US Government Orders Farmers To Destroy 30 Million Pounds Of Their Own Crop

[link to www.offthegridnews.com]

In one of the worst examples of government regulation and intrusion, the US government ordered Michigan cherry farmers to literally dump 30 million pounds of cherries on the ground. Even worse, many cherry farmers are being driven out of business because of the outrageous rules.

The practice is coming to national light because of a new lawsuit against the government filed by a cherry processor. A judge currently is considering issue.

“The food pantry shelves are bare, people going hungry, and here we are dumping millions of pounds of cherries on the ground,” Michigan cherry grower Rob Manigold said of the 2009 incident. That was the same year farmer Leonard Ligon dumped 72,000 pounds of tart cherries along a road outside Traverse City, Michigan, to protest US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations on his state’s cherries.

Dumping along the road was one of the few things that Ligon could legally do with the cherries he had grown on his own property. Under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act, a bureaucracy called the Cherry Industry Administrative Board (CIAB) tells farmers how many tart cherries they can sell. The board ordered Michigan farmers to keep 65 percent of their crop off the market in 2009, Bridge Magazine reported. Last year farmers were allowed to sell only 90 percent of their crop.

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