… On a strictly Republican vote. Per Ed O’Keefe at the Washington Post:
House Republicans narrowly passed a farm bill on Thursday that was stripped of hundreds of billions in funding for food stamps, abandoning four decades of precedent to gain the backing of conservative lawmakers.
The 216 to 208 vote was a victory for a Republican caucus that has struggled to pass the most basic of legislation, but it also set up weeks of acrimony and uncertainty as House and Senate leaders must reconcile two vastly different visions for providing subsidies to farmers and feeding the hungry…
The 608-page measure that passed the House includes a package of subsidies for farmers worth about $195 billion over the next 10 years that would make significant changes to agricultural policy and conservation programs, including an end to direct subsidies to farmers. It is nearly identical to that aspect of the Senate bill.
But for the first time since 1973, the House measure says nothing about funding for food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which was set at about $740 billion.
Farm subsidies and food stamps have long been paired, in part for political reasons. Rural lawmakers backing payments to farmers and urban ones supporting money for food and nutrition programs formed a powerful coalition that served both interests….
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank D. Lucas (R-Okla.) said he would introduce a separate food stamp bill “as soon as I can achieve a consensus.”…
… and the thought balloon over everyone’s head read “Which will take place on the twelfth of never.”
…With three weeks remaining before the month-long August recess, House GOP leaders were eager to quickly pass a farm bill and begin talks with the Senate so they can spend the remainder of July voting on bills to repeal the health-care reform law and address recent Obama administration scandals.
GOP leaders rushed late Wednesday to set up Thursday’s vote after determining they had sufficient support to proceed, according to aides familiar with the plans. Unlike in other recent high-stakes votes, aides said that top leaders worked in unison to ensure the bill’s passage. Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) appeared ebullient for most of the day, the result, aides said, of an 11 a.m. meeting that determined they had sufficient support…
Shorter Cantor: It’s not about the productivity, it’s about the posturing!
Incidentally, the “anti-spending groups closely aligned with dozens of the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers” are pissed that even this shallow pretense at legislating passed, so it’s not like any of the GOP goobers are going to put this on their K Street CVs, come the day when they’re reduced to sucking public dollars at second hand.
… The White House said President Obama would veto the bill if it ever reached his desk and urged lawmakers to work on “a comprehensive approach.”
Negotiations with the Senate on a final version of the legislation are expected to begin in the coming weeks. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) called the House measure “extremely flawed” and “an insult to rural America,” noting that hundreds of farming, conservation and food aid groups also oppose the legislation.
So, all parties agree: This is cruel, stupid, and pointless! Such a bargain!
Supplementary reading — Jon Chait at NYMag, “House Republicans Pass Bloated Socialist Monstrosity“:
The House of Representatives just passed a farm bill, which overlays a Byzantine political calculus atop what ought to be a simple policy question. Should the government subsidize business owners because their business is agriculture? The answer — even to somebody relatively friendly to government, like me — is obviously not. Running a farm is not inherently more virtuous or necessary than running a gas station or a bookstore. Farmers earn more than the average American. Washington should get out of the business of paying farmers directly (or indirectly, through price supports that drive up food costs) altogether.
The political complication that comes into play is that farm subsidies have traditionally been packaged together with food stamps. Food stamps strike me as an especially meritorious program. Giving people money because they’re so poor they struggle to eat regularly makes way, way, way more sense than giving people money because they’re in a particular (and generally lucrative) line of work. You could replace food stamps with some other kind of cash grant, but the main idea of helping people because they’re poor is sound.
Historically, the two programs have passed together. There’s some policy rationale for this. Some of the farm subsidies drive up the price of food, making it harder for poor people to buy the food and thus making it more necessary to subsidize them. But the main rationale for joining food stamps is political. It gets urban liberals to vote for farm subsidies that hurt their constituents, and it gets rural conservatives to tolerate food stamps that they’d otherwise oppose. And since advocates of both farm subsidies and food stamps fear losing their program more than anything else, they strongly endorse keeping them together…
max
So, all parties agree: This is cruel, stupid, and pointless! Such a bargain!
Most folks would rather have the anthrax and the tire rims.
max
[‘You can pawn a good set of rims.’]
The prophet Nostradumbass
What will they think of next? A bill to disestablish Martin Luther King Jr. day?
