[gammarator]

"Have you been to a corn / soy bean farm? Visit one and ask the farmer if he enjoys his job, and how much he makes (many are in the red)."

Have you done this yourself, or are you just trying to score rhetorical points?

I have: my parents are corn/soy/livestock farmers on a small farm they own in the Midwest. Their friends and neighbors are all small operations as well. It's not a job you make much money at, it's true--imagine if all of your income depended on good weather and timing the commodities markets right! They stick with it because it's a job with independence and pride in producing something the world needs. Heritage and tradition, too: many have ancestors who have been farming in the area for a century or more.

It's easy to vilify something if you don't understand it.

[rapind]

Rhetorical points? I have been, and very recently in fact (I've become sort of fascinated with the topic). I'm not even remotely vilifying the farmers. That would be like vilifying anyone who bought a house in 2006 only to lose their shirt. It's the system I take issue with. I'm starting to see most corn / soy farmers more as slave labourers if anything. I realize this may come across as offensive, but I honestly don't mean to offend, as I have absolutely no issue with corn farmers themselves. Rather I take issue with the corn subsidies, the CAFOs, the large meat processing firms, the genetically modified crops, and the fertilizer pushers.

More corn / soybean is about the last thing the world needs. It's also extremely dependent on oil prices due to the fact that most corn farmers requires heaps of fertilizer to produce corn / soy at such an unsustainable rate. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=that-burger...