Zimbabwe

August 27, 2002

The "dog days of August" 2002 will soon be just a memory. If you got rain on your corn and soybean fields, you can be happy. That is -- unless it came too late. I'll be on my Illinois farm next week and let you know what I find. We're all aware of the ups and downs of farming and ranching, but I can't help but be grateful that we live in the USA.

We may not be able to control the weather but we have laws and courts to give us another kind of protection. That's not the case in Zimbabwe. President Mugabe is moving ahead to seize 5,000 white owned farms -- without any compensation -- and give them to his government officials, military commanders and cronies. Two-thirds of the farmers have defied the order to give up their land, but now they are being arrested. The white farm owners and 70,000 experienced farm workers are being driven from the land.

Who will raise the food now? Certainly not the inexperienced, ill-equipped squatters. For two years Mugabe has been disrupting the farms and now six million people face starvation.

The first terrible injustice is that a tyrant like Mugabe could steal from families what they have built over generations, maybe 100's of years. Just imagine! The second cruel act is to destroy the production agriculture that over the years has made Zimbabwe an exporter of farm products. Now Mugabe's own people are starving. And finally, to demonstrate the ultimate in stubborn stupidity, he refuses to accept food aid from the U.S. to feed the starving because it may be genetically engineered.

Robert Mugabe -- a pathetic, vicious dictator. When I walk the field on my farm new week, I'll think about those white farmers in Zimbabwe. Hopefully world pressure will cause this injustice to be corrected