The Daily Item
May 5, 2024
As I sat in a lovely space listening to my dear great-nephew’s bar mitzvah, unable to understand the Hebrew being spoken, I leafed through the Torah in translation. My eyes fell on a line, Leviticus 19:19, the third book of both the Torah and the Christian Bible.
“Do not plant two crops in the same field.”
Being a home gardener myself, coming from an agricultural background and living in an area where the fields of market gardeners are colorful with swaths of strawberries adjacent to beans, followed by squash, tomatoes, and so on until the final rows of rhubarb and asparagus, I could not believe the Biblical words.
Native Americans knew the benefits of planting corn, beans, and squash together. Costa Rican coffee growers know the advantages of shading coffee bushes with well-placed banana and fruit trees. Peruvian farmers have known for centuries to mix the many varieties of potatoes right down the line to take advantage of varying resistance to diseases.
No-till modern agriculture seeds the new crop right on top of the old and rotates all in swaths for better soil and future harvest.
What’s going on with this particular Biblical Law? Though it can be interpreted by theologians as a caution to stay away from trouble, to me it has the ring of a dictator, a pharaoh, who wants to control the market, rather than listen to the wisdom of farmers who constantly adjust to changes in weather, season, customer needs, and over- or under-supply.
There’s a parallel happening in America right now, best exemplified by the recent shortage of baby formula— most often a soybean-based product — in a land producing an abundance of soybeans. What caused the shortage? Contamination in one of only four manufacturers of baby formula in the entire country forced a shutdown and a worldwide hunt for more formula.
Why did this happen? Because American business practices work to eliminate the competitors through mergers, buy-outs, under-cutting, and other self-aggrandizing actions. Businesses vanish in the wake of those focused on personal wealth.
Will this happen again? Yes, unless we as a people, united in our government, guarantee the survival of a broad spectrum of American manufacturers of essential products as we face increasing hardships. The hardships of scarcity of green power, of natural disasters brought by climate change, of our dependence upon only foreign manufacturers, of collapsing bridges and derailed trains … and the possibility of war expanding across the globe.
How do we ensure a spectrum of manufacturing? President Biden has made huge strides in establishing new semiconductor plants, some in rural areas, rebuilding airports, highways and rail services, funding communities’ resilience in the face of increasing fires and floods, establishing rural broadband so that small businesses can compete, helping American businesses bring home factories from China, and increasing access to capital so new entrepreneurs can start more businesses.
There is more to do! So many more crops to plant in our collective fields! America needs more power without increasing climate change. We have a scarcity of workers in general and of well-educated thinkers to solve problems yet to be seen … and so much more.
President Joe Biden is continuing his work by opposing the sale of U.S. Steel Corp to a Japanese firm. The investors want to enrich themselves by $14 billion. Biden is thinking of guaranteeing America’s manufacturing future and U.S. national security.
What can you do? Vote! Choose to put work and income into the hands of families. Billionaires don’t need more tax cuts. Grow an abundance of businesses. More than one crop
per field.
Judy Peeler is a retired teacher. She has been a resident of Lewisburg for 57 years.