Letter: Let’s put idle acreage to profitable use

Opinion

March 10, 2010

Anonymous McLeansboro Times-Leader Wed Mar 10, 2010, 01:06 PM CST

To the editor:

We hear about the need for jobs in Hamilton County on a weekly basis.

We have an industry sitting idle that could put more than 30 young families to work in direct jobs. Spin-off jobs are many when you consider the labor required to supply goods and service to these families.

The positive cash flow would be welcome to the state and federal coffers.

I am talking about 32,200 acres of Conservation Reserve Program land, laying idle, creating no jobs, yielding no production. Removing the land from the CRP would stop the drain on public monies and create taxes on profits earned from free enterprise.

The CRP has had a trickle-down effect in our county of less need for housing, merchants, teachers and many more people needed in a thriving community.

The school bus goes by our house about one-third capacity. Thirty-plus families could put 100 children in our schools, a positive thing.

We are an agrarian county. We should be proud of it and develop it.

Not all the land is suitable for row crops; this I understand. Livestock is still a respectable enterprise and suited for our climate.

These acres could create a positive cash flow for our county and state.

The state of Illinois is in bad financial shape, as you all know. When the private citizen needs money, they look at what they could sell.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has 3,000 acres that could be sold for a sizable sum. The result would be a much-needed influx of cash and a reduction of expenses of operating a hobby.

This is just our county; there are many more in the state.

Ecclesiastes 5:9: “Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: The king himself is served by the field.”

Ralph Wilton

Dahlgren

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