Farming Practices, Food, and Shortages Caused by Inept Governments

I was watching with fascination a documentary about monastic farm practices in Tudor England.  A historian and two archeologists introduced the viewers and the visitors to farming methods, tools, food, clothing, and customs from 500 years ago by actually tilling the soil, planting crops, harvesting them, building tools from that period, cooking, burning crockery, churning butter, raising sheep, pigs, and chicken, hunting, fishing, and living, at least on screen, like the monks had done during the fifteenth century. What Life Was Like In The Tudor Era | Tudor Monastery | Absolute History - Bing video

What was fascinating to me was the fact that many of the implements and practices from the Tudor period looked familiar because I had seen, experienced, and used them on my grandfather’s “private” small farm as a child growing up in socialist Romania.

The wooden butter churn was quite recognizable and so was the wooden plow pulled by oxen. Grandpa used to cut hay by hand with a scythe, gather the hay in piles with a home-made wooden rake, and then used a wooden pitchfork to move the hay unto a cart and then to the dry loft for use during the winter.

The family planted the garden in straight rows with deep separation ditches between the seed line (the seeds were spaced out enough to allow for plant growth) to enable water flooding from the creek when rain was scarce, and irrigation became necessary to keep the plants alive.

When the Colorado beetles started devouring every plant in their small gardens, they used powdered DDT to kill them as directed by the government that sold it. No amount of picking the bugs off the plants made any difference in the infestation. The fruit trees were attacked by fruit flies. There were so many open outhouses in the village.

The dirt had to be prepared by hand, using a metal hoe and hard labor to cut the hard-crusted topsoil and make it crumble enough for seeding. All this backbreaking work had to be done in their spare time as each villager owed a certain number of work hours per week to the cooperative farm “owned” collectively by the villagers.

Each peasant home raised a pig for slaughter at Christmas, chickens, ducks, geese, and the occasional rabbits. Some even had a milking cow, and many had sheep. The village shepherd, an actual paid position in the kolkhoz, took the cooperative farm’s cows each day to graze outside the village and returned them in the evening. These cows had either been confiscated by the cooperative farm or were in the ownership of a specific peasant who still had to make produce donations to make up for the cow that they were allowed to keep.

Inhabitants were forced to toil and put in the crops and harvest them. They had no choice as the Bolsheviks confiscated most of their lands and forced them into a collective farm. This collective farm or kolkhoz as the Russians called it, had to be tended to collectively by all villagers. They were left with enough land for the home they lived in, a yard, and a plot for a small garden.

The peasants in the kolkhoz were paid as salaried employees based on quality and quantity of labor contributed. The left describes the kolkhoz as a voluntary union of peasants, but it was hardly voluntary when their land was confiscated by the state authorities in power and, to survive and eat, they had to work for the state-controlled kolkhoz.

Land had been expropriated from the peasants in 1929 in the Soviet Union and later in Romania (there were state farms as early as 1945), after the king abdicated and the monarchy ended in 1948. The royal family’s thousands of acres of agricultural land, forests, several castles, and palaces were confiscated by the communist regime. A king’s inheritance: The properties of the Romanian royal family | Romania Insider (romania-insider.com)

According to Romanian agricultural sources, 75 percent of all arable land belonged to cooperative farms and 17 percent were state farms which were formed as early as 1945. The rest (8%) were small private farms which brought their harvest to the government-sanctioned markets for sale. In mountainous regions where cooperative farms were not feasible to organize, locals grew food for their own extended families.

State farms were a socialist enterprise. They received the best land from the state and were allowed to use the state’s machines, chemicals, and irrigation water. Such advantage increased their crop yield when compared to cooperative farms. The communist government told the state farms how to operate, peasants were paid a fixed wage for their labor and had no rights to a private plot of land for their own gardens.

Cooperative farms also took their production orders from the socialist government, but they technically “owned” the land and basic equipment. “The cooperatives were told what crops to grow, how to grow them, and how much to deliver to the state.” The peasants were forced to work at least 300 days per year on the cooperative and, if the cooperative had no work for them, they could be transferred to other farms or to construction and lumber work sites. These cooperative “farmers” earned an income of only 60 percent when compared to others and had much smaller pensions. It is safe to say that income equality meant misery for some. 