Corner Stone
I just don’t understand these Wal-Mart commercials.
Isn’t the fact that you have to trick people into trying your fruits a pretty clear sign no one wants to buy them there? And having a chef trick people into eating a WM steak?
Doesn’t this kind of tell you where you are in the market place?
Corner Stone
What’s funny is Forbes already has an article out praising the death of the Ag bill because they believe it’s the first step to permanently killing all SNAP type programs and funding.
Forbes. Yeah, I think that’s going to work out.
mai naem
@Corner Stone: Walmart had a promoted tweet a couple of days ago about the real walmart behind the scenes with associates etc. They had some pretty funny replies on the tweet.
@The prophet Nostradumbass: What? They haven’t done that yet? I listened to Orangeman at his little weekly press conference. They’re going to vote on a bill delaying the individual mandate of Obamacare next week. Apparently Obamacare has become to the GOP what the rubber raft had become to the man who kept on humping it. They just wanna keep on fucking that chicken.
Petorado
Good job House Republicans. You pass legislation that is so ludicrous it will never become law, spend lots of time fruitlessly attempting to overturn current laws that are popular, alienate every conceivable portion of the American electorate that doesn’t look or think exactly like you, and generally accomplish nothing for your generous pay package. How can this not be a recipe for success?
aangus
Sorry, it would appear that I can’t sleep!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3aniiKuxL8&feature=related
: )
The Other Chuck
Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to “split the bill” as the intention supposedly is, wouldn’t you, um, have another bill ready? Or at least in committee?
The Senate won’t let this through, and POTUS would veto if it ever made it to his desk, but it’s not like the teatard house cares about actually passing legislation or anything.
Yatsuno
@Petorado: Simple. They sell it as cutting off those worthless lazy young bucks with their T-bone steaks and Cadillac welfare queens. Then when their own constituents complain blame the blah guy in the White House. And the 27% will buy Every. Single. Word. Tribalism is a helluva drug.
The prophet Nostradumbass
So at least a few Republicans must have voted against this hideous bill. Were they being reasonable, or were they just mad that they didn’t make SNAP an extra tax on poor people?
JWL
If the American people don’t revolt in 2014 about this GOP bullshit, well then, fuck us all.
They’ll get what they deserve.
It will then be left to their grandchildren to hoist decapitated heads on spikes in the future.
p.a.
@Yatsuno: yes. yes. and yes. I don’t remember ever it started, it’s been around for a while, but the most succinct analysis of the Republican base goes something like this: they’ll vote themselves into living in a cardboard box roasting sparrows on a curtain rod as long as the black/Hispanic/gay/object-of-hate-du-jour in the next box can’t get a sparrow and curtain rod.
JWL
@JWL:
Tried to edit that comment to read “we’ll get what we deserve”.
Further, I tried to edit it to also read “our grandkids will hoist”…
Spaghetti Lee
Random OT question, but I’m attempting to plot out (and eventually write, hopefully) a fantasy/action novel. If there was a malevolant creature who came to earth and caused some trouble (say, blowing up a large city’s downtown levels of trouble) but was eventually caught and apprehended, would the military, the FBI, or the local cops get custody? And would the military or FBI be more likely to maintain an expanded presence in that area for the cleanup and to make sure there aren’t any more monsters lurking about? I don’t need some super-realistic answer-it’s not the most important part of the story-but I’m trying to be consistent and look halfway knowledgeable about how a ‘realistic’ response would look. Thoughts?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Spaghetti Lee: Pick the military, I’d say. I have no idea what would be “realistic”, but readers would buy them.
Steeplejack
@Spaghetti Lee:
Depends on if it is known that the perp is a “malevolent creature who came to earth,” i.e., an alien, presumably. Then it would be the feds all the way, baby. National emergency, etc.
Also, whether the perp is known to be an alien or not, large, citywide destruction would get the whole antiterrorism apparatus into high gear.
Anne Laurie
@p.a.: That would be our Davis X. Machina :
? Martin
@Spaghetti Lee:
Military, definitely. If it’s a malevolent alien, they wouldn’t take any chances on how to contain that individual, nor would they want to contain that individual in an inhabited area in case his friends show up. In my mind even capturing such an entity is a bit of a stretch. Too many unknowns. We’d likely just kill it. If you need it captured for the story, that’s what I think you need to work back from.
