While in Savannah, we stopped and visited with a couple of black men on the sidewalk near the river working with palm leaves and sweet grass. One was making baskets, the other palm-leaf "roses." The older man, making the baskets, talked about the place of sweet-grass baskets in the local culture in the old days-- a skill brought over from Africa and used by the slaves to make storage containers and carriers for food and water. He harvested the sweet-grass himself on the coastal islands. However, getting the grass is becoming harder, he said. Rich people are buying up the islands for their own private use, and developers are putting in resorts and condos. Result, less sweet-grass, and that which remains often legally off-limits. In addition, the government is now trying to protect the remaining sweet-grass and frowns upon harvest. He confessed he did not know what the future held for people like himself. A small basket of his now sits on our coffee table.

This conversation reminded me that economic development, and government regulation, often hits the little guy hard. I've seen it in agriculture. Housing creeps out into the country, and suddenly the hog farmer whose family has been raising hogs for generations finds he has neighbors who object, sometimes in court, to the smells and sounds of hogs. And, government regulations often hurt small producers. Regulations are written to prevent feedlot runoff, or to up the standards for milk production; small producers find it difficult to meet the cost of the regulations, and so must either expand or get out of the business.

The irony is that the local environment might be able to handle a few dispersed small producers, but is strained by a collection of large producers.