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The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

theguardian.com

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Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#351

Post by TheCondor »

colanderman wrote: post #75
gonzoflip wrote: post #9

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…

Dumb question, as I am neither a farmer nor a businessperson, but is there a way for a farmer to set up, say, an LLC, which holds money from profitable years for use in unprofitable years, from which the farmer takes a steady salary each year?

There are financial instruments for this, different insurances and such. Not an LLC exactly but there are ways to do it and there are products you can buy to do just that, annuities and different income yielding investments. If you’ve got issues with any form of taxes due to your culture, you’re not likely a good candidate or disciplined enough to accept these kinds of instruments. Fundamentally it means you have to make less during the great years to pay yourself during the bad years.

It has also been my observation that there is a sort of victim mentality that many farmers embrace, they can be legitimate multimillionaires but would rather be seen as poor and bullied by the banks, government and elites.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#352

Post by jokermatt999 »

danieltillett wrote: post #334
yters wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmland is essentially a complete livelihood, whereas other land is just a place to park a house.

Yes, but so is a business and it doesn't seem to induce the same type of ownership.

A business supplies you with currency to trade for the basic necessities. A farm can provide those directly.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#353

Post by dragonwriter »

EdSharkey wrote: post #291
dragonwriter wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democrats are losing seats everywhere, have not been grooming enough replacements for the old-timers, and won't shake the loser 60's radical