When American farmers cut down blossoming cherry trees that take years to bear fruit, something is wrong. When peach trees are also chopped down, and tomatoes, asparagus and cabbage, although profitable and tasty, are not planted, something is wrong. When farmers instead buy expensive machines that are too ham-handed to pick delicate produce, yet spew harmful vapors from the burning of fossil fuels, it is more than wrong; it’s tragic.

Despite the dangers of industrialized farming and the beneficence of the local farming movement, respectively decried and praised by writers such as Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, America’s political leaders do nothing to fix our broken immigration system.

A bipartisan effort to provide a solution, by increasing the supply of foreign agricultural workers, just failed in the Senate. The AgJobs bill, added as a rider to the Iraq Supplemental Appropriation legislation, but assailed by politicians on the left and the right of the legalization/no-amnesty divide, would have added over a million jobs to pick American produce and offset our need to import food from abroad.

At least George Washington admitted that he chopped down the cherry tree. Why won’t our legislators have as much candor as our first President? They chopped down the cherry trees!

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