Hay Farmer & Politics

 During a conversation about harvesting hay with Idaho Hay and Forage Association President Don Hale, I asked him what he thought about ethanol and got quite a response. “My problem with ethanol is that the federal government seems to be messing around too much. Last year wheat hit an all time high price. Never before seen towards the end of 2007 the prices started to climb and so in 2008 there was a lot of wheat. The American farmer can produce more food and more fuel than anybody else in the world but he has to have incentive to do it and that incentive is a profit. The federal government has had a cheap food policy and they’ve maintained that forever. It’s the only export we have out of the U.S. that isn’t recyclables or garbage or whatever else that they send to China, we send out food and it’s a natural resource, it’s grown here and yet the federal government uses it for manipulation of treaties and all kinds of stupid political purposes. The mentality by our political people in the U.S. scares me worse than anything else we see, they manipulate prices and they cause more problems than all other things put together. I think if you allow the American farmer to make money, he’ll produce enough corn for the ethanol plants, for the livestock, we have the ability to do almost anything.”