Over two hundred years ago, our founding fathers established a nation that has survived to this very day. At that time, over ninety percent of the nation’s population was involved in production agriculture. Today less that one percent of our nation’s population produce agricultural products. It’s ironic how a nation that was founded on revenue from agriculture products, now pays so little attention to the minority that is the American farmer.

It is hard to believe in that amount of time, that the economic reliance on agriculture products had decreased to it’s present day status. Agricultural products are now taken for granted by the majority of today’s population as well as by the government. Involvement by the government has ruined the market for crops grown in the United States. “When the grain embargo was placed on Russia in the mid 1980’s, the grain market fell almost fifty percent”(Bierig, H, personal communication, February 25, 2004). Prior to the embargo, wheat was over five dollars per bushel, after the embargo, grain was rarely seen over three dollars and has been at the same level ever sense.

As we enter the twenty-second century, the fam

In my opinion, nothing is more vital to the United States than our farmers. They feed not only themselves, but also the entire world. Farmers work hundred weeks to ensure that this country and everyone in it will survive. They work around the clock to produce beef, pork, wheat, corn, and soybeans for the world to consume. I have presented you with a problem; now let us see how we can fix it.

Government payment are not all they are cracked up to be. “The government pays the farmer the difference between the price of grain and two dollars and sixty cents per bushel”(Bierig, H, personal communication, February 25, 2004). Everything over that price is not subsidized unless the crop is destroyed. Diesel is sold to farmers at a reduced rate. Farmer’s pay an average of about forty cents per gallon less that we do, but the fuel is to be used for agricultural purposes only. The government also offers farmers a reduced death tax rate. The children of farmers can now inherit up to one million with out being penalized verses six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for normal citizens(Time 1).

The average age of the farmer is now over sixty years of age. There are many farmers over the age of seventy that still produce grain and meat in my community. All the money they put into Social Security is not enough to support themselves and their families, so naturally that keep farming to supplement their income. When will these people retire, most of them probably never? Some type of incentive must be invented to entice people to become a producer of agricultural pro

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