——————————————————————

First of all, I am happy to report that a forty (40) member health care team
from the Bedford Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps of New York City (BSVAC)
arrived safely in Haiti on Sunday afternoon, January 17^th. This first
team is made up of EMT’s, paramedics, nurses and doctors and many of them speak
the native language. I personally know some of the members of BSVAC and I hope
to stay in contact with them as they do their humanitarian work. I have offered
to help them in any way that I can.

Right now I feel that the best way that I can help is to give a little
background to the predicament that the Haitian people find themselves in both
before and now after this “publicized” disaster. I am a farmer and an
agricultural economist. The extreme poverty of Haiti is directly related to the
destruction of her agricultural base and the subsequent erosion of her land.
Just yesterday I introduced my new book to the 12^th Annual Ministry
of Agriculture Conference held in Dawson, GA about 9 miles from Muhammad Farms.
The title of the book is “The Science and Business of Farming vs. the Art and
Hobby of Gardening.” In this book I emphasize how a farmer must look at his
farm in terms of a “system”. I also emphasize how the major function of the
farmer is to make the right decisions to keep his farm system in “balance”.

Haiti’s agricultural and economic system is completely out of balance with
nature and the needs of the people. In this case this imbalance can be
historically tracked an analyzed. The relief efforts given now, pale in
comparison to what is needed to put Haiti in a position to sustain herself in
the future. For an in-depth overview of Haiti’s history please type in to a
“google” search “Why is Haiti so poor” and read the article by Bob
Corbett, director of People to People.

Haiti’s problem began in 1804 after the slaves rebelled and freed
themselves from their French slave masters. Haiti was once called “The Jewel
of the Antilles” and was the richest colony in the entire world. Economists
estimate that in the 1750s Haiti provided as much as 50% of the Gross National
Product of France. The French imported sugar, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, cotton,
the dye indigo and other exotic products. In France they were refined, packaged
and sold all over Europe.

One of the primary reasons that Haiti was such a productively rich land was
because of slave labor. White people were willing to put productivity above all
other values, and Haiti’s slave system was the most brutal in the Caribbean.
The ultimate threat to a rebellious slave was that he or she would be sold to
Haiti.

After the 1804 liberation struggle, Haiti became the second free country in
the Western World (after the United States), and the first black republic.
However, the United States was still a slave nation. The international community
decided that Haiti’s model of a nation of freed slaves was a dangerous
precedent. An international boycott of Haitian goods and commerce plunged the
Haitian economy into chaos.

Unfortunately for the masses of Haitians, slavery did not die with French
rule. Rather, the basic concept of forced cheap labor was passed on to the
emerging native Haitian elite. The colonial French heritage carried on in the
Haitian elite’s imitation of the French labor system. The first president of now
freed Haiti tried to enforce a system of labor on the peasants which resembled
medieval serfdom, i.e., tying the peasants to particular plantations owned by
the elite. This is an important factor in Haiti’s later misery. About ½ of the
elite were mulattos and the other half were freed black slaves who earned their
freedom before the revolution.

So a class system developed in Haiti where the elite 3% ruled over the
masses. The masses decided to run to the hills to get away from the new slavery
like conditions. However, they were poor and had no other fuel for cooking but
charcoal made from burning wood. The destruction of the trees led ultimately to
the destruction of the topsoil in the hill country of Haiti where most of the
people lived until extreme poverty and land erosion ran them to the cities. When
trees are removed from hilly land in a climate of tremendous rainfall, then the
topsoil in which crops can grow will be washed away.

Haiti’s poverty was increased by the Haitian governments consent in 1838 to
pay France 150 million francs for the land taken from the slave owners after the
1804 revolution. Haiti paid this money as a type of ransom to France so that
France and the rest of Europe would recognize Haiti and agree to buy Haiti’s
agricultural products. However, the only way to repay this debt was to sell raw
agricultural products to France to obtain francs. Of course France paid Haitian
farmers what she wanted to pay, meaning that over time Haitian farmers and the
Haitian economy was drained over an 80 year period until the debt plus
interest was paid back in 1922.

