Bayou Renaissance Man: Africa: land, tribes, and animist traditions - Commenter is kurt9:
What I've been thinking is this: The average age of a Mid West farmer in the U.S. is early to mid 60's. These guys are going to retire soon. It is my understanding that these Afrikaner farmers are, indeed, excellent farmers.
What if the U.S. government offered to buy out these farmers, pay the proceeds split between the Afrikaners and the South African government, then relocated the Afrikaner farmers that have just been bought out to the U.S. so that they can replace the retiring mid-west farmers?
The big issue is the cost. How much would it cost to buy out these Afrikaners? $10 billion? $50 billion? We dropped $5 Trillion into the Muslim Middle-east over the past 15 years with absolutely nothing in return. It seems to me that this buy-out concept is peanuts in comparison, and we get a whole new generation of farmers in out Mid-west.
Such a buy-out option strikes me as the appropriate positive-sum solution to the issue. The black South Africans get the money, along with the land, that they would not otherwise get. The Afrikaners get some value for their land (which they are not about to get under the current plan). Lastly, the Afrikaners get residency (and ultimately citizenship) in the U.S. The U.S. gets the benefit of another generation of decent farmers to replace the guys who are retiring.
It seems to me that only issue is how to get this scheme past the PC police here in the U.S.
March 6, 2018 at 10:38 PM
Read the whole thing. The idea has some merit, not just for America, but for other Western countries losing their farmers.
1 comment:
They would be a welcome addition to the rural Midwest. Amish are fine, but they are clannish and don't mix well. There are, however, a lot of them, and their very large families are colonizing the whole of the farm belt from Pennsylvania to Iowa. Their percentage growth rate might exceed the Mormons.
If we get the Boers, then we have two Germanic speaking minorities in the country. Will they cooperate?
PS. The Columbus Dispatch ran an article comparing Amish farms with conventional farms. The Amish farms were more profitable ($/ac) despite lower yields.
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