Alan Jennings To Train Sharecroppers

Those of you who listened to the podcast of my interview with Alan Jennings know that toward the end of the interview I confessed to snickering about his organization's plan ( Community Action Committer of Lehigh Valley) to take over the farmer training at the Lehigh County owned Seed Farm.  Those who follow this blog know that I oppose Farmland Preservation,  because it is a ridiculous disconnect with the reality of food production in 2018.  It is however politically correct for urban liberals to think that if as much farmland as possible stays available,  there will be an endless banquet of environmental bliss, with organic food no less.  Alan sees it as an extension of food for the poor, sort of another ladder step in the food pantry mission. Low income food issues are because of money, not food production shortfalls. These liberals of course are ignorant of the long hours and hard work which goes into farming. They are also ignorant of the economic reality of competing with large scale agriculture.

Now, unless Alan wants to gift each of his graduates with a farm at our expense,  they will either be a farm hand, or at best a sharecropper.  What is really scary about Alan's plan is that it has the endorsement of the Republican controlled Lehigh County Commission.  They are apparently so vote craven, that they go along with such nonsense.

The only practical program assisting farming is Clean And Green.  Unfortunately, the Morning Call ran an expose on the program featuring photographs of large expensive houses,  surrounded by farmland. While the program limits tax reduction to only the land actively farmed,  the photographs give the impression that the tax breaks are going to people who don't need it.  I suppose the liberal paper thinks that those involved in agriculture are supposed to live in shacks.  Worse yet, the paper thinks that their story is a masterpiece, has has been running it on their website for months.

photocredit: Dorothea Lange, Son of Sharecropper, 1937

above reprinted from July of 2018 

ADDENDUM JUNE 17, 2025:If you use my blog's search engine, over the years you can find dozens of posts about Community Action of Lehigh Valley. I have criticized them for not giving out fishing poles, but rather buying people fish markets. Currently, they are crying the blues over proposed federal cuts under the Trump administration. They have gotten so big over the last couple decades, and so far beyond their original mission of directly helping poor people, they would. have to shrink 75% to get back to their original mission. They are so fat, that in the current Morning Call article they claim that many of their employees could be making more in the private sector...Perhaps now they will have that opportunity.