America ruled Haiti from 1915 to 1934. During and after this occupation,
America has increased the class divisions by supporting the elite against the
peasants as a way to insure that a “friendly” regime to the US government
would always be in power.

Haiti is a mountainous country. For the past 200 years people have been
cutting the trees on their mountains without replanting. Now, when the rainy
season comes with its four or five months of daily pounding rains, one can see
the brown rivers torrent down the mountain sides and watch, helplessly, as
Haiti’s little remaining soil flows out into the Caribbean.

Haiti has no fuel except wood. People cook with charcoal. This requires
massive amounts of wood to provide fuel for 9 million people. Thus the demand on
wood as a crop is the immediate cause of the denuding of the mountains of Haiti.

The immediate motivation of much of the cutting down of trees is economic.
Peasants are hungry. They have little available work. But wood is in constant
demand as charcoal, or to sell to others to make charcoal. Peasant wood-cutters
who do understand the soil erosion problem will argue that they have no
alternative. They either cut wood to sell for food or they starve.

There is little motivation for wood cutters to replant more trees. Mainly
they do not own the land. They cut here or there as sharecroppers or renters,
then move on to other lands. The land owners are often city people or wealthier
village folks who do not keep a close watch on their lands. Were they to
replant, it is likely that the neighbors’ animals (pigs and goats) would eat the
seedling trees since there is little forage left in Haiti. The land tenure
system–the way land is owned and used in Haiti–provides little motivation to
anyone to replant the trees. Of course, it is in the interest of the nation as a
whole to replant trees. But, no individuals who own, share-crop or rent lands
are personally motivated to do this costly and troublesome work whose investment
benefit to the tree grower cannot be realized until after the tree is harvested
in 30 years.

The largest portions of Haiti’s best lands produce crops for export. Sugar
cane is the dominant export crop, but tropical fruit and other crops are grown
as well. With most of the very best land out of production for local food crops
(beans, rice and corn), the masses of people do not have access to land to grow
food for eating or selling on the local market. Ironically, Haiti, once a
primarily agricultural land, is a net importer of food.

These lands which produce the export crops are controlled by the elite of
Haiti. Most of the imported cash goes to these owner/controllers of the land and
most of it is not spent in Haiti, but in the United States and Europe. Not even
a trickledown effect is felt from this flow of cash. Further, the farm wages are
among the lowest in Haiti. Cane cutters spend an entire day in back-breaking
work to cut a ton of sugar cane. For this long day one could expect $1.63 a day
OR LESS! When one compares this with the high prices of imported food, one can
see the contribution to Haiti’s difficulties from this concentration on export
crops.

Look at Haiti now and know that what you see there can be in America soon.
When the product of the land is not valued as highly as the products that a
farmer must buy, soon the farmer must strip his land to produce enough raw
products to pay his expenses. Consequently, the fertility of the land is broken
and the people starve. From 2001 to 2008 the average return on equity for the
American farmer was 1.67%. However, the return on equity for the food
manufacturers who used the raw products from the farmers was 16.5%. The food
manufacturers receive 9.9 times more returns or profitability on their equity
investment than does a farmer. How long will the farmers hold up under this
exploitation and will their children come into farming knowing the reality of
economic slavery? Maybe Haiti will be a lesson to us all.

——————————————————————

Will Haiti’s Earthquake Wake Us Up?

By Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

In 1970 Henry Kissinger, US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State
in the Nixon Administration, made a statement saying: "Control oil and you
control nations; control food and you control the people." The first
question to ask is who is this “you” that Kissinger is referring to and why
would ‘they’ want to control oil and food? It is important for the black,
brown, yellow, red and white people of this planet to understand that the “you”
is just a few and does not include all “white” people, just a few families.
The devastating earthquake in Haiti has forced a lot of people to study the
history of Haiti and its battle with America over the control of her resources.
America’s first response to the devastation was to land 20,000 troops into
Haiti to continue her on and off occupation and political disruption of that
country since 1915.
F. William Engdahl wrote an article on January 30, 2010 called “The Fateful
Geological Prize Called Haiti” whose full contents can be studied at:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287.
In this article he writes:

