Independence from whom?

Agriculture News from HPJ - Your Ag News Source

Independence from whom?

As citizens of the United States of America, we have just celebrated Independence Day 2007. But I ask the question whom, exactly, are we independent from? Millions of men and women have risked their lives since the Revolutionary War to ensure that the United States is the envy of the world and I will never forget what they have accomplished for us. I recently witnessed an account of one of the citizenship ceremonies that took place in Washington, D.C. The statement from one gentleman should stick in our mind. "I am so proud to now be a citizen of the best country in the world."

I struggle every time I hear a native U.S. citizen make the comment that other countries look down on us. Of course they do. They are jealous. They want what we have. If they didn't, we wouldn't legally allow thousands of people to come to this country annually. But it appears to me that because we have life so good here, we bleed sympathy for those who are less fortunate than us. I do have concern for human rights violations that occur around the globe, but I am not going to fall into the trap that I, as an American citizen, am somehow responsible and also forced to solve all of the world's problems at the expense of addressing many of our own.

The United Nations, which was devised by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a global peacekeeping venture, has been hijacked as a means to redistribute American wealth to the rest of the world. I truly believe our greatest asset on the balance sheet is freedom, the freedom to pursue ventures that benefit the citizens of the U.S. I am particularly concerned about those freedoms that involve efficiently converting the natural resources we have available into the essentials of life. Our innate ability to do that so well has made us one of the richest nations in the world and now others are trying to sabotage that.

One doesn't need to be much of a researcher to uncover plenty of theories about the communist agenda of most of the original organizers of the United Nations. While I don't believe that today's U.N. officials have a communist agenda, I do think they believe in more social engineering than I do.

We seem to be in an era of worrying too much about what some other country will think of us if we do what we believe to be right. I don't care if the European Union agrees with our implementation of the latest and greatest technologies available that allow us to excel as the global leader in food production. We often brag that the United States of America is the home of the most affordable, safest food supply in the world. We have accomplished that prestigious accolade by doing what was best for the citizens and applying both environmental and animal stewardship. Why do other countries, which don't do the job nearly as well, feel compelled to meddle in our operations?

A recent Food and Agricultural Organization report from the United Nations found that livestock production is one of the major causes of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. But the report failed to point out that the shining Global example of good environmental stewardship was the United States of America. In the past 50 years alone, through the implementation of science and technology, the beef industry has doubled the amount of human consumeable beef without increasing the total cow herd. The dairy industry has reduced the number of cows pulling on the environment by two-thirds, while increasing milk output by three times. And all of this was accomplished during the same period of time that, according to the USDA, we increased the number of forest acres in this country by 16 million. So we must be doing something right.

I will never forget one of the United Nation's World Food Days I attended a few years back. Their goals were curing poverty and feeding a world population of 6 billion people and the leaders point blank said that combines were not the answer. Finding ways to increase employment through hand labor similar to what I do in my garden was their solution to world hunger. For me, that was a showing of the true colors of the United Nations--basically, they believe the United States has too much of everything, and we need to come back to their levels of production.

We have an immigration problem in this country for a good reason. People want to come here. People come because of American intelligence and a strong work ethic in the areas of the military and food production. The flags, flying on the 4th of July, should remind us of the sacrifices so many have given, so that our great nation could be the envy of the world. How could anyone even consider giving that away?

Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or e-mail Trent at trent@loostales.com.