I think they would indeed maintain a presence and probably quarantine the area. What if it carries diseases? What if it left technology in the area? Shit, we do that just when two jackasses blow up part of Boston.
Roger Moore
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Articles of Impeachment for failing to invite the House Republican Caucus over for dinner and a movie.
MattR
I’d like to see Chait survive by eating books.
There is obviously a lot of waste/graft in the current farm subsidy bill that ends up doing nothing but improving the bottom line of large corporate farms, but OTOH I think there needs to be some level of price support/subsidies to make sure farmers provide a steady supply of the crops we need rather than focusing on the most profitable ones of the day. The market may eventually correct itself but those fluctuations are damaging to a lot of poor people so I believe the government is justified in attempting to stabilize the market and minimize the fluctuations. That doesn’t mean I think the current form of farm subsidies is a good idea.
Yatsuno
@Spaghetti Lee: Most likely the military, specifically the National Guard. By extension that would get the (creature?) to the Pentagon where it would most likely get studied. But it’s your story, who says it has to conform with reality? :)
@MattR: Based upon pricing alone farmer would grow corn, soy, and beef and that’s about it. Other veggies or livestock would barely enter into the picture except on local farms where production couldn’t match the big agribusinesses and prices would be only something the very rich afford. Ag is an amazingly distorted market in the US in many ways.
Roger Moore
@Spaghetti Lee:
They would be shipped to GITMO. FEMA would be in charge of the cleanup, but would fail miserably because they were run by a hack fundraiser rather than a competent administrator.
Spaghetti Lee
@Steeplejack:
Story’s set pre 9/11 actually. I had mid 90’s as the probably date. Mostly because I have some characters who are written as WWII vets or ex-60’s-era protestors and I wanted them not too old. But given that there’s lots of military action in the book, and the source of tension one protagonist (essentially a Nick-Fury type leader-of-the-supers role) is all about how she completely doesn’t trust the govt or the military but is running out of resources and power to fight the bad guys on her own account, and fears they’ll overrun her if she doesn’t seek help, I figure some kind of Big Statement on how national security and such has changed over the years is inevitable. And, in-story, this would taking place right alongside OKC, so maybe I could work that in there somehow.
The bad guy is probably closer to a demon (comes from a hellish other dimension, not space) but seems like an alien to a lot of people (Reptilian/insectile, pilots a flying warship). Basically, he makes a deal that he’ll pick up what he came for (one of the main characters) and leave, and if the military doesn’t bother him, he won’t attack anything else. But he’s got an itchy trigger finger and blows up downtown Harrisburg, PA (there are in-story reasons for that town in particular) and also decimates the just-in-case military platoon sent to keep an eye on him. The non-military, band-of-ragtag-demonslayers are the ones who actually bring his ship down, but it’s the military that captures him. So that’s why I was thinking military, and then military that builds up a presence as weird shit keeps happening in the town where the heroes are based.
Thanks for all the responses by the way, everyone. It’s nice to get some feedback.
Anne Laurie
@Spaghetti Lee: Area 51, dude. Respect the classics!
Yatsuno
@Spaghetti Lee:
That gives a lot to build on. The demon could open the hole but who says he can close it?
Spaghetti Lee
@MattR:
I wonder if there’s some sort of hypothetical magical policy bullet that would help make family farms more competitive with big ag. I mean, yeah, I’m an old-fashioned romantic, but maybe that would help slow/change suburban sprawl and stop population drainage in the rural areas. Not that big ag would let such a thing happen of course.
Spaghetti Lee
@Yatsuno:
He’s the first of many. And the others aren’t as big fuck-ups as he is.
MattR
@Yatsuno: It has been quite a while since I closely looked at the economics behind various agricultural commodities, so it is hard for me to tell which are distorted due to natural vagaries in the market and which are distorted by unnecessary government intervention (usually pushed for by a lobbyist for one piece of that market). Somehow I think corn is on both of those lists.
