Independent Farmers and Ranchers Are Harder To Herd Than City Dwellers

Independent farmers and Ranchers Are Harder to Herd Than City Dwellers

Bernard Pyron

Rural farmers and ranchers who are not part of corporate ownership of large tracts of farm or ranch land are too independent and self-reliant for the contemporary collectivist more urbanized society. Much of the rural population tends to be less stressed out than are urban Americans now, and numbers of the farmer and rancher population still on the land tend to be healthier than the city dwellers. In addition, the birth rate for lower middle and middle class Americans has dropped in recent years, and fertility among the far larger urbanized portion of these classes has decreased.

 But since the rural counterparts of these Americans have tended to remain healthier, without as much exposure to stress, toxins, poor diet, lack of exercise, and estrogen mimickers in plastics, pesticides, etc, it is possible that among some rural Americans the birth rate may not be declining. Estrogen mimickers are now believed to be responsible not only for the increase in breast cancer but for the drop in fertility rates, making reproduction of the American middle class appear problematic, if Christ does not come back in the next 30 or 40 years.. If it is true that as a group rural Americans of the lower middle and middle classes who live on the land have higher fertility rates and more children than their city counterparts, this would be an interesting problem for the social engineers who want to reduce the numbers of people still on the land, since rural people are harder to herd and control than city people.

J. Frank Dobie wrote that "They" - the men of the earth - are utterly at ease on the planet and express the flavor of the earth to which they belong..." "They" - the people of the land or wilderness - "have lingered with the grass, the rocks, and the thorned shrubs..." Walter Prescott Webb , side-kick of J. Frank Dobie and Roy Bedichek in Austin, said that "The true distinctive culture of a region springs from the soil just as do the plants."

W. S. James (1898) said that under the influence of a free, wild life, the Texas cowboy grew to be self-reliant. These are not traits of an urban conformist. Walter Prescott Webb in The Great Planes (1931) said that the great distances and sparse population of the West encouraged self-reliance. And Webb said that the people of the Great Planes West were "lawless," not meaning they were all outlaws, but that they were nonconformists who were not easily dominated and controlled.

Independent farmers and ranchers who are not large corporate enterprises still, even in 2014, live close to the earth, and are at ease in whatever distinctive land they ranch or farm. The urban American society is far removed from the land, from the growing of plants for food, and the raising of cattle for meat. Independent farmers and ranchers understand one another, even though they may not agree on everything. Being self-reliant and independent, they have have not formed organizations easily to protect themselves from large corporations and the governments.

A lot of the range fed beef that is sold, often at higher prices than the pen-fed meat from cattle confined in feed lots, is raised by these independent ranchers on the land. In the corporate feed lots cattle are given many drugs, and GMO grains which make their meat less healthy than that of range fed cattle.

The city bureaucrats, white collar people in huge corporations, in education, the controlled media and other urban people are so far removed from living, working on the land to produce food that the farmers and ranchers are an alien species to them. The city slickers, soft belly money grabbers, bankers and slick politicians and the farmers and ranchers will never fully understand one another.

But economic collapse is a predictable outcome of the contemporary brand of Transformational Marxism co-oped by the corporate and financial elite. That outcome may come in some form, and not too far in the future. But maybe most of the followers of Transformational Marxism, who don't know its a form of Marxism, are so cut off from the earth and reality that they cannot believe they might face a time when there is no food on the shelves of the supermarkets, no electricity and no running water in the kitchen or bathroom. And many will not have money to buy food, gas, or water even if it were available. How many of these urban dwellers can kill a chicken and cook it, if they could find one, or catch fish in a river? How many know about stand alone gravity fed water filters, making it possible to get water from streams or lakes to filter and drink?

"Ain't too many things these ole boys can't do.........And a country boy can survive. Country folks can survive.......Because you can't starve us out, And you can't make us run.........We're from North California and south Alabama, And little towns all around this land. And we can skin a buck; we can run a trot line. And a country boy can survive." Hank Williams Jr.

Farmers and ranchers have been through hard times and have survived. They have had bad years, but many of them are still on the land. As long as the government and big corporations do not succeed in running the farmers and ranchers off their lands, they can survive. Many of them have wells and springs on their land, they have fire wood, many can hunt and fish to supplement their tables, and they can plant gardens by hand when there is no gas to buy. And some of them know which wild plants and herbs can be eaten and which cannot be consumed by people.

But, unfortunately, the big corporations and governments may come after many farmers and ranchers and try to take their lands, so these more self-reliant, independent and somewhat tough individuals can be herded and controlled like the city dwellers.

And many of the urban inhabitants will submit to being herded and controlled "...Keep them dogies rollin' Rawhide!.....Move 'em on, head 'em up, Head 'em up, move 'em on, Move 'em on, head 'em up, Rawhide."