“In March 2004, some months before the University of Texas
and American Big Oil launched their ambitious mapping of the hydrocarbon
potentials of the Caribbean, a Haitian writer, Dr. Georges Michel, published
online an article titled ‘Oil in Haiti.’ In it, Michel wrote,

… .[I]t has been no secret that deep in the earthy bowels
of the two states that share the island of Haiti and the surrounding waters
that there are significant, still untapped deposits of oil. One knows not why
they are still untapped. Since the early twentieth century, the physical and
political map of the island of Haiti, erected in 1908 by Messrs. Alexander
Poujol and Henry Thomasset, reported a major oil reservoir in Haiti near the
source of the Rio Todo El Mondo, Tributary Right Artibonite River, better
known today as the River Thomonde.”

Mr. Engdahl further points out in this article that Cuba which is only 90
miles from Haiti discovered large oil reserves off of its coast in 2008 and
plans to work with Russia and China to help exploit those reserves. So now the
cover is pulled back. American oilmen knew about the oil as far back as 1908.
The U.S. invaded and occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. America’s President
Franklin D. Roosevelt rewrote Haiti’s constitution in 1934 to allow American
businesses to buy the most valuable pieces of land in Haiti. However, with Cuba
finding and planning to exploit oil from this same basin, America had to act
quickly to establish a military presence in the area to control who will exploit
these vast oil reserves. Former rivals Clinton and Bush joined hands to “help”
Haiti. In the meantime the Haitian people suffer from extreme poverty, while any
Haitian leader who may have plans to utilize her hidden resources for the
benefit of the Haitian people are either killed or like their former President
Aristide, removed from office and not allowed to come back to the Western
Hemisphere.

In a previous article we wrote entitled “The Destruction of Haiti” we
pointed out that one of the major problems in Haiti was her extreme loss of
topsoil due to the removal of trees. These trees were cut down to make charcoal
because this was thought to be Haiti’s only source of indigenous fuel. How
ironic it is to find that she had oil all along but has not been allowed to
exploit her own resources.

Now let me talk to the American people who until the economic crash in 2008
had believed that the political and economic leaders of this country have been
working on their behalf. For centuries Americans have been used to destroy the
economies and political systems of other countries around the world, including
Haiti. America’s military has terrorized the world while she has used her
abundance of agricultural wealth to destroy indigenous people’s agricultural
systems. Now the same set of families that financed the colonization of America and the world have
now decided to turn America into a ‘Third World’ country. Demographers
speculate that white Americans will be the minority in the foreseeable future
allowing Blacks and Latinos to have political control of the most powerful
country in the world. These controlling families are not sure that they can
continue to control the minds and hearts of their former slaves. When 2 million
black men showed up in Washington, DC in October of 1995 at the Million Man
March, these families, the ‘you’ of Kissinger, realized that black people
may be faking their mentally asleep condition and could not be trusted to
blindly follow bad leadership. Minister Farrakhan stopped the plans of America
to take the black man down, alone, so ‘they’ decided to take America down on
top of the Blacks.

After World War II the world was open to American capitalism only checked by
the communist regimes in Russia and China. During this period the American
worker enjoyed the greatest growth in income and consumption. America and Russia
went around the world and bullied non-aligned nations to make a choice of which
camp they would join. If they did not bend, the CIA for America and the KGB for
Russia would topple governments and assassinate leaders. The American worker was
convinced that they had arrived into the middle class and were coaxed into
participating at the rich man’s gambling table called the Stock Market. They
allowed their retirement funds to be handled by third parties who played at the
gambling tables ostensibly on their behalf. But after 1995 Congress began to
roll back the laws that protected the American people against these “gambling
houses”, posing as investment banks. Only too late did the American workers
find out that their ‘agents’ were getting rich from fees while trading the
workers’ money, but then somehow lost the workers’ money in a series of bad
investments, bets. Now the American workers who thought they were entering the
middle class don’t have enough stored wealth on which to retire.

