Kicking the dying small farmer is a full-throated state mandate

ACROSS the globe, one of the state mandates that the pandemic has failed to slow down is support for agriculture, with real focus on small farmers and small-scale agricultural activities. All through the pandemic, leaders of various ideologies and persuasions rallied behind support for small farms and small farmers.

Vladimir Putin's Russia has revived its version of the Homestead Act to resettle people through land grants and productivity incentives in sparsely populated areas hundreds of miles away from Moscow. There is a stated caveat — the homesteaders must make the homesteads productive. Joe Biden's America is finally granting subsidies to Black farmers, welding social justice and agricultural productivity agendas in one support package. The rural and conservative areas dominated by farming remain pro-Trump, pro-Republican bases, but the Biden administration has kept support flowing into these areas.