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through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc I'm genuinely curious whether this is actually the case. Can you cite some examples? My google-skills don't seem to be adequate.
google: 'sugar subsidies''corn subsidies''milk subsidies' In particular, sugar should be taxed like tobacco, with a sin tax, rather than subsidized. But that's not what we do.
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The subsidies obviously don't specifically say, "big farms get this benefit, fuck the little guy!". It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smal…
This is one of the better sourced articles on the subject I could find in a quick googling (interestingly, it comes from a libertarian think tank, which makes them interesting bed fellows with the food justice and local farms movement): http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies This article doesn't claim that large farms are subsidized disproportionately, which is the claim you made when you said, I t…
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The subsidies obviously don't specifically say, "big farms get this benefit, fuck the little guy!". It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smal…
Can you provide sources for the claim that government support for farming is inaccessible due to bookkeeping and compliance expense? I'm a local food person (for reasons other than "food justice") and an investor of sorts, and nobody in this field in Chicago has ever told me that before.
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The subsidies obviously don't specifically say, "big farms get this benefit, fuck the little guy!". It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smal…
Can you provide sources for the claim that government support for farming is inaccessible due to bookkeeping and compliance expense? I'm a local food person (for reasons other than "food justice") and an investor of sorts, and nobody in this field in Chicago has ever told me that before.
Can we just stipulate that commodity crops are indeed locked up structurally for giant agribusiness cartels, and keep focused on the small family vegetable and livestock farming this Salon article is talking about? I feel unprepared to discuss the public policy implications of wheat and cotton farming.
My grandfather ran a farm. Small farming isn't profitable. Full stop. Farming scales up really well but not down.
And if you can make back the costs of the equipment, own the land, and create enough food for your family, what value does money have?
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Can you provide more support for the argument that "mega-store purchasing policies" make farm co-ops a "moot point"? It looks like even Whole Foods, one of the largest mega-suppliers of produce in the US, readily sources from co-ops. A bigger possible reason farms tend not to join co-ops is that they integrate vertically and do direct marketing both to chains like WF and to farmers markets and, particularly, restaura…
Whole Foods does it as a part of their "local" and "organic" brand identity, but even they don't buy from very small providers. Walmart and the major grocery chains generally do not. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/04/171051906/can... http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/08/08/where-does-your-grocery-...
But it's not my argument that small family farms are likely to supply a significant portion of all the produce the median American buys at a grocery store.
Rather, my argument is that there are steady, high-volume buyers for small family farmers. Whole Foods can constitute a tiny fraction of the produce sold in the US (though: they don't; they're extremely popular) and still be one of several means by which it is viable for small farmers to be in business.
And, I guess my point is, this seems to be the case.
When you read this Salon article, you didn't get a bit of a "Brooklyn" vibe from this particular "mid-20s, early-30s" farmer outraged that their watermelons and lavender flowers buttered by the Sacremento sunlight on their less-than-one-city-block farm plot couldn't pay all their bills?
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"large farms are favored (through subsidies, tax breaks, regulation, etc.)" Can you share any examples of these things that specifically favour large farms? The two books you mention seem to be focused mainly on different issues (corn subsidies, large scale feeding, food labelling, ethics, ...).
The subsidies obviously don't specifically say, "big farms get this benefit, fuck the little guy!". It takes the form of favoring monoculture farms (where economies of scale are more pronounced, but also the environmental impact is largest), or requiring significant compliance expenses and bookkeeping that smaller farms cannot handle (because the cost of bureaucracy is often fixed, so it is relatively higher the smal…
Most California farmers, who grow mainly fruits and vegetables, do not get direct subsidies from the Depression-era programs, which remain largely targeted at grains, cotton, dairy and a handful of smaller crops.
In fact, these subsidies are handed out based on land area, and seem to have a penalty against large farms which operators have been circumventing by legally subdividing their farms to collect more.
Anyways, I think we can agree that these subsidies aren't relevant to the farmers in the article, who have chosen not to grow grains and other subsidized crops and are not in competition with these large farms.
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Can you provide sources for the claim that government support for farming is inaccessible due to bookkeeping and compliance expense? I'm a local food person (for reasons other than "food justice") and an investor of sorts, and nobody in this field in Chicago has ever told me that before.
I read the first link you provided carefully, and it doesn't appear to discuss compliance costs at all, and further refers to cotton farming, not food supply. Can we just stipulate that commodity crops are indeed locked up structurally for giant agribusiness cartels, and keep focused on the small family vegetable and livestock farming this Salon article is talking about? I feel unprepared to discuss the public policy…
Certainly. I think I've been making that argument all along. And, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that being a problem (I think it probably is, if that wasn't clear).
"and keep focused on the small family vegetable and livestock farming this Salon article is talking about?"
So, we should exclude everything that supports the notion that big agribusiness has significant anti-competitive advantages, and only talk about the miniscule segment of the market that has not yet been eaten by big agribusiness and still has a few small farmers able to scratch out an existence?
Also, I'm not arguing that the author of this article should expect to make a great living off of a 10 acre farm. Obviously, that's silly (though I know people who do think that a small farm on that scale can be some sort of sustainable existence, and this article is probably useful for them from the perspective of bringing a little reality to the fantasy of retiring on a little farm).
Duh. Do these people just forget about the principle of economies of scale? How do they think they can possibly compete against huge factory farms? I can understand if you're doing a small farm 'for fun', but don't understand how an otherwise intelligent person can think they can (or should be able to) make good money from it. > As the average age of the American farmer neared 65, I knew young farmers were badly need…
The author of the article is your typical naïve liberal. They seriously chose to effectively be a sharecropper in Northern California? Had they actually spent any time on real working farms before they decided to jump in? The irony is that these types of people look down upon the 'rednecks' of flyover country and have the audacity to think that ten measly acres is going to support two people in Northern California. T…
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/425146/or-my-people-say...
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google: 'sugar subsidies''corn subsidies''milk subsidies' In particular, sugar should be taxed like tobacco, with a sin tax, rather than subsidized. But that's not what we do.
Why should sugar be taxed? Why not just eliminate sin taxes altogether? You people that want to tax everything that you feel isn't "good" is just obnoxious. There's something called freedom. Ridiculous nanny state proponents that want to use taxes to discourage behaviors that they consider 'bad' yet like to consider themselves 'pro choice' or interested in 'diversity.' --except when they disagree with those choices.…
So go ahead and think it's obnoxious. We're even. Seeing as the vast majority at that time had no say in the political process because they didn't have a penis, or land, and weren't white, it's a pretty ignorant and obnoxious appeal to authority you're making via The Founders who were fat white rich men.