Interesting thing happened during the last Depression. Prices on goods and services actually dropped.

This isn't mysterious or complicated; it's a simple function of supply and demand. The same thing is happening today; a lot of prices are either holding steady, or even declining.

Except for the farmer.

Damnedest thing you ever saw – last year, farmers wound up paying over 30 percent more for seed corn than in 2008. Soybean seed went up too – almost 25 percent.

What the hell's going on?

Remember a few weeks ago when I was on a rant about big corporate ag firms? They're at it again. In the great tradition of huge corporate conglomerates, it's all about more. "Enough" is the dirtiest word in these guys' vocabulary.

Except now, they might just have gone a little too far over the line. Now, the Justice Department is looking into every farmer's favorite company – Monsanto. Remember, these guys are probably the same ones who bought off politicians in India and are getting them to make it a felony even to criticize their product, which is GMO seeds.

What ticks me off is, these guys are always mouthing off about "competition" and "free markets" – and they're all fine with that, as long as it doesn't apply to them. Over the past several years, Monsanto has been buying up all its competitors and pretty much getting a lock on the market for GMO corn. Not surprisingly, we’re paying well over twice for these seeds what we paid ten years ago.

This isn't new. We've been there before – about 120 years ago. They called it the "Robber Baron Era." It was a time when a few powerful individuals – J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller and a few others – managed to create monopolies in certain key industries and stick it to everyone else. Then, in the early 1900s, the American people decided they'd had about enough.

We're at about that point today. Is President Obama going to be another "trust-buster" like Teddy Roosevelt?

Maybe...it seems that Monsanto has crossed a line. The head honcho is having to answer some pretty hard questions. Of course, he's claiming just the opposite. In a recent article in the New York Times, he said: "We were the first out of the blocks, and I think what you see now is a bunch of people catching up and aggressively competing, and I’m fighting with them."

So tell me, Mr. Grant (that's his name) – how come we’re paying over twice as much for seeds today as we did ten years ago?

Mr. Grant also went on to say that farmers are buying his company's products because they liked what those seeds produce, not because they don't have any choice.

I don't know much about all the legal issues involved here, but I know this – if it looks like a cow pie and smells like a cow pie, I don't have to pick it up to know that it's a cow pie.

Source: Neumann, William. "Rapid Seed Prices Draws U.S. Scrutiny." New York Times, 11 March 2010

I've spent a couple of weeks ranting about corporate agriculture, their complete disregard for the environment, for workers, for communities, for anything but their bottom line.

By now, Americans from across the political spectrum, from the Tea Party to the Coffee Party know all too well who their congressmen are really working for.

Whether you lean to the left or the right, there's no avoiding the fact that our federal government doesn't seem to care anymore. If we're going to fix things, we're going to have to do it on our own and at the local level.

This is where Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) comes into the picture.

Since the 1980s, CSA has really been catching on. The way it works is actually a lot like what happens when a businessman takes a company public by selling stock. The farmer offers shares of his harvest to local subscribers. These folks pay up front or make arrangements, and once the harvest starts coming in, they get to come out to the farm every week and pick up a box of fresh, seasonal produce.

This is a win-win system for everyone. When a CSA grower sells subscriptions, it helps their seasonal cash flow – so they don't wind up having to take out loans to buy my supplies so much. It also means they can do marketing early on in the year before they’re out working in their fields from sunrise to sunset.

It also gives the growers a chance to get to know you folks and for you to know them, building relationships – which means building stronger communities.

Meanwhile, you're going to be tasting food that's fresher and better (including better for you) than anything you've ever tasted. By eating seasonally and locally, you're helping the environment by reducing the use of fossil fuels (to offense to hard working truckers, but transporting food a thousand miles or more is an issue we need to be thinking about), and chances are good that you're going to taste some things you haven't tasted before.

Best of all is the effect it has on kids. If you're a parent, you know how hard it is to get kids to eat their vegetables. However, when the family buys into CSA, the kids experience a sense of ownership – and guess what? Suddenly, they're eating those veggies and loving it!

You can learn more, including where to find CSA farms in your community, at Local Harvest, an online non-profit organization dedicated to this growing institution.

Actually, instead of getting mad – or in this case, even getting even – it's better to just not play the game.