“In the late 1980s, the systematization program aimed to subordinate privately owned land and private plots on cooperative farms to the regional agro-industrial councils and thereby tighten central control of private farming. Systematization would eliminate many of the plots, as villages were levelled to create vast fields for socialized farming. This policy directly contradicted the government's mandate in the 1980s that the population feed itself by cultivating small plots (even lawns and public parks had been converted to vegetable gardens) and breeding poultry and rabbits.” Romania - AGRICULTURE (countrystudies.us)

This period coincided with a period when the Communist Party told all citizens how many calories they were allowed consume per day according to their profession, how much they should weigh, and the shortages of food were quite severe.

The ruling Soviet-style state maintained operational control via “elected” chairmen and political units in the machine-tractor stations which furnished heavy equipment in return for payments of agricultural produce. And the terms were never favorable to the peasants, only to the ruling regime. Often these tractors were not operational for lack of parts or lack of people who could fix them.

Among the many horrible decisions made after the Bolsheviks took power, one stands out. The “agricultural communist planners” ordered the slaughter of thousands of workhorses during the first three decades of communist rule. The horses were replaced by tractors. The number of tractors grew from 13,700 in 1950 to 168,000 in 1983. But in 1986, the regime rulers reversed their management practices through the National Council for Agriculture, Food Industry, Forestry, and Water Management and called for reducing the number of tractors in service by one-third and replace them by horse-drawn equipment. Eighteen to 25 percent of all harvesting and hauling was to be down by horse-drawn equipment by 1990. So much for 500 years of agricultural progress. Romania - AGRICULTURE (countrystudies.us)

Mechanizing agriculture raised the possibility to grow more grain and corn but there were some problems. Much of the workforce left in agriculture were elderly peasants who were not seeking better paying jobs in factories within commuting distance. The elderly did not have the expertise to fix these tractors when they broke down nor did they know how to operate them properly. Often crops rotted in the fields because there was nobody left to harvest them.

Poor crop rotation practices yielded smaller crops and droughts plagued the arable lands that were not connected to irrigation. Additionally, only 34-36 kg of fertilizer were used per acre, an inadequate amount.

“Furthermore, much of the best farmland had been severely damaged by prolonged use of outsized machinery, which had compacted the soil, by unsystematic application of agricultural chemicals, and by extensive erosion.” Romania - AGRICULTURE (countrystudies.us)

In the 1970s, the socialist regime I grew up under and its “private” farmers, still used agricultural implements that were 500 years old, the same ones used in the monastic Tudor period. Agricultural progress must be slow in socialist regimes.

Not only did a major agricultural country had very thin and gaunt people, some of whom starved to death in winter, but severe food shortages plagued the country in the 1980s while the socialist centralized planners, political and community organizers, were selling the good crops to the west for hard currency, currency which they used to support their lavish lifestyles and to develop impractical and unprofitable industries across the country.

People were employed for meager wages in factories but had to struggle every day to find food, standing in long bread and grocery lines and for other necessities.

Wallachia, the breadbasket of the country, was once a proud producer of cereals in the Bărăgan Plain, a steppe famous for its black soil, perfect for growing grain in general. On a visit in 2015, I noticed the unplanted fields, then occupied by unsightly windmills turning in the wind, none of which, I learned later from an official with the energy ministry, were connected to any power grid. The windmills had been donated by the EU and had been hurriedly placed across The Bărăgan Plain. What happened to the breadbasket of Wallachia?

According to official online sources, Romania, an EU-member since 2007, imported food from the EU in 2006 worth 2.4 billion euros, up 20 percent from the previous year. Romania exports to the EU 64 percent of agri-food products and imports from EU countries 54 percent of food. Romania imports substantial quantities of grain and 2.8 percent of the country’s GDP is derived from agricultural activity.

In the U.S., about 2.7 percent of the population are farmers who grow food and feed the rest of the country. More family farms are being sold to large agri-businesses or are being paid by the government not to farm certain crops, or to burn the yield entirely to manipulate the market price.

As we see dozens of food warehouses going up in flames recently around the U.S., one wonders, would our fast-becoming socialist country eventually starve its citizens, or might they have to fight for limited sources of food like we had to do in the 1970s and 1980s socialist Romania? I hope not.

 

 

 

A Progressive Migration to Conservative States

Liberals from California and smaller blue states are exerting their influence on the electoral process in red states, determined to flip them to blue, and, by and large, are succeeding with the exception of the most recent election in Georgia’s 6^th district where Democrats spent over $23 million, the most in the history of the House of Representative elections ever.

I’m still scratching my head trying to understand the insanity of 144,000 low information Americans from Georgia who voted for the Democrat candidate Jon Ossoff, a French President Macron look-alike, even though he did not reside in their district and did not have much of a platform.

