The Farm Bill

The Farm Bill is an extremely important piece of legislation that connects us, our food and the farmers who grow it. It also involves the environment and what natural resources are used to grow the food we eat (What Is The Farm Bill). So in reality, the Farm Bill is really more of a food bill. The bill expires every five years so that it can be updated to suit what is currently happening in our country. More then fifty percent of the Farm Bill money goes to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Progam (SNAP) to help Americans in need. In 2012, there were 46,000,000 Americans relying on SNAP to put food on the table (UC Berkeley). This is an important part of the bill, to help those in our country that need help obtaining food. Although the bill was created to help out the farmers and instead it is feeding people that may or may not need the extra help. Throughout all the years of the Farm Bill, a majority of the spending has been towards nutrition. The Farm Bill was designed to help the farmers and maintain farming in America but if anything it is hurting the country. The question people are asking is if it is time for agriculture to break free from the Farm Bill. The purpose behind the bill is great and the country really needs something to look out to those who put food on our tables but it does not seem that is the highest priority since most of the money goes into food stamps.

UC Berkeley. "The Farm Bill." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.

"What Is The Farm Bill?" National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.

Farm Forklore

For my folklore piece I decided to use a folksong in our textbook titled, The Country Life. It is a song about the farm life year round and how they have to work hard no matter which season it is (Farm: A Multimodal Reader). It can be hard to tell if folklore is farm related because a lot of them generally have to do with farming. At least when I think of folklore, I think of stories told by farmers to their sons, passed down generation by generation. That is not always true though.

This folksong is quite obviously about farms. You can tell just by reading the title, The Country Life. Country life and farm life are commonly used interchangeably. By the end of the first line, you know they like to rise early in the morning, which is an essential characteristic of farmers. There are plenty of other jobs that require you to wake up early in the morning, often before the sun rises, but most of the time it is because you have to, not because you enjoy it. I have known a few farmers in my life and all of them have been morning people, they enjoy getting up before the sunrises and starting their day off early.

There are about six verses to this song, each repeating the chorus. The first four versus are about the seasons of the year and what work a farmer has to attend to. It begins with spring, describing how it is filled with sowing their harvest. It is by far the busiest time of year for them but it is what they prepare for year round. The next is about winter and preparing for the spring to come. Summer is by far the most relaxed season. They celebrate the closing of spring and all the hard work they accomplished. Autumn they are just preparing for the cold winter months by gathering wood.

This entire song is depicting the life of a farmer and how it is a year round job. It shows how hard it is to be a "country boy" but it is also extremely rewarding.

References:
Kinkead, Joyce, Evelyn Funda, and Lynne S. McNeill. Farm : a multi-modal reader. Southlake, TX: Fountainhead Press, 2014. Print.