Last week, I talked about big corporate agriculture and what it's done to American farmers and their families. It's one thing to start a family venture as an entrepreneur and through hard work and vision and good environmental stewardship and playing by the rules, make a nice living by providing something of value (like food) to folks in your community.

It's another thing when an operation becomes so big and powerful that it can set the rules and exert absolute control in ways that allow them to get even bigger – but cause real harm to everyone and everything else. I truly believe (and I think most of my fellow Americans of all stripes are with me on this) that anything that's "too big to fail" is too damn big to exist.

Sort of like dinosaurs. (If you remember, when the dinosaurs went extinct, it was small creatures that survived.) Problem is, what can we, as the "little folk," do about it?

Vote with your pocketbook, that's what. The federal government may be in bed with Monsanto, ADR and ConAgra – but so far at least, Congress hasn't passed a law forcing anyone to buy their products (although this is happening in some countries – such as India, where a law is under consideration that would make it a crime to even criticize GM Crops/Monsanto! Source)

You as consumers can help to kill off factory farms by starving them to death. The more you buy your food from local, sustainable farms, the better a place your community becomes. Now, I'll be straight with you - I like to profit from my labor. Some farmers, growers or ranchers might argue “I put a lot of lot of work into raising produce and meat for folks like you, and I deserve to make a good living at it.”  This is true. But unlike Monsanto, that's not most farmers, growers or ranchers only concern. Unlike the big corporations, I most ag folks have three bottom lines to think about – their own personal profits and operating expenses for sure, but also the health of the environment and the good of their neighbors and their community. When you buy directly from the farmer, more of the money goes toward taking care of him and his family instead of some big CEO's inflated salary, or a middleman or some oil company that sold the fuel that was needed to transport those goods a thousand miles or more.

And that's a good thing all around.

To their credit, some large grocery chains are starting to get more of their produce from local sources (within 100 miles). You can also visit a weekend farmers' market. These things are springing up all over the country, and they're about more than just good local food – artisans sell art and craft items, there's usually local entertainers performing, and it's just a good place to meet your friends and neighbors.

There's also what's called CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture. This is something that is gaining real traction around big cities, and I'll tell you more about it next week.

I thought this was an interesting invention.  I support any product that can make farmland more productive. This new, high-volume Rock Picker promises to delivers results.

Mel Aho, owner of a farm in central Minnesota, has developed the RP1000 Rock Picker, a machine that it is capable of efficiently picking large quantities of stone from tillable fields.  This past September, Mel's brother Mark "Merf" Aho operated the RP1000 in a field in Sebeka, Minnesota.  He picked 1,500 yards of stone from 55 acres, and did so in 65 machine hours.  During that time, the RP1000 loaded a dump truck more than 175 times with 8-yard loads of stone and debris.  The owner of the field, Eric Valentin, said afterward, "Thank-you! There are several times I thought that field was never going to be farmed."

It was one of Mel's own fields, a stony 160 acre tract that motivated him to design the new rock picker.  He got help from a friend, Perry Gilmour of Clark County, WA, to build the machine.  The effort has been worthwhile.  After picking the rocks from his field with the RP1000, Mel has been able to double the speeds at which he operates his planting and harvesting equipment.  Additionally, his equipment maintenance costs have dropped significantly due to the reduction in wear on his machinery.

Mel and Merf will be hosting a public demonstration of the RP1000 Rock Picker in the Hillview Management area near Sebeka, MN on April 30th and May 1st.  The machine is available for hire in 2010.  Visit http://www.therockpicker.com, or contact Merf Aho at (603) 365-7183 for details.

The RP1000 Rock Picker is protected by U.S. Patent 7,658,233 B1.

International patents are pending.

Visit http://www.therockpicker.com/video.aspx to see a video of the RP1000 Rock Picker operating in Eric's field.

Biographical summaries:

Mel Aho grew up on the family dairy farm in Hillview, Minnesota.  He is the originator of the RP1000 Rock Picker.  Mel continues to operate his farm in Minnesota while running his home building company in Vancouver, WA.

Mark "Merf" Aho grew up farming in Minnesota alongside his brother Mel.

After selling his New England-based steel erecting business, which he had run since 1983, Merf has taken up the task of bringing up the RP1000 to operate at its full potential.

Perry Gilmour is a 3rd generation farmer from the Willamette Valley.  His background is in specialty crops, so he is no stranger to the process of developing specialty equipment.