A few weeks ago at the NCBA convention, we had a short press conference with Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, for about 15 minutes. Most everyone wanted to talk about trade, but I was more interested in forest health and wildfire. The farm bill lost a bunch of funding that was to be invested in forest health and management. I asked Secretary Perdue what the definition of a healthy forest was. He replied, “Come to Georgia and I’ll show you healthy forests.” Most forests in Georgia are privately owned and actively harvested. They have a vibrant forest product industry.
My point was: When you get environmental activists and conservative conservation groups together, do they agree on what constitutes a healthy forest or range? Probably not but reaching a common definition would go a long way toward solving the activist wars.
Yet the definition for healthy ecosystem would be different for every region of the world. And then you have private property rights and public lands. Both need active management but forests on public lands are essentially not managed at all; it’s a timber and forage resource that is completely wasted, which in my mind is no way to respect your renewable natural resources.
Just think about how many issues we could solve in this country if we all agreed on the same definition, on just about every issue. We all fear the top-down policy decisions handed down from Washington, D.C. They get the general definition right, but not the regional definition. When it comes to conservation issues, they should all be made at the local level. Many of the agencies are starting to realize that, but the BLM and Forest Service managers are for the most part bound by the book or unwilling to think outside the box.
Agreeing on definitions is important and we see it every day in the cattle business. Take EPDs for instance. The breed associations started keeping performance data on individual cattle; the Angus guys were first. For indexing purposes, we all agreed that 100 would be average for all the various traits. Everyone agreed to the new rules for breed improvement based on science, and it worked.
But then take it to political issues such as a border fence. Much of the border fence already exists. Today the political battle is whether there is an emergency at our southern border. You talk with ranchers on the border and they agree that a fence would be helpful in controlling people and crime. You talk with someone in big population centers like New York, Chicago and they may not agree because it doesn’t affect their way of life. They’re not impacted by millions of people damaging their land and the ability to use it, regardless if it’s private or public land. They don’t have a vested interest in the definition of whether legal aliens are good or bad.
According to Wikipedia, in 2007 there were 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., and they claim that it’s lower today. But a 12-year hole in the data isn’t very convincing. Researchers at Yale and MIT estimate that there are more like 22 million undocumented immigrants.
So, is immigration into the U.S. at an emergency level enough for the president to claim a national emergency? Illegal immigration is an issue that has gone on for 60 years or longer. We’re kind of conditioned to it. We’re so used to it we don’t know if it’s a crisis level issue. I do know that a lot of European countries are fed up with the volume of refugees coming to Europe. So, when you have a million a year crossing the border illegally, it’s certainly a problem.
How we deal with immigration in this country certainly needs some fixing, but still Congress can’t or won’t get together and define the issues that make the problem worse. America was born from immigrants. We have thrived through cultural blending. Everyone comes here for the same reason, Liberty and Opportunity.
I don’t know about you but I’m ready for our U.S. Congress to get this immigration thing fixed and done right. All we want is for everyone who comes to America to simply sign the guestbook and let us know you’re here. You can come here and work and go home. We can sure use seasonal labor at harvest time. But sign the guestbook. If you want to stay, you must go through the process, which probably takes too long.
Party and power don’t work for most folks. The politics are all static. We need to see some results and we all need to agree on the definitions of the issues. But our politicians don’t seem to care once they get to Washington, D.C. — PETE CROW