Spaghetti Lee
@? Martin:
I assume they’d make an effort to take it alive because, hey, First Contact! Seems to be the sort of thing the government would want to keep alive at least until it got to root through its organs. Also, in-story I have a scene where he’s captured, and he’s already mostly defeated, injured with his ship blown to bits and his crew mostly dead. So it’s not a hostile situation where the soldiers would need to shoot to kill. And yes, I want him alive in the story for a bit longer.
mdblanche
Major Major’s father should be happy.
Fred Fnord
The military. We would nuke whatever city it was thought to be in. Continuously for two hours. Unless it was in NYC or DC, in which case they would send in ‘boots on the ground.’
If it was in San Francisco, three hours. Four, tops.
MattR
@Spaghetti Lee: I wish my dad was still alive to ask. He grew up on a farm and was a pretty smart guy (or at least he fooled his son into thinking that) so I bet he would have had some ideas. Getting them through Congress would of course be a whole different matter.
(EDIT: I believe the family still has mineral rights for the land, but it is in the eastern part of North Dakota and not out west where all the action is)
Spaghetti Lee
@Yatsuno:
That just seems like the sort of error people would rip you up for, i.e. “On page 572 the military takes this action despite existing law on that topic CLEARLY STATING, blah blah blah etc.” It seems like that’s the one thing every fiction reader is a stickler for-proper technical stuff for soldiers, feds, and cops. You can write a thriller where you openly spit on Newton’s laws of motion, but by God the specs on that fighter jet better be accurate. I blame Tom Clancy.
Yatsuno
@Spaghetti Lee: Tom Clancy messed up a bunch of stuff in his novels. I’ve heard my dad laugh out loud at some of the chain of command errors he’s made. You are correct though in that no matter what if it’s happening in the US with the military it must happen EXACTLY as UCMJ would call for or you’re a poseur.
The prophet Nostradumbass
and, I see my relatives are getting their annual Two Minute Hate on in Belfast. Bah.
Spaghetti Lee
@Corner Stone:
I don’t understand why Wal-Mart has commercials. People ain’t gonna forget they exist. In lots of small towns they’ve got a captive market. Same with McDonalds. They oughta slash their ad budget and pay their goddamn workers.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Spaghetti Lee: Wal-Mart don’t run those ads to attract customers. They are, essentially, political ads, designed to derail any legislation, at any level, to restrict anything they do.
ETA: Why are you replying to Corner Stone in a serious fashion?
Shalimar
@The prophet Nostradumbass: They don’t have the guts to vote for that. They can always have the Supreme Court declare Martin Luther King, Jr. Day unconstitutional because it is no longer necessary.
Shalimar
@Roger Moore: Was arguing with a teaparty type the other day and he wants Obama impeached for continuing to provide aid to Egypt after the coup. I’m pretty sure if we had stopped aid, he would want Obama impeached for failing to support a critical ally. It doesn’t matter what happens, there is always some reason Obama should be impeached for it. My head hurts even trying to understand it.
raven
Well the General Stuck was quite a thread!
Botsplainer
@Spaghetti Lee:
Be really careful. You’re dangerously close to this John Ringo plotline.
http://www.amazon.com/Into-Looking-Glass-Book/dp/1416521054/ref=la_B000APPSXE_1_31?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373623333&sr=1-31
Schlemizel
If I may paraphrase Ten Years After:
Feed the rich
Starve the poor
Till there are
no poor no more
– – –
Was this a great country or what?
JPL
@raven: After a few comments, it became apparent to me, that the trolls climbed out of their cesspool. Stuck will be missed though.
raven
@JPL: He didn’t fuck around, I liked that.
piratedan
@Botsplainer: actually I like reading Ringo (dislike his politics, but he’s a good storyteller imho) and some of his stuff is quite good fun. The Aldenata/Looking Glass and Prince Roger series are very entertaining Space Opera imho.
sherparick
@MattR: In 1933, when FDR created the first the Ag Bill, 43% of the population was rural, the average farm was 157 acres, and 21% of the labor force were farmers or agricultural workers per the 1930 census. http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/1930.htm. The food stamp program has been perhaps the most successful of the Great Society programs, eliminating hunger and reducing poverty among the working poor. Hence it is has become a special target of hate and contempt by the vicious of our elite.
danielx
Given the increasing Republican antipathy towards legislation of any kind, it’s no great wonder that Orange Julius and associates view passage of this absurdist fantasy as an accomplishment. I suppose it is, in a way, but any legislation which provides similar opportunities for sticking it to the poors/Those People would have a chance of passing. After all, if people aren’t starving how will they ever muster the gumption to lift themselves by their (nonexistent) bootstraps?
