At Vote: Fertile Farmland Protection [Complete]

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Description: The World Assembly,

NOTING that most -- if not all -- WA States rely heavily on professional farmers to grow crops through agricultural means, and deeming it necessary for agriculture to remain intact having realized the benefits to the farmers, the economy, and international trade, but

REALIZING that when the same crop is planted in the same field too frequently, it rapidly depletes necessary nutrients from the soil, causing the soil to become infertile and unable to continue to produce enough crops to benefit anyone,

RELUCTANTLY AWARE that whenever a fertile field is destroyed by any means, a portion of similarly sized area of forest must be deforested in order to replace that field,

BELIEVING it is necessary for fertile farmland to be protected, this resolution hereby:

1. DEFINES a "professional farmer" as a person who is a farmer, planter, or gardener by profession, and farms at least one acre of farmland,

2. RESTRICTS professional farmers from planting the same crop in the same field in back-to-back growing seasons so that fertile farmland might be preserved,

3. ADVISES professional farmers to alternate crops so that a perfectly good field does not go unused,

4. ESTABLISHES the World Assembly Agricultural Association (WAAA) to oversee a agricultural communities and enforce the given guidelines, and

5. STRONGLY ENCOURAGES the World Assembly Forest Commission (WAFC) to consider creating restrictions on the number of acres that can be deforested for agricultural purposes in a given area.

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Please vote: For | Against | Abstain | Present

"Abstain" means that you wish for the Delegate to not vote on the resolution at all.
"Present" means that you effectively choose not to participate in this vote. "Present" has no effect on how the Delegate votes.

Posts which do not include an explicit and unambiguous vote are not counted in the tally.

Ministry vote recommendation: Against

Ministry Review
Written by Sciongrad and HMS Unicorn

It's a shame this resolution didn't spend more time in the drafting stage, and it is evident that this draft was rushed to submission prematurely. At its core, this resolution seeks to address sustainable agriculture, yet it's too narrow in focus and simplistic in content to achieve anything worthwhile. In order to prevent soil erosion, it mandates a style of crop rotation taken straight out of a "Farming for Dummies" book. Which is not to say that crop rotation isn't an effective strategy, but it should be a small part of a more comprehensive resolution on sustainable agriculture. Mandating crop rotation as a solution to soil depletion is a very poor, uninformed solution to a very complicated problem.

Sustainable agriculture is an area that could benefit from World Assembly legislation of appropriate scope, which sets appropriate standards without overreaching. But this is a very weak draft that hardly touches the issue, let alone addresses it with an appropriate level of depth. As such, the ministry recommends a vote Against.

This is 3 approvals away from quorum, and given that the author sent an approve campaign, will likely make it to quorum before this major. There is a chance it may be pulled from the queue (there is at least one GHR questioning its legality). But I am likely to be busy this evening, so I am starting the vote now just to be sure.

This proposal seems to be very rushed and weak in content. Against.

Against

Against.

Ha crop rotation is a bit more complicated than that. Against

Against. And no it was not me who pushed this to quorum despite popular belief....

Abstain

This is now at vote. I voted against.

Voting on this resolution has ended.

Thanks to those nations who cast their votes. Your participation is a great help to the region.

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