No amount of cash, air time, dishonest claims, speeches, and other shenanigans Hollywood and progressives around the country engaged in, convinced the rest of the well-informed Georgia voters to elect Jon Ossoff.

Someone comically wrote that “Snowflakes are crying their Ossoff in their parents’ basements’” after the results of the election determined that Ossoff lost.

Trying to cajole young voters who had just graduated from high school, frustrated that conservative parents interfered with their attempts to reach potential 18-year old voters living in their parents’ basements, voters who have no idea who runs the political world and our lives into the ground, Democrats complained to the compliant press that parents were mean and unresponsive to their frequent calls and attempts to brainwash their offspring to vote for the Democrat candidate.

The socialist Democrat platform was well articulated by candidates like Bernie Sanders. Vote for collectivism and social justice, he told his young and naïve followers; when I lose, I can buy an expensive sports car and a second home in Vermont while you dopes are driving tin cans or old cars with the “Feel the burn” and “Coexist” bumper stickers on and lay your head on your parents couch in the basement after a hard day’s work as baristas at Starbucks.

Democrats from progressive states have deep pockets which they spend on Millennials and other misinformed and brainwashed young people who, for $15 and hour, a “living wage,” will go anywhere dressed in black, with face masks, like the cowardly anarchists and fascists that they are, and will destroy someone else’s property in the name of “social justice” and “equality.” The not-so-feminine and self-described nasty women dress in vagina costumes like vile idiots. They attack people who disagree with their insanity and demonize our duly-elected President with vitriolic hate.

Progressives have been moving to conservative states in droves, changing the face of the electorate and flipping parts of a red state into blue, eventually succeeding in flipping the entire state to the progressive agenda by dominating in a few very populous cities. Thus, a state like Virginia, because of its heavy concentration of communists and other fellow travelers in the northern part, it has elected a fellow progressive governor, senators, and other representatives despite the fact that the rest of the state is very much conservative.

Former Rep. Allen West, who was redistricted out of his seat by his own Republican party who did not like his America-first stance on many issues, compared this exodus of progressives and invasion of conservative states to the Muslim Hijra which is also taking place all over the world as we speak, including the United States. By far they are succeeding in colonizing western civilization beyond their wildest dreams, both in Europe and here at home.

If you add into the mix the illegal vote of so many aliens who have crossed our border unlawfully or were brought here by the Obama administration, one can see how elections are swayed in the direction of the Socialist Democrat Party which now runs or heavily influences all the blue states, our government, the military, the fake main stream media, all the technology monopolies, social media outlets, publishing houses, academia, schools, Christian churches, the legal system, and the Deep State.

What conservatives are left with is the alternative media and talk radio with voices like Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, and TV personalities like Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity. Nobody is sure how long that will last. Liberals, the intolerant bunch that they are, operate on the following predilection - you have a right to say what you want, as long as you agree with me.

We were lucky that Georgia conservatism won this battle. Will we be lucky next time and win the war? Most Americans have been lulled into a false sense of security, have food on the table, air conditioning, heat, water, in-door plumbing, multiple sports channels, a home sweet home and, as long as nobody bothers their daily routines, they don’t care who is in charge of their global enslavement. So they vote in more of the same corrupt politicians for both parties.

Many go to church and bend over backwards to appease the few atheists and their fellow travelers who demand “separation of church and state” in schools but say nothing when special accommodations are made for Muslim children and their prayer needs.

American Christian children are being indoctrinated into Islam by the Common Core curriculum in public and private schools, and are forced to go to the bathroom with a pedophile/mentally deranged person who pretends or “feels” that he is a she.

What else can possibly go wrong with our great country, the former “shining city on the hill,” that is being tarnished day by day by influential anti-American groups with huge coffers?

Poplars and Nostalgia

I parked the rented beige Jetta under the tall tree that I had planted as an 8 year old, a life time ago. The entire street was shaded by poplars, painted white half way up the trunk to prevent insect invasions. The lush green trees have grown taller than the five story buildings surrounding them.

On a regular schedule, the Marxist community and street organizers would show up and corral everybody to a day of volunteer work, sweeping the streets, picking up trash, mowing the grass, planting trees, shrubs, pick up garbage, rocks, and pull weeds. Adults would work quietly, fearful of saying something that would be reported downtown, but the kids laughed and ran carefree in their exuberant playfulness.