Omnes Omnibus
Oliver Cromwell’s words are apt: You are no Parliament; I say you are no Parliament; begone, and give place to honester men.
RSA
@Spaghetti Lee:
I remember coming across discussions like that on Usenet, in the science fiction newsgroup. “The writer said the main character was carrying a rifle, but it turned out to be a shotgun! What a maroon.” Whatever–that sort of thing doesn’t bother me because I don’t know anything about guns, though a lot of reader apparently do take that sort of thing seriously, which I imagine might be part of why they would read science fiction, especially military SF.
As suggested above, I’d pattern what happens on a response to a terrorist attack. And if you need something to happen that you’re not sure about, you could always cite secret executive orders for dealing with alien invasions. That’s been believable since the 1940s. :-)
Suffern ACE
Weird how around the world farmers aren’t so rich. Landlords are rich, but farmers not so much.
Nina
Would it be possible for the conference committee to slip the food stamp supports from the Senate bill into the House version as part of the reconciliation process?
IowaOldLady
@Spaghetti Lee: With an alien, you’d be in an unprecedented situation, one the law doesn’t really anticipate (I assume). So I’d guess you could use the military without people nitpicking. If you wanted to, you could make that a small issue in the book. “Jones, what’s the law?” “Law? Great googely moogely, there’s a monster sitting downtown. There’s no law for that. Congress can’t even anticipate a heavy rainstorm!”
Omnes Omnibus
@Nina: The conference committee could also choose to send out the Senate bill. They just need to try to get a version that will pass both houses. This bill will not get through the Senate.
The House GOP is either betting that mindless cruelty will net votes or they are simply mindlessly cruel. Or both. I am going to go with both.
Linda Featheringill
The farm bill:
The Republicans realize that most beneficiaries of food stamps, etc. are children, don’t they? Why do they hate children?
Also, the majority of families receiving this aid are white, anglo-saxon, etc. So even if they are using malnutrition as a tool for a eugenics program, this doesn’t make sense. Why do they hate blue eyed, blond children?
Anton Sirius
“I don’t understand why Wal-Mart has commercials. People ain’t gonna forget they exist. In lots of small towns they’ve got a captive market. Same with McDonalds.”
McDonalds ad campaigns aren’t designed to make people aware of their existence. The campaigns are designed to make people forget that their food sucks ass.
NickT
@Linda Featheringill:
They’ve spent years propagandizing themselves to believe that selfishness is the right thing to do, that decency creates dependency and that they are the only hard-working Americans – even as they sit on their corrupt and lazy rumps doing as little as possible while taking tax-payer money as a salary. In the process, they’ve done a lot to wreck the economy and bring poverty to levels we once thought would never return. If they succeed in this food stamp folly, they’ll bring back famine to the US as well. A horrifying number of Americans already struggle with hunger – and that’s directly attributable to the failed right-wing policies that began with Reagan and have only intensified under the teabaggers.
PeakVT
Should the government subsidize business owners because their business is agriculture? The answer — even to somebody relatively friendly to government, like me — is obviously not.
Chait is being stupid here. While we may not be going about it in the right way, what we’re trying to do with the farm bill is ensure a steady and adequate supply of food. Making sure farmers don’t go out of business because of either a bad crop or too good of crop (along with many others at the same time) is one way of stabilizing the supply, and probably a necessary component of an overall program. Of course we really should be subsidizing different crops – more fresh food and less grains which end up being heavily processed – as well as subsidizing consumers more and producers less. But ag policy in principle is a good idea.
And, unfortunately, it will probably become more necessary to intervene in ag markets in the future, as the weather becomes more extreme due to climate change.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Spaghetti Lee:
Make sure your book has an 80-page discussion on the pros and cons of posse comitatus somewhere in the middle.
(Actually, no, don’t… only Neil Stephenson seems able to get away with that).
