31–40 of 391 posts
The amazing thing is the median age of farmers in the USA is ~56. In the next ten years over half are retire-able. Who is going to take over? Corporations or the current immigrant workers? Its a huge change for most of the country.
Local farm services guy had this to say: "Used to buy truckloads of fertilizer, then the coop would buy train car loads and undercut us. So we bought a train car - they bought a train. We bought a train - they bought a barge. The margins are disappearing entirely" Almost everybody is being squeezed out by 'economies of scale'. And its going to get worse, when we start making simple foodstuffs electrically (starch, su…
The first thing I learned when I started working life in a store was: "We do not compete by undercutting the competition. That will kill us both."
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Why is that a valid criticism? Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?"
> Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?" Is that not a valid criticism?
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Why is that a valid criticism? Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?"
> Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?" Is that not a valid criticism?
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Why is that a valid criticism? Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?"
It's not criticism, it's responding to the question asked. Q: How do we reconcile on the one hand farmers by trade leaving and wannabe farmers wanting to join a farm life? A: "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?"
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I remember that discussion. I also remember the major criticism was that a good portion of the people who are moving from tech to farming were already independently wealthy enough to bootstrap their farm into a good place. And on top of that getting to choose where their farm is located. Contrast that with a farmer who may have inherited what he has from his parents and may not be in as good a financial state, or the…
Why is that a valid criticism? Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?"
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Is this for philosophical reasons about taxes and government? Or is it just a big chunk of money they're trying to save?
I think both, but is it really saving money if you personally are unable to buy food after a bad season?
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> Doesn't that just boil down to "people who want to do x and have money can end up in a better spot than people who inherited x and have less money?" Is that not a valid criticism?
I guess my hang up is that it seems pretty self-evident. Yeah, money makes things easier. I don't think any of the software developers on this site making 3-5x the median individual wage will argue against that. Assuming for a moment that "money buys things" is a valid criticism of some independently wealthy software developer buying a farm (?), what's the proposed solution to that?
I have family that farms in Iowa and I also worked in the agriculture industry there for a while after leaving the military. One thing that increases the stress on the farmers is the way they avoid income taxes at all costs so they rarely save any of the profits from good years to help them float during the bad years. This is all anecdotal but I have personally talked with several farmers that would rather buy new eq…
Your business having a illiquid depreciating asset that is required for the business to function can still be struggling. You can't eat a combine, you can't trade it away.
This is usually solved with coops owning the equipment and time sharing it to distribute the costs among the coop participants.
Farmers are indentured servants to the commodities markets, the land owner's they rent their land from, and John Deere.