One of the issues that should be addressed in farming areas, in preparation for a national security emergency, is farm security. Crop theft and livestock rustling are common crimes during ordinary times; during an emergency, they will be widespread and have the potential to destroy the economic basis of the farming livelihood. Theft and destruction would also cripple state and national government efforts to obtain and distribute food to urban areas. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, for instance, theft of crops and livestock and revenge destruction were common, filling daily newspapers with stories of thieves who simply drove into groves and fields and filled boxes with produce. Today, we also should be concerned about farm supplies of fertilizers and other chemicals that could be used to make explosives. Additionally, there are issues of farm security against bioterrorism.
State legislatures need to provide the enabling legal framework for rural and farm security planning. Farmers and their neighbors in rural areas should be planning now how to address how to protect farms in a national security emergency that involves evacuation of large metropolitan areas.They should expect that the countryside will be filled with wandering groups of displaced persons. There will be makeshift encampments with hundreds of scared vagrants and residents. There will be continual traffic of cars and trucks filled with persons who simply drive around the countryside, ready for opportunistic crime. Beggars will walk from farm to farm, rural house to house, village to village, asking for food, clothes, and supplies and stealing when desperation motivates them.
Uniformed police and national guardsmen will not available to protect farms and fields. In the Great Depression, in Southern California, the citrus farmers' cooperatives handled some of the protect with private security patrols. In that region, however, such patrols made sense, in that the groves were centralized and compact, compared to Midwestern farming areas. Most farming districts will be unable to afford sufficient private patrols to protect each farm.
What should planning for such an emergency address?
My first thoughts on this question are that the best means of securing rural and farm areas is to organize the refugee, vagrant, and temporary population that urban evacuation would bring to the countryside. An organized population would, I think, be less likely to commit crime.
As a time-line, it would be prudent to prepare for an emergency of months in duration, rather than days or weeks. A nuclear or biochemical attack might make a city uninhabitable for several months.
Appropriate measures might include:
- Organization of the rural and farming population for policing property and protecting crops, livestock, and supplies, including training in firearms.
- Training the rural and farm population for "neighborhood watch" and other civil patrol procedures.
- Preparation to provide shelter, food, and medical supplies for urban refugees, at least on a temporary basis until state and national support becomes available. Such outside support would probably take weeks and might not be available at all for many rural areas.
- Obtaining ahead of time legislative and legal authorization and do planning to bring refugees, vagrants, and temporary residents into make-work programs for rural and farm work.
- Obtaining ahead of time legislative and legal authorization for emergency measures by police and sheriff to maintain public order.
- Organization of local social services and medical facilities to handle mass need, disease, and injuries, including
- Training rural population above 16 years of age as auxiliary support for social, medical, and police duties.
- Stockpile resources, such as gasoline, needed for emergency and police vehicles.
- Stockpile emergency food rations and food supplies for refugee population.
- Stockpile resources, such as gasoline and diesel fuel, needed for farm tractors and vehicles.
- Planning for emergency loans for food production.
A national security emergency will be difficult enough for the nation to deal with. Disruption of the nation's food supply would compound the emergency.
In a sense, we need a civil defense program especially designed and planned for rural and farm areas that would be impacted by emergency food production needs and by refugee and vagrant populations.
References
See the useful brochure, "Rural Security Planning", by the Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service. The brochure approaches security planning as a problem for the individual farmer and his/her family; but in a national security measure, security becomes a widespread problem that can only be solved by area-wide planning. The on-line brochure has a good list of Internet resources.
The USDA Community Food Security Initiative is intended to help the rural poor obtain sufficient food and have a healthy diet. Some of the suggestions in the program pamphlet would be useful for a national security measure to deal with refugee populations. For instance, rural schools with cafeterias could provide refugee service.
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