The hill where I used to run sleds in wintertime was now occupied by 9-story apartment buildings, so clustered together that one could touch a neighbor’s hand in the other building through the bedroom window.  

Near the stairs leading to another housing project below, there was a patch of heaven where I ran my sleigh many winters ago, laughing, falling, and rolling in the snow. It was now strangely covered in asphalt on a 30 degree incline.

I walked down trying to retrace my steps but I froze at the bottom of the hill. A large pack of street dogs was approaching, barking and growling. I went uphill quickly, regretful that I could not continue my exploration. The street below, with 40 or so homes still standing, was familiar – three of my school mates lived there with their families. I was surprised that these homes had not been demolished to make room for more high-rise ugly concrete block apartments. Utilizing every inch of space to the max was a primary goal of city planners.

My former home, a tiny match box sized apartment on the fifth floor, still painted the same dirty sea foam green, was oozing decay and pollution stains. Nothing has changed since 1977 when an earthquake damaged many buildings but somehow left ours with cracks and a bathroom window dangling chunks of concrete from the reinforced steel bars, like a loose tooth.  That was my family’s bathroom window. The concrete bar was still missing and the window looked odd.  Why fix it, nobody was going to climb to the fifth floor and invade the home through the gaping hole in the bathroom. The only addition to the old building was a security entry at the main door. All apartments had been bought for $30,000 each by the former communist era tenants who used to pay subsidized rent to the Communist Party.

The sidewalk was cracked, leading to the shopping center where we bought our milk, bread, bones with meat on them, wilted vegetables, and the few groceries available for which we stood in line a few hours every day. I was shocked that the building still stood. Half of it was abandoned in a pitiful state of decay; the other half did not fare much better but it was occupied. A lone, dingy grocery store sold a little bit of everything - the shelves were full of food and merchandise. I don’t know why but tears welled up in my eyes. I remembered the empty, clean shelves of my childhood, the pharmacy, the bakery, the dairy, the “cofetaria” selling sweets, the book store, and the pub always full of people who were trying to drown their sorrow in beer and plum brandy. They were long gone. The young shopkeeper ignored me after a cursory look at the middle-aged woman in front of him.

My old elementary school was still behind the shopping center, surrounded by the same fence and locked gates. It was freshly painted a happy yellow. The educationally-themed mosaic created by a commie artist on the left hand side of the building was still intact. It showed mother education as a goddess of communist learning holding a book adorned with a hammer and sickle.

I will never forget the misery and torture the dictator Ceausescu had subjected my people to during his reign of socialist/communist terror. Some individuals have short memories though, especially those who try to excuse the horrible treatment of a nation as a “fatherly,” well-intentioned attempt to rid the country of the national debt to the west.

A professor who used to be the communist party secretary to the university system during Nicolae Ceausescu tried recently to blame Ceausescu’s demise on his announcement in 1989 that Romania had paid off all its debts to the west; additionally, Ceausescu allegedly forbade the Romanian government to seek any foreign credit. In other words, Romania had become such a threat to the one world government bankers and their ill-gotten interest-based fortunes that they were able to get rid of Ceausescu and “punish him physically for his insolence.” Perhaps this professor forgot that Ceausescu did not consult the Romanian people if they were willing to suffer so much hunger, cold, poverty, neglect, misery, torture so that Romania would owe no money to the west. He also forgot the brutal abuse, imprisonment, and swift punishment citizens suffered if they dared to criticize the communist party.

This professor’s national debt explanation makes for an interesting conspiratorial theory. The powerful western bankers cowed by a “maverick” defiant dictator who stood in their way to control the world financially. God forbid Ceausescu’s move would be copied by other dictators and turn into a contagion around the globe, robbing the bankers of their fortunes acquired by shameless interest charged to poor countries. Did someone force his hand to sign on the dotted line? Did the dictator with an elementary school education not become a wealthy billionaire from these loans, and lived a life of luxury while his people starved? Did I miss something here?

Communism did not die behind the Iron Curtain in 1989 – it re-emerged in a more nefarious form around the globe, promoted by the compliant media and hypocritical Hollywood. McCarthy was right about some of them after all.

The has-beens of the old communism and total government control are nostalgic for the good ole days of totalitarianism, romanticizing the past, trying to reclaim their positions of power and privilege. The global communism of U.N. Agenda 21 is making great stride, using environmentalism, land preservation, zoning, and care for the planet as a tool. And the Fabian socialists in the west are winning the hearts and minds of low information voters who believe anything they are told over and over by the main stream media.