order to prevent them from imposing even greater restrictions, is ceding the battle now and in the future to those whose stated objective is to shut down agriculture completely.
The hope that it will appease them by granting them the power to possibly impose even greater restrictions is naive at best. I have far more confidence in a free society’s ability to cope with future environmental problems than in our ability to cope with a government and a parasitic bureaucracy whom we have ceded all of our property rights and civil liberties to, with all of the environmental, economic and social catastrophes that are inherent with that type of government.
A simple perusal of history will give you plenty of examples. Matt McIntosh even references the EU and the onerous regulations that are imposed on the farmers there, imposed by the very enviro-blindered bureaucrats he wants to appease here.
The day that Matt McIntosh or anyone else purchases at my determined price, and assumes ownership of my land, is the time at which they can begin to make decisions of what they will or will not do with it.
Why on earth would you ever want to concede to anyone else the power to dictate what will happen on your land and the power to force taxpayers against their will to pay you to do anything? Power to extract a tax on one person to be paid to another is the same power to force compliance with the regulation.
The ‘payment’ is only the moral rationalization we grant politicians for imposing what we want on others. Accepting such a payment is a capitulation of part, if not all, of our property rights.
Protect our property rights. Do that by taking care of the environment and do not give up your rights and become party to the further extortion of the taxpayer. We want them to feel that they are our allies, not that they are our patron benefactors nor our extortion victims.
I’m sorry, but a pre-emptive surrender of our rights to people who want our demise is not the answer.
Travis Hatch
Sunset House Alta.