In the 1980s Russia “threw in the towel” and left America as the
undisputed champion of the economy of the world. China finally capitulated to
the onslaught of capitalism and now she is in bed with America. China had to get
rid of 20 million farmers to be accepted into the World Trade Organization in
2000. Why would 1.5 billion people who were self-sufficient in food production
allow the West to make China become dependent on America for substantial
portions of her food supply? At the same time many American manufactures left
America and set up plants in China to exploit cheap labor, and then sent those
same manufactured goods back to America. As long as the American economy was
expanding under the false economic bubbles, first generated by the “dot-com”
era and then later the housing bubble, the American consumers could use their
equity to borrow money to buy those unnecessary consumer goods that were being
shipped from China to the ‘Wal-Marts‘ of America. However, in 2008 Wall
Street crashed, the American consumer stopped buying and China’s economy had
to lay off millions of factory workers.

Have you seen “Food Inc.”? Over the last 8 years the average returns on
investments in agriculture to the American farmer has been 1.67%, while other
sectors of America’s economy received 8 times that amount on each dollar
invested. This imbalance in financial returns is draining the resources of the
family farm. American agribusiness has lobbied Congress to further handicap the
family farm while expanding production on mega farms owned by multi-national
corporations. Many of these mega-farms are located in California.

Now the stage is set far a major international drama. China wants to work
with Cuba to develop her oil reserves. China is the number four market for US
agricultural exports. At the same time, China is buying up more of America’s
debt than Americans, making China the largest holder of America’s debt and
dollars. What happens when, not if, an earthquake, like the one that hit Haiti,
strikes California and sea water floods the Central Valley of California which
supplies 12.8% of the United States’ agricultural production? What will happen
if California cannot ship food to China and the Chinese people face a serious
food shortage? She will first try to use her financial leverage over America to
force her to send China food at the expense of the American people, whose family
farms would have already been decimated by large agribusiness corporations. What
is the planned end of this game? Will it be war between America and China while
the rich European families and bankers hide in their underground cities? Will
Haiti’s earthquake wakeup America in time? Or will we just feel sorry for
Haiti for a while, and then go back to sleep while the “Kissinger’s” of
the world plan our fate?

If I were Satan and faced with the threat of the removal of my kingdom, I would take
action. Let us first look at the "threat". The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught his
followers that Master Fard Muhammad had promised to destroy the devil’s world. He said that the
Mother Plane and its bombers would begin to destroy the major cities after the devils had killed no
more than 300 of his "Righteous Followers".

Well, if I were Satan I would hold off on shooting and look for a more subtle method of killing.

In the mean time I would put Muhammad’s beloved Blacks in the middle of all my major cities.
Therefore, if those bombs were to drop they would kill a lot of Black people too. This would give me
Time to discover and implement more "non-violent" methods of killing.

Since Elijah taught his followers "How to Eat to Live", we, Satan, can not expect to
get Elijah’s followers to knowingly eat the main killer of the Negroes, the swine. Therefore we
must put the poison in the very foods that they think are safe.

Since they purchase these foods from us willingly, and I am not forcing them, then no one can
blame me if they die from the food. They have a choice. They could buy farm land and grow their own
food. But I will make farming unprofitable. If they follow me in greed, they won’t stick to
farming long enough to thwart my plans. Furthermore, I will take away the land of the Black farmers
and make the farmer a laughing stock in the Black community to ensure that young people will not go
into that profession.

Now how can I (Satan) produce poisons that will not be noticed until too late? I would begin by
producing a set of pesticides based on Hitler’s "nerve gas" (organo-phosphates) and
distribute it at low cost to the farmers. This would begin to tare down the immune system of the
population. Then I would use my new knowledge of the DNA to add a gene to soybeans and corn that
would attack human sperm and eggs.

We would like to genetically modify all food crops, however that would not be necessary. The
genetically altered crops will contaminate the other crops, plus we will mix in the genetically
modified crops in all of our processed foods.

Since those who follow "How to Eat to Live", eat one meal per day, we will reduce the
nutritional value of the food that they do eat, so that their body would not be satisfied with that
one meal. We will market varieties of crops that grow fast but have lower nutritional value. So the
people will get weaker, even though they are eating more and getting fatter.