BruinKid
Your link is to the wrong vote. That was an earlier vote on something else. The actual vote was Roll Call 353. The Republican “no” votes were:
Justin Amash (MI-03)
Paul Cook (CA-08)
Ron DeSantis (FL-06)
Jimmy Duncan (TN-02)
Trent Franks (AZ-08)
Phil Gingrey (GA-11)
Tim Huelskamp (KS-01)
Walter Jones (NC-03)
Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02)
Tom McClintock (CA-04)
Matt Salmon (AZ-05)
Mark Sanford (SC-01)
And these Republicans missed the vote along with 5 Democrats.
Paul Broun (GA-10)
John Campbell (CA-45)
Duncan Hunter (CA-50)
Mike Rogers (MI-08)
David Schweikert (AZ-06)
John Shimkus (IL-15)
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
No one can be that dense and still function in society.
Using yourself as a straw-man is an interesting rhetorical flourish, but you would have done well to save it for one of those rare times when you actually have a decent argument.
kindness
I’m really curious about how the Ag community is going to take this. I mean, they are primarily Republicans. They can see they won’t be getting anything with this as it will never become law. I would expect that some of these Republican farmers might start to worry about getting nothing real soon. How are they going to treat the republicans that foisted this shit sandwich on them and declared it to be delicious?
Yea, Republicans did this so they can blame Democrats for the farm bill’s demise. That will play well to Fox, Rove & the Teahaddists. But the farmers will see through it. They will see the people they donated to elect just thoroughly sodomized them.
So that is what I am waiting to see. Farmers reactions and where they donate money next election. The poor? I feel terrible about them but they are now simply (forced) cannon fodder for Republicans now. The poor and the farmers are both gonna get screwed so Louie Gommert can continue to say idiotic stuff on national TV.
Xecky Gilchrist
@MattR: I’d like to see Chait survive by eating books.
My thought exactly. That paragraph reeks of the Libertarian twaddle you get about how the free market is fine for allocating Macintoshes to people, so we should use it for health care, too.
Higgs Boson's Mate
All I can add is that it’s a darned good thing that none of that $740 bn in SNAP money would be used to buy anything produced by farmers. They’d be really pissed off if Republican nihilism deprived the food business of three quarters of a trillion dollars over ten years.
Linnaeus
@kindness:
I’d really like to believe that. But I’m doubtful.
Linnaeus
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Chait could have been a little more nuanced in that part, to be sure, but his overall point is still pretty solid: Republicans who clamor about “freedom” and denounce government spending are more than happy to shower said spending it on groups they favor. The question isn’t about whether to have big government, it’s about who should benefit from it and who shouldn’t.
RaflW
@Omnes Omnibus:
They do seem mindless. And cruel.
I think the 12th of never for SNAP bit in the OP rings true. I’d imagine that the end game for Orange Julius is a Congress that enacts roughly one bill for the remainder of 2013: a continuing resolution that funds government at, say, 95% of the post-sequester 2012 budget, and some bullshit 9 month extension if the debt “limit.”
That’s it. One bill that manages to get thru both chambers and, under severe duress gets signed by O.
Sure the House will pass 100s of crap symbolic bills, but actual legislating, actually crafting laws and policies is beyond the ability of OJ and most Republicans.
kathleen
@ISpaghetti Lee:
I am familiar with a couple of small farms that are doing very well in the ultra-suburban Connecticut community where I used to live. The do well by growing specific crops their research has shown them the community will buy. For instance, one of them grows lots of “pick your own” flowers and sells dozens of bouquets every day for the homebound commuter who is late or whatever. This same farm also grows a lot of specialty Indian (not native American) vegetables and herbs because the area has a large Indian community. Most of the rest of their acreage is in two popular types of corn, strawberries and in various heirloom tomatoes. Their prices are high, but they sell everything they grow.
The other farm does more or less the same thing: popular yuppi vegetables, all kinds of apples, and they run an ice cream store for which they make their own ice cream…a very popular year-round destination for families and visitors.
The point is, these people aren’t doing what we think of as “traditional” farming: acres of soybeans or alfafa or whatever. They are really doing truck gardening on a large scale, growing what their community eats. They are not a substitute for but an addition to the regular agriculture scene that gives us our bread, potatoes and so forth. Works for them.
fuckwit
Keep fucking that government subsidized chicken, while complaining about the gummint and welfare.