Ron Wieczorek

To Save Agriculture, It’s Time
To Support the Ideas of Lyndon LaRouche

This is the edited transcription of the opening remarks by Ron Wieczorek to the Schiller Institute Conference September 6, 2020. Mr. Wieczorek is a cattleman in South Dakota. In 2018 he was on the state ballot for U.S. Congress as an Independent.

I want to make a few points here on the number of people involved in agriculture. In the early days of our country, about 90% of the people were involved in agriculture. By 1850, we had 1.4 million people in agriculture. By 1914 we had 6.4 million people in agriculture. During the 1930s we started losing farms, so that by 1950, we were down to 5.6 million. Today we’re back to just a little over 2 million farmers! This has all happened as the total population of the country has increased dramatically. So, percentage-wise, we’ve got way less farmers representing the agriculture sector than we’ve ever had in the history of the country.

We need to address the consumers so that they become involved in agriculture, because of what’s happening with the collapsing economy and the infrastructure falling apart. For example, right now, in California, 1.4 million acres of forest and productive land has basically burned up; 7,000 fires going on. That’s more than last year or the year before!

The derecho that swept across South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio on August 10 left widespread destruction, hitting Iowa the worst, damaging an estimated 14 million acres of corn and soybeans. The storage facilities were destroyed, the infrastructure is down.

The agriculture sector is being destroyed! Right now, this afternoon, we had hailstorms going through, with inch-and-a-half diameter hail destroying crops in northwest South Dakota. The storm is forecast to move across North Dakota, into Minnesota, across Wisconsin, and across the Lake states and into the Northeast. So the agriculture sector is being destroyed.

A lot of the damage could have been prevented if people had listened to Lyndon LaRouche, if we had applied his Four Laws, if we had had Glass-Steagall and the Bretton Woods system back on the books to curb the speculation that’s going on and destroying what little productive sector is left.

I feel sorry for these young people. And I really feel sorry for those who eat, if they don’t come to their senses soon, and demand support for the productive sector and an economic system that will support infrastructure building like NAWAPA, for example, the North American Water and Power Alliance. If we’d had NAWAPA for California, would we have all these houses burned down? All these potential forests for future homes that we should have? That’s not available to these kids anymore.

It’s time to listen to the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche.