Food Freedom & Preserving America’s Farmland

Author: Angel Cushing

My livestock production directly impacts my grandson’s health. He has type 1 diabetes. I am grateful for the advances in diabetes health care. If my grandson had been born a few years earlier, he would have had to go to the doctor’s office and have his blood drawn in order to determine the amount of sugar in his body. The most recent advancements in the affordability and ease of the glucose monitor are a game changer. People are able to learn how foods affect the sugar levels in their bodies in real-time, for each individual.

Fat, as the glucose monitor showed in my grandson, digests slowly. Some fats, such as the fat found in meats, digest so slowly that an insulin bolus is not needed. In fact, his sugar levels do not increase for any meat he consumes. Beef, pork, poultry, fish, seafood, and even wild game will not increase his sugar levels. The more fat on the meat, the less likely his sugar levels will climb in the hours following his meal. Vegetables do require that he take an insulin bolus, as do dairy, nuts, and grains. Cereal grains, the ones we are told need to be the majority of our diet, require him to take a lot of insulin. And not just at the time of consumption. Cereal grains tend to make his blood sugar run high all day long. Not even sugar, straight from the sugar bowl, requires as much insulin as cereal grains do.

Constantly having large amounts of insulin in circulation is not good for the body. It eventually leads to heart disease, kidney disease, and other problems. If the body is not producing insulin at all, such as my grandson’s body, those problems are even more likely to occur because the insulin he uses is not made by him. Thanks to the meat in his diet, my grandson can avoid many of the complications that insulin build-up will cause.

“Well, you can just go hunting” is the standard response I am told after I express concern for the availability of affordable meats. If livestock was no longer available or affordable, how much hunting would be required to sustain a healthy diet for him? My little grandson lives with two siblings and both parents. How many hunting trips would be needed for one month to feed a family of five? How many hunting permits are available in the area he lives? How much time and money would have to be dedicated to hunting? How likely would the family compete with other people in the hunting area who are in the same predicament?

Anyone who has been shopping for groceries knows there is reason for concern. The prices are climbing. We take comfort that food is available in our local stores. The shortages created by Covid are behind us. However, I do find myself stopping in grocery stores as I travel through other states to find the options that used to be readily available in my local grocery stores here in Kansas. We need to remember how much of our food supply comes down to the small farmer, and we need to realize how small farmers are being threatened out of existence.

“Did you know that Lyon County is trying to ban barbwire fences in the entire county?” is a question I asked of my neighbors and residents in 2019. Our county had created a partnership with the city of Emporia for a new Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Regulations. Not only did it eliminate parking lots and traffic lanes inside Emporia, it also converted farms to open spaces, green spaces, and other public land definitions. It complimented a detailed public trail system tying all the different areas of the county together. Not one check would be written to a farmer for this new use of their land. The farmer would simply be regulated out of business and into compliance.

To ensure the method of Regulatory Takings would not be undone, the city and county commissioners signed a legally binding contract called an interlocal agreement to work together. The Joint Comprehensive Planning and Zoning combines all planning boards, appeal boards, and zoning boards. The city has a larger government than the county and a larger population to find employees and volunteers from. This means the city ends up having the majority of representation for all land use policy decisions for the entire county. People in the city will absolutely vote to camp in the farmer’s wheat field and swim in the livestock tank. They will vote for the regulatory taking of private property.

Livestock manure is accused of threatening the planet. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of talk about eliminating methane from people, pets, or wildlife. Nor do any of the experts bother to ask: Why now, after thousands, or millions of years, is livestock methane suddenly a threat? They simple say, over and over again, that we must eliminate livestock and replace it with wild animals, in order to save the planet. This threat is called Climate Change.

At a convention held at the headquarters of Cargill in Wichita, Kansas, speakers of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition explained how the United States was killing the soil. Ironically, in order to increase our agriculture exports, we must build infrastructure in Africa. Africa was to be the next bread-basket of the world and livestock would be better sustained in African countries.

We have built nuclear power plants in Africa, while we work to take them down in the United States. We are building production of food in Africa while we pay farmers not to farm and convert farmland in the U.S. to recreational areas. Why would a cattle trading business like Cargill consider ideas that will end all cattle production in the United States?

History has shown us why. It happens when business monopolies become government partners. One notorious example is the British East India Trading Company who was partnered with the English Empire. The Tea Act of 1773 was passed by the British Parliament in an effort to financially bail out the British East India Trading Company who was sitting on warehouses of tea in London. If the taxes were agreed to by the American colonies, the British government would have a more effective means of eliminating tea imports to the colonies from the Dutch East India Trading Company. That government and monopoly partnership deal led to the most famous Tea Party in history. Is our government promoting the Climate Change narrative to benefit partnerships?

A handful of giant food processors control most of the food market in the United States. What better way of becoming the only food processor in the world than being the only company that is saving every country in the world from Climate Change? With the current environment of a few established food monopolies, the potential to become the next World Trading Company to rival the East India Trading companies is within reach.

Each of the giant food monopolies is persuading politicians to eliminate competition and alter consumer demand through regulations. Each does not care whether they sell people real meat or fake meat. Each giant food processor simply wants to ensure the only choices of food every person has are their products.

My livestock operation has not produced a profit in the last several years. I cannot compete in this regulatory environment and asking everyone to consider how much agriculture land should be converted to wilderness and recreation consumes most of my time. The diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes can occur at any age. However, the ages that are most prevalent for diagnosis are between the ages of 4 and 14 years old. My herd of goats is more than a livestock operation to make a profit. It is freedom, it is liberty, and for my grandson, it is a healthy life.