Charity Begins at Home with American Citizens

Photo: Martha Boneta 2014

While we are fighting in Virginia and around the country for small farmer’s rights to maintain their freedom to farm, unencumbered by local government permits and environmental NGOs that are determined to force all farmers under conservation easements and regulatory control, war refugees are given land and grants to farm in our country.

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.

Virginia is for Food and Farm Freedom Lovers

Virginians are not taking lightly the NGOs environmentalist assaults on their land and the right to farm. They are fighting back with the Virginia Small Farm and Food Freedom Resolution in support of the Farm and Food Freedom Act. (www.vafarmandfoodfreedom.com)

Many Virginians testified in Richmond in support of HB1430, The Right to Farm Act, better known as the Boneta Bill, which passed the House of Delegates 77-22 in February 2013 but was blocked by the Senate Agricultural Committee by a vote of 11-4. Delegate Scott Lingamfelter promised to reintroduce the bill next year.

Virginians have vowed to continue the fight. Chairman Mike Thomas and his committee of 12 proposed a resolution on May 4, 2013 to be included and published on the Republican Party of Virginia website with a link on the home page.

It remains to be seen if any of the parties and members of Congress represent the wishes of the majority of the people anymore. Would lawmakers continue to pass laws just to protect the loudest minorities, the illegals, those on welfare, and the elites in power?

The Resolution calls on the Republican Party of Virginia to “support state legislation and local ordinances consistent with each farmer’s right to determine what best constitutes farming, farm life, the best uses of his/her own farm land, respect for their neighbors,” market pay for their labor, and to repeal state laws and ordinances inconsistent with the Resolution.

The Governor and the General Assembly have a duty to advance legislation in 2014 that respects the rights of citizens to pursue their self-interests as protected by the Constitution of the United States, the vision of the Founding Fathers, and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Farmers engage in more than just production agriculture, they have the right to commerce, the right to enjoyment of their land, assembly on their property, the right to exercise religious freedom on their lands, the right to grow, eat, sell their locally produced foods without burdensome local and state government regulations or dictates from environmental groups sponsored by international groups and entities, including the United Nations ICLEI.

Government should not use laws, regulations, zoning ordinances, or cumbersome and expensive permits to violate or trespass on the farmers’ rights and freedom to farm under the guise that they know what is best for farming in general or one farmer in particular.

Government agencies or subdivisions that violate farmers’ rights and trespass on their property should be made accountable for their deeds. Americans should not be treated as guilty until proven innocent while giving environmental groups unlimited power without much redress for small farmers who do not have the means to fight back and must shut down their farming operations and farm stores as was the case of Martha Boneta in Virginia and many others across the country.

Less than three percent of American labor feeds 306 million Americans yet the government is making it harder and harder for small farms to operate and bring wholesome foods to the market. Why should farmers be subjected to “annual property monitoring visits and inspections” by environmental groups funded by U.N. Agenda 21 agencies and pursued by groups beholden to ICLEI and other environmental councils who have no idea how their food gets to the table nor do they care? Are “penny loafer farmers” and their horses the only Americans protected under the law? Don’t real farmers deserve the same protection under the supreme law that guarantees all Americans unalienable rights such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”