Last summer, over a couple of beers at Pratty's with an old friend and longtime Gloucester fisherman, I got a crash course in just what a raw deal America's family fishermen have been getting for years at the hands of the federal government and a variety of well-heeled environmental and corporate interest groups.
Not long after that conversation, I talked with an old political activist friend in Iowa who now works as an advocate and lobbyist on behalf of America's rapidly disappearing family farmers at the state and national levels.
The daughter of a family farmer, Lynn's first comment to me when I told her about my conversation with my fishing friend was, "Sounds like they're doing to the family fishermen exactly what they did to the family farmer."
She then detailed for me how the federal government, working in tandem with international corporations such as Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland, systematically set out to put the family farmer out of business, often citing so called environmental groups' concerns that the family farm posed intolerable environmental risks.
The real agenda, Lynn alleges, was to pave the way for the corporatization of American agriculture so that large companies like those mentioned above could export vast amounts of food around the globe and reap billions in profits in the process.
After that conversation with Lynn, I spoke with Gloucester Daily Times editor Ray Lamont about the many links Richard Gaines has uncovered in his informative coverage on the fishing industry between the federal government, the Environmental Defense Fund, Pew Environment Group, and large corporate interests.
Read the complete letter from the Gloucester Times.