Agriculture cannot shutdown due to weather, disaster, war, or disease. Up until this declaration, there was nothing preventing ag loads of feed to dairy, poultry, or any other life stock farms from being shutdown. There was nothing preventing crops from not being able to be harvested and new crops planted. I am glad someone finally woke up. The FMSCA was worried about toilet paper, medical supplies, and restaurant chains. Hell, they even were worried about plastic. Food production? Nope. Only from packing plants etc. where it is packaged. I guess the pencil pushers at FMSCA believe food is produced in factories and meat packing plants. I’m really not sure where they thought food was actually coming from but they remain completely clueless about the ag industry and food production. Maybe they think it’s produced at Wal Mart or in a factory somewhere. Honestly, they’re more worried about collecting revenue than anything else. It costs $5000 just to get cab cards to run two semis over state lines for a year. That’s just a drop in the bucket in fees and taxes paid to state and federal government. Your food is expensive because of government regulatory entities collecting taxes generating revenue for the government. Trucking regulations and fees/taxes are literally putting the agriculture industry out of business and killing people on the highways with ill thought out HOS rules and regulations. But, I digress…..
Here is a reality check. Your bread, tortillas, soybean products, beans, rice, cooking oil, etc. require land to be planted and harvested in season. You cannot grow enough wheat, corn, or soybeans in your garden to make most of the food products you take for granted. Crops have to be planted and harvested on schedule. Period. They do not grow otherwise or they rot in the field. Life stock producing milk, dairy, and meat must be fed every single day. If the dairy cows die, you don’t have milk to ship to the store. It’s not a difficult concept. Baby formula? Meh, who needs it? Your pet food requires continuous shipments of feed ingredients also. So your big plan was to not ship feed, fertilizer, and grain for several weeks or months? That will leave you with no food for next year. It will leave you with no food in a few weeks. Personally, I can live without toilet paper but I need food to eat. Toilet paper doesn’t have much food value or so I have heard. I’ve never tried to eat toilet paper. What were you thinking? Oh, that’s right, import it from China. Brilliant thinking. How is that working out? Buying food from China that can be produced here was never a good idea. Having meat packaged, grown or processed in China was never a good idea. Buying things from China that we cannot produce? Ok. Trump needed to renegotiate our trade deals. Thank you Trump! Thank you Homeland Security!
Middle of the Muddy Road 