To help them eat more we will introduce monosodium glutamate (MSG) into every processed food that
we make. We will make MSG the "nicotine of food". ‘You can never eat just one.’ So
without them knowing it, they will be making a covenant with death. Just one deviation from the
right path will make them addicted to our poisonous fast foods, and make death convenient.

If they continue to eat our contaminated meat, we will make the meat not only unhealthy but
Unholy by selling them meat from cloned animals produced by a homosexual reproductive process. Our
next step would be to put a pig gene in every meat and major vegetable crop through genetic
manipulation. We will make them all deviate whether they know it or not.

The only thing that could thwart our plans is that the followers of Elijah stick to "How to
Eat to Live", start raising their own food and inspire other Blacks to do likewise.

If they decided to stick to such a regimen, we would have to force them to eat our poisons or
just shoot them down outright. Of course this could bring on the "threat". However, given
enough time we may be able to come up with some better weapons to fight God with. All we need is
Time.

Even if we can not beat Him, if we have enough Time we can learn more about the "root of
Life" itself and poison life at its root before the effects are visible to the naked eye. The
damage done would be too great to fix before Life itself is exterminated on this planet.

All we need is time. Watch out for any "trumpet blower" that would arouse the Black
people to use their God inspired personal activities that would burn up our plans and break their
death covenant with me, Satan, and my "merchants of death".

——————————————————————

By Dr. Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad

Many people are excited to hear that the Black farmers are finally receiving
justice due to the Senate passing legislation funding a settlement for
discrimination against Black farmers. However, the “devil is in the details”
and the enemy is at work to mix poison with honey to ensnare the unaware.

“There’s no question. The bar is much higher,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson
(D-Miss.), a CBC member and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

The legislation to be sent to the president would provide $4.55 billion to
settle longstanding discrimination claims with the Department of Agriculture
from Black and Native American farmers.

The additional steps added to the claims process for the Black farmers and
not the Native American farmers, include an audit by an inspector general and
oversight by the attorney general’s office, as well as a review by the secretary
of Agriculture, who must sign off on a farmer’s claim. Attorneys involved in
cases must swear in writing that the claims are legitimate, and a special
federal “adjudicator” must also take an oath that the claim is legitimate
and may request additional information and documentation. At the end of the
process is another round of oversight and review from the Department of
Agriculture and the Department of Justice at the top levels.

The new standards for the “Pigford” claimants were added by the Senate
after several attempts to move the legislation failed. The additional
requirements were meant to meet concerns about fraud that were raised most
notably by Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Steve King (R-Iowa).

“We need to have an investigation of every single claim going out,”
Bachmann said in an interview. “This is $50,000 of the taxpayers’ money to
every single claimant.

What we have heard from whistleblowers is that there are people in urban
areas living in highrises getting $50,000 who have never been on a farm and have
never lived on a farm,” Bachmann said.

However, here is the rub. To be eligible for money now, “…claimants must
have farmed or attempted to farm between 1981 and 1996, have filed a
discrimination complaint before July 1, 1997, and have filed a claim after the
deadline in the original settlement.” Here is the trick that leaves the door
open for claims of fraud by the Republicans. How can a person who is not a
farmer prove that he or she “attempted to farm between 1981 and 1996”?
The Republicans claim that there are only 20,000 Black farmers according to the
Census of Agriculture, but how many Black people could have “attempted to farm”?
What type of unchallengeable evidence can a person present in 2010 that they “attempted
to farm between 1981 and 1996“?

The Pigford II lawsuit unlike any other class action lawsuit that we know of
has an attached threat that any claimant may be investigated by the Inspector
General’s office. The Republicans in the Senate demanded that such draconian
measures be taken to ensnare Black farmers over $50,000 while in 2008 they let
the bankers walk away with $700 billion with no questions asked.

That threat alone, along with the wording of who may be eligible, should be
ample warning for anyone who still owns farm land to stay away from such a minor
and short term gain. Any such investigation could cause unnecessary legal
ramifications that could put that land at risk.

