Agricultural Production and The State.

From "The peoples Cube."

I'm away for a week or so but I'll leave you with a letter by Ron Kitching.

It is generally well known that Argentina is blessed with some of the richest, flattest, best-watered land in the world. With these advantages under their feet, plenty of sunshine, and a rapidly expanding population around the world, agriculture on the pampas makes agriculture Argentina’s main revenue producer.

But like Australia, farmers are blessed by nature but cursed by politics.

Instead, in Argentina, the farmers go broke. Why? politicians and popular democracy. For every person on the pampas, there are 10 voters in the big city eager for other peoples' money. So, farmers pay 40% export tax on their products to the feds in Buenos Aires and as much as 30% more to their local governments. By the time the tax collectors are finished with them, they are out of business.

Now, in Australia, we have dark green influenced bureaucrats deciding that farmers can no longer clear land and put it into production. This of course prevents farmers from maximising production of their many and varied products.

Impediments to farmers activities occurred in Roman times. As Henry Hazlitt reported, it led to the phenomenon of agrica deserta. Farmers walked off their land as, instead of maintaining them and feeding the multitude, it became an impediment to their survival.

Pursuing the the ever anti-industrial green vote, the activities of the Federal and State government are rapidly moving Australia’s producers in the same direction as those in ancient Rome, Russia in Stalin’s time, and in Argentina today.