Photo: Martha Boneta 2014 |
A recent
report by the Associated Press from Des Moines, Iowa, stated, “The rapidly
rising demand for locally grown fruits and vegetables has created a robust new
market for refugees who fled violence in their home countries and found peace
in farming small plots of land in several U.S. cities.”
The Global
Greens program offered through the Lutheran Services of Iowa enabled 26 refugee
families from Bhutan, Burundi, Burma, and Rwanda to grow tomatoes, potatoes,
carrots, kale, lettuce and eggplants for their own consumption on small plots
of 50 feet by 50 feet. Eight families are growing food on quarter-acre plots for
local commercial consumption.
The 2003 federal
Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program awards a maximum $85,000 to each
organization ($1 million per year). In addition to previous organizations, plots
are currently funded in New York City, Buffalo, Cleveland, Honolulu, Nashville,
Providence, Sioux Falls, and Tampa. http://www.federalgrants.com/Refugee-Agricultural-Partnership-Program-41339.html
Simon, a
refugee from Burundi said, "We were in a refugee camp and life was not
good there but the United States gave us the opportunity to come here. This
means a lot to me because we get to sell stuff and make a little bit of money so
we can help our family and we can grow food so our family can feed other people
and feed ourselves too." He expressed his hope to return to Africa one day
and “to teach them new techniques to grow food and fight hunger.”
The goal
of the Global Greens program is “to help families make money, but it’s also
about being able to grow some of their own cultural crops. It’s being able to
involve their families, being able to just have their own land.” http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dc77e20b44534de5b9b029f968cb21c4/refugees-settle-thanks-small-farm-plots
Should these government
grants and charity not be given to our own unemployed and destitute American population
who would welcome the opportunity to have their own piece of land on which to
farm commercially and grow their own food? Charity begins at home but lately it
seems that our own population does not count; illegal aliens and refugees from
war and poverty-torn areas are given priority over the wellbeing, financial
security, and health security of our own citizens.
Additionally,
has any American citizen tried recently to get a "Farmers Home Loan?” What about two years of free living like the
State Department gives to refugees?
Environmentalists in the
historic York County, Virginia having collected 130 signatures, have asked the
Board of Supervisors to ban commercial farming. Anthony Bavuso, a local
oysterman, did not believe that York County should require him to purchase a
special use permit for his oyster-farming operation at York Point because the
Commonwealth of Virginia passed a low in 2014, the Boneta Bill, to protect
small farming.
This law is strongly
opposed by conservationist activists and environmental NGOs and they are
determined to obstruct it by “asserting that the county of 66,000 could cite
lot sizes and other considerations to quash farming activities.” www.watchdog.org/170548/county-farming-ban/
Martha Boneta, the small
farmer who owns Liberty Farm in Paris, Virginia, has been battling for eight
years the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), a 501(c) non-profit land trust
that co-holds an easement on her family farm with the Virginia Outdoors
Foundation (VOF). Her easement contract permits agricultural, industrial, commercial,
and residential uses of her property. Yet PEC regularly inspects, to the point
of harassment, her barn, tools, kitchen, bathroom, and closets to make sure
that nobody resides in her barn. According to Boneta, based on the secretive “confidential
agreement” between the NGO and realtors, there is no doubt about the intent of
the constant harassment and unending court battles.
While American farmers who
have farmed for generation on small plots are being squeezed out by the NGO environmentalist
assault on property rights, refugees and illegal aliens are given land and
money to achieve the American dream. It is nice to be charitable and altruistic
but our American citizens and their children’s dreams should have priority.
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