The fact that some of the funding for this settlement is to be taken out of
the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program may give a signal to the public
that Black farmers are taking food away from women and children. Therefore if a
claimant is later charged with some type of fraud, the public will not have a
sympathetic ear. However, if you are desperate for money and have nothing to
lose, it may be worth the chance to win $10 to $50 thousand that will not even
buy a new farm tractor. And you must also factor in the tax implications.

What we need is a farm movement and not a cheap payday. The Black farmers
went to court in 1997 to stop the USDA from foreclosing on 3,000 black farms,
not $50,000. That cash settlement was developed by Al Pires, the Black farmers
lawyer, and accepted by the federal judge in spite of the objections by lead
plaintiffs in the Pigford lawsuit. The Pigford I settlement was designed to deny
the legitimate claims of active Black farmers while enticing none farmers to
participate. So instead of 3,000 claimants they increased the claims to 22,000
so they could deny the 3,000 without people being suspicious of the USDA’s
intent to steal more land, which they ultimately did in a number of cases. They
denied legitimate claimants because they did not give the correct “similarly
situated white farmer” and let others in based on “attempted to farm between
1981 and 1996“.

Some estimate that as many as 68,000 people may file is Pigford II.
Republicans claim that this is impossible because there are only 20,000 Black
farmers. Let me end this charade by the Republicans once and for all. First of
all, the time frame under investigation begins in 1981 when, according to the
USDA Census of Agriculture there were at least 33,000 Black farmers. However, by
1996 there were only 20,000. Could it be that the 13,000 missing farmers from
the 1996 USDA census are not dead but were put out of business by the USDA and
that is why they are filing in the lawsuit? So now we are up to 33,000
legitimate claims.

But oh, the lawsuit accepts those would-be farmers who “attempted to farm
between 1981 and 1996”. Could it be possible that at least one of the children
of each of these 33,000 Black farmers went to the USDA to get a loan to either
buy their parents out or go into farming in a separate operation? Therefore we
have found another 33,000 eligible claimants. Of course, we don’t die we
multiply. So each Black farmer could have had a number of children to attempt to
farm between 1981 and 1996. So leave the Black farmers alone and go run after
“crooked finger” Paulson and find our $700 billion. While you are out witch
hunting for Black fraud, ask the Federal Reserve Chairman how many trillions of
dollars has he loaned his banker friends at no interest and no requirements to
repay.

Black farmers are treated like children who can’t add and subtract, do not
know their rights nor what is good for them. Unfortunately, their white lawyers,
the USDA, the Justice Department, and now the congressional Republicans, are
their evil stepparents. These evil stepparents just love using the same set of
whips from the days of their “night riding” parents. Free the Black land!!!
Free the Black land before they kill us all with their Frankenfood!!!

(Please read:http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/4134-a-real-jaw-dropper-at-the-federal-reserve)

Usury: The weapon of mass enslavement

The “systems approach” is defined as a problem solving methodology which
begins with a tentatively identified set of needs. It has as its result, an
operating system for efficiently satisfying a set of needs which are acceptable
or “good” in light of trade-offs among needs and the resource limitations
that are accepted as constraints in the given setting (Manetch and Park, 1982).
There are two prominent attributes of the approach: 1) it overtly seeks to
include all factors which are important in arriving at a “good” solution to
the given problem; and 2) it makes use of quantitative models, and often
computer simulation of those models, to assist in making rational decisions.
This framework will be used to help the farm manager “break down” his task
into conceptual parts, then put those parts back together again to establish a
“system” that works for his managerial needs.

The major phases of the approach are: feasibility evaluation, abstract
modeling, implementation design, implementation and system operation. As seen in
Figure 1, the movement of the process is from a set of needs to be satisfied (at
the top) toward an operational system (at the bottom) capable of satisfying the
needs which exist. The solid lines and arrows indicate the path of flow through
the process as you move through the sequence of functions which must be carried
out in order to achieve system objectives.

