Ripping the Fabric

By Melissa Hart

Imagine four-wheel drive John Deere tractors gathering cobwebs in a pole barn with doors that hadn’t been opened in months.  Can you see fallow farm ground growing up with weeds and annoying brush?  Or farm lanes that are grown over because there was no traffic in or out of the farm. The grease guns are never used, the farm implements rusting away behind the barn and no fuel trucks in and out of the driveway for lack of need. 

The neighborhood equipment dealer would cease selling new tractors, and electric lawn mowers would be the new hot item.  The parts manager would also serve as the bookkeeper, the part time mechanic and the custodian.  There would be one grain elevator to serve the entire county, one farm store would be able to serve three counties and the seed dealer and chemical salesman would be an online store somewhere in Kansas.  Stockyards would close up, vibrant diners that served local farmers would shutter their doors and the county fair would be nothing more than a carnival with a few photos of what used to be exhibits of crops, livestock and horses.

This would be the reality if the current administration decided to do to agriculture what it’s done to the fossil fuel industry.  When the drilling leases were eliminated, pipelines were shut down and we were told that clean energy is where we are headed, we took an entire industry full of owners, employees, families and vibrant towns and said, sorry, you don’t matter anymore.

When people in perceived power used their position to bend the will of an industry to their agenda of priorities and impose them on a country who’s founding was based on hard work, ingenuity and freedom, they slowly create a sluggish economy that is profitable for the powerful and merciless to Americans.

This is a country of people who not only adjust on the fly but have the tenacity to do what is needed.  During World War II our factories were changed from producing everyday goods to war-time necessities.  During Covid when we thought we needed ventilators, industrious minds and intelligent engineers backed by hard working people produced more ventilators that we could use during three pandemics.  When hurricanes hit our southern shores, people from all corners of this nation dropped their daily activities and headed to help those in need. We are rescuers. We are resilient. We are survivors.

Having a load of baby formula flown in from Europe when factories should have been ramping up production knowing one producer was shutting down is humiliating.  Buying oil from Venezuela, a country ruled by dictators, when we have plenty of our own clean oil is not only foolish but has lowered the expectations on a country of smart, proud, and ingenious people. 

We can produce our own food.  We can produce our own fuel.  We can produce our own goods and services.  But when leadership rips that responsibility from people, they not only tear away the fabric of a freedom loving republic, but they kill the spirit of a country who thrives on liberty.

Our forefathers did not fight battles in bloody bare feet to lose the war to power-hungry men in faux leather soled shoes two centuries later. Our country has survived decades of difficulty and I am confident that when we are tested, we will come forth as gold.