Editor:
I would like to comment on Alan Guebert’s great article on NAIS in the June 18 Farm and Dairy. His lines, “flaws are as wide and deep as its unknowns…” and “no farmer wants a new expressway built between him and the federal courthouse” are excellent observations!
With the correct picture he has drawn of this flawed attack on farmers, the error of the article is, “USDA have encouraged just 35 percent of livestock owners to register their premises…”
Guebert, like many of us, believes USDA to be honest, and they should be.
This 35 percent number is over triple the real true number. USDA is juggling the data. They get to count the ones enrolled, not us. Don’t believe them.
They also invented a total dishonest number of 1.4 million livestock producing premises in the USA. The USDA’s own 2007 census blows past that number more than double.
To get down to a tiny 1.4 number, they eliminated all farms with less than $1,000 livestock income last year. That was 499,800 that they evaporated.
USDA accidentally forgot to include the 1.96 million horse premises (American Horse Council) housing 9.2 million horses.
Easily we are over 3.85 million farms right there. Add to that penned large game, zoos, etc.
The fact is, when USDA says they have over 35 percent enrolled, if you place an “honesty meter” on it, they have less than 9 percent.
Also, many of those farms are in the process, at this minute, of filing to be removed.
It is a great article. But USDA is a tarnished division of our government with an old reputation of honesty and integrity that has now totally changed and stinks to the high heavens.
Their forced feeding of NAIS to farms would gage a coon dog. Guebert should keep up the very good work, and be sure — it is much worse than he indicated.
Darol Dickinson
Barnesville, Ohio
