Opinion: Cotton and Tobacco Lead to Environmental Degradation

Two of the Deadliest Crops by Melvin Polatnick

The Cotton and Tobacco farms in the United States total over ten million deadly acres. They are responsible for killing more people than most major diseases including AIDS or Cancer. Each acre of Cotton consumes over five thousand dollars of oil based fertilizers and insecticides yearly. The water resources around Cotton farms have kerosene like odors that kills not only fish but the people that use it. Planes fly overhead spraying the crops in order to make the Cotton leaves fall off so it can be easily harvested. Some call that defoliant Agent Orange. Cotton farms in the United States have always been causing the nation problems. The Southern Cotton trade with England was the cause of the Civil War. The South imported inexpensive machinery in exchange for Cotton and the North went to war to stop the trade. Cotton is a labor intensive crop and farmers used slaves to bag it. Now Cotton is picked by oil guzzling Harvesters. The average Cotton farm is over one thousand acres and is owned by large corporations or millionaire farmers. They are heavily subsidized by the government and supportive tariffs.

Tobacco is farmed in over 500,000 acres in the United States. It is not a food and serves no purpose except to be smoked. Tobacco is estimated to have killed over a billion smokers since people started using it. Poppy growers are hunted down and jailed but the smoke from opium is not as toxic as tobacco. Tobacco is infinitely more deadly. Nobody has yet suggested that we outlaw tobacco farming. The reason is obvious. Billions are being made in the cigarette business and the industry is deeply involved in Washington for protection. They have silenced all opposition including the Church who has been the voice of compassion on every issue except tobacco farming. It is widely known that tobacco kills but everywhere you look there are cigarette butts that litter the streets. The media is full of stories about murders and deaths from AIDS but not one story about the millions that die of smoke related lung disease each year. Something does not make sense.

The most compassionate thing for Congress would be to outlaw Cotton and Tobacco farming in the United States. Most of the Cotton products we now use are imported, that means we don't need domestically grown Cotton. It would be good news to Asian farmers who would prosper if America got out of the cotton growing business. Let them grow the cotton and poison their own rivers and streams. We would be importing their affordable Cotton based products at a big savings. Millions of acres of farming land will be available in America by outlawing these two deadly crops. Those open acres can be used for farming Wheat, Corn, or Rice. It would make food more plentiful and less expensive. If there was ever any need for a positive change it has to be for a nation finally free of those two poisonous crops.

melpol

Retired and single recluse

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