Most farmers in the U.S. have given up the source of wealth that God (whether you believe in him or not) has so generously given them and traded it for the empty promises of prosperity that big agribusiness have deceived them with. The basic rule of economics is to buy low and sell high. This is a limiting rule when it comes to prosperity. There is always someone who will do it better than you and if you are involved in the same transaction, guess who comes out on the short end. That’s right, there is a sucker born every day.

The next best thing to buy low and sell high is to be a manufacturer of goods. This is the entity that takes raw materials and transforms them into something useful. This is one source of prosperity, given us by God. Here is a quote from the Christian business man, L.E. Tourneau.

Right over here in Birmingham the Lord put the iron, the limestone, and the coal, the three ingredients of steel, all in the same mountain. All they had to do was roll the raw materials out of the mountain into the furnace and you have your own steel right here in your own Southland. Why then can’t you have your own finished products? God Runs My Business by Albert W. Lorimer, Fleming H. Revell Company Copyright© 1941 pp178-179

Services is another avenue to acquire prosperity, however it is limited by your ability to acquire labor. That labor comes from two sources: what you can do yourself and those you are able to hire and pay. Competition pushes down the profit margin and the demand for cheap labor escalates. Eventually, you can scratch out a living, but it gets harder and harder to make a go of it as you loose contracts to the next guy who can afford to loose a little more money than you did.

Most people employ buy low, sell high when they enter into employment with a company. You try to get as much pay as you can in trade for your time and skill. This trade is limited by the amount of time you can put into your work week. The employee worker can only work so many hours per week. That effectively limits what you can earn. The differentiating factors then become the skills you bring to the job.

The farmer or rancher has a different opportunity placed here by God. That is the increase.

And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat. Leviticus 25:7 (KJV)

Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Leviticus 26:4 (KJV)

As the farmer plants seed and yields a tremendous increase, so does the rancher or shepherd have an increase as offspring are born into their herd. It is a miracle – almost something out of nothing! Yes, you do work hard and nothing is a guarantee. This works best when the farmer can freely save seed for the next planting or when the rancher can freely buy, sell, or trade livestock for breeding.

It is when the costs of purchasing your inputs become so high that you can only borrow against the future potential increase that this economic model starts to falter. Pastoral economics relies on the increase to work. When you borrow against the increase, a portion of it goes to the banker. When you purchase all your inputs, a portion of the increase goes to industrial agribusiness. Too much of this and all that remains are government subsidies to sustain you. At that point, yes, you do need animal identification. How else would the government keep track of “their” money?