The $45 million question, asked in your recent editorial: “How many state parks is enough?” (Oct. 3, TribLIVE). Good question, but aren’t we missing the point here?

In the 1970s, there was a movie called “Three Days of the Condor.” At the end of the movie, Cliff Robertson told Robert Redford that the killings in the movie were about oil, because oil is what people wanted.

Fifty years from now, it will be about food. Why aren’t we preserving farmland for food production? We have been taking our best farmland and building houses and businesses on it. Most of the time, the little farmers get nothing from the federal government; the large corporations get most of the money. This doesn’t help the little guy, and usually they struggle to survive and support their families.

All this is going to make prices go higher in the long run. If the little farmers go belly up, we all will be paying more for food.

Do we eliminate federal subsidies and let prices be what they will be, and let the people complain about the true cost of food? With the Chinese buying our farmland, are the Chinese going to be subsidized by our government?

This isn’t about state parks!

Cliff Long

Unity

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