Feasibility Evaluation has as its goal the generation of a set of
feasible system “alternatives” capable of satisfying needs which have been
identified. The steps in feasibility evaluation are reproduced in Figure 2.
Feasibility evaluation begins with a careful analysis of needs to determine
whether the needs do, in fact, exist and if they do, to state them in an
operationally useful form. (For instance, we say in the Ministry of Agriculture
of the Nation of Islam, that we want to supply the black people in America with
one meal a day according to the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. This
goal to satisfy the need is both limited by what are the foods that we should
and should not eat along with the logistical problem of producing and
distributing these food products to 40 million or more people spread out over an

area 2,000 by 3,000 miles. Therefore, each of our future farm managers will
be doing their part to satisfy this need and must know how they fit into the
overall “system”.) The “output” of Feasibility Evaluation is a set of
realizable alternatives which appear capable of satisfying the identified needs.

Implementation Design has as its purpose to completely specify the
details of system and/or management strategy designed in the abstract during the
modeling phase. “Completely specify” means developing a complete set of
instructions that will lead to the operationalization of the desired system.
This would include specifying the necessary preparations for implementation
including data and budgetary needs along with the procedures for accomplishing
specific functions.

Implementation is to give physical existence to the desired system. In
this case the system is the farm. Since the systems approach is iterative,
information developed in this phase on the workability of the system would act
as feedback for the modifications needed for implementation of a Working
System.

Similarities between the steps in the systems approach and Johnson’s (1977)
problem solving model (Figure 3 below) indicate the generic nature of both
processes. Also, the systems approach can be observed to coincide with the basic
thesis development i.e., problem statement (feasibility evaluation),
investigating how others have brought light to the problem in the form of a
literature review (developing a set of feasible solutions), developing of model
to be tested

(abstract modeling), statistical methods and hypothesis testing
(implementation design), analysis and recommendations (implementation). However,
the systems approach goes further and actually involves the decision-maker or
those who will be affected by the system to participate in its development. This
is why we in the Ministry of Agriculture try to involve its members in all
phases of development of the system that will satisfy the stated needs as
expressed in our Mission Statement.

The systems approach makes the assumption that it is the end user and not a
so-called “expert” that will determine the adequacy of the system outputs.
This is important when dealing with a normative (subjective) discipline such as
economics where the role of the professional is to educate the manager, but
learn from other theorists. However, our research assumes that there already
exists “successful farm managers” and that we can learn from what they do.

Another benefit of the systems approach to very unstructured problems is the
introduction of detailed diagrams which guides the decision-maker and helps to
prevent the exclusion of necessary parts to complete the working system. This
does not mean that no parts can be omitted either knowingly or unknowingly, but
diagramming the process helps to focus on the essentials. “Mistakes do not
exist in the Nation of Islam”. Mistakes happen, but through proper analysis
and learning from those mistakes, we do not repeat the same mistakes over and
over again. If we leave out a step in our problem solving techniques, we should
be aware that we did and watch for repercussions from those omissions to further
test the process going on in our heads.

The Farm System

A “system” is a set of interconnected elements organized toward a goal or
set of goals (Manetch and Park, 1982). A basic systems model along with
definitions of component parts is given in Figure 4. The systems approach forces
a conscious recognition of what is and is not

under the manager’s control and who are the relevant managers of that
system.

The “Farm System” shown in Figure 5 includes the farm/family with its
different production enterprises and consumption units which transform land,
labor, and capital into outputs such as production, income, cash balance,
consumption, education, net worth and debt. The transformation process is
determined by the design parameters of the system which consists of land are,
soil productivity, labor availability, input availability, input/output
coefficients, and per-capital consumption. The controllable inputs under the
direct influence of the manager are levels and types of production, marketing
strategies, and investment policies. The “System Environment” includes those
inputs which are exogenous to the system or outside of the direct influence of
the manager including: weather, the biological process itself (except for
genetic engineering), output prices, input prices, government programs, wage
rates, interest rates, and credit availability. Although the manager may not be
able to directly influence these factors, knowledge of them and their probable
directions is needed to make adjustments in his farm system. In other words, a
careful study of history will reward our research. Therefore we must develop the
historical timeline that brings us to the agricultural and economic environment
that we must work in and as awakened Muslims must work to change.