Tag: Acres USA

I have gotten tremendous learning from subscribing to Acres USA magazine and buying some of their books.  https://www.acresusa.com/  is a great source that needs to be supported.  Buying books and magazines on subjects that you believe in or want to support is voting with your dollars for that viewpoint.  Charles Walters the founder and long time publisher is gone but his legacy continues and has influenced a large number of people.  He promoted sustainable agriculture at a time of chemical farming dominance.  One of the other things he railed against was unfair pricing of agricultural goods thru the commodity markets and the near monopoly grain trading companies.  I experienced first hand the disasters of being forced to sell crops and cattle based on what the commodity exchanges say a crop or cows are worth with the horrible practice of allowing speculators to sell a commodity on the exchange with nothing more than a cash deposit of a fraction of a contracts value.  Often times far more of a commodity trades on the exchange than the physical trade.  Because a speculator has to only put a small amount down they can make a lot of money on their capital with small changes in price.  Charles Walters campaigns for a full fair price for farmers and promoted the idea of a farmers union to demand them.  The problem of agriculture is so many individual farmers selling to so few that no individual farmer no matter how large has an pricing power over the often only buyer in the area.  

Here is Charles Walters bio from the Acres USA website

“Charles Walters is the founder of Acres U.S.A., and completed more than a dozen books as he edited Acres U.S.A., while co-authoring several others. A tireless traveler, Walters journeyed around the world to research sustainable agriculture, and his trip to China in 1976 inspired others to travel to this then-mysterious society. By the time of his death in 2009, Charles Walters could honestly say he changed the world for the better. He wrote a number of important books that broke the door wide open for further research on non-toxic farming methods”.

The Get Real Alliance stands on the shoulders of pioneering people like Charles Walters to try and promote their vision.  While he had the happiness of seeing the organic farming and regenerative agriculture movements gain strength we still see his term “toxic rescue chemistry” being the dominant practice in agriculture with chemical companies and their companion genetically modified seed companies reaping a large share of gross agriculture income at handsome profit margins as they have near monopoly due to patenting of chemicals and seed.  Yes today a farmer doesn’t buy a seed with no restriction as to its use but buys a bag of seed with a long legal license agreement printed on it that restricts the farmer to only growing grain for sale and prohibiting the saving of seed to replant as farmers had generally done especially with soybeans and wheat.  

I would strongly encourage you to at least sign up for Acres USA free newsletter but really to subscribe to the print magazine which is full of good information for everyone whether you are a farmer or consumer.  Today people are used to getting free information and publishing for profit which supports journalists and writers is in sharp decline.  Paid subscriptions allow publications to run articles which are important but may not make advertisers happy.  Especially those in the chemical farming area.  

Vote with your dollars by supporting the Get Real Alliance and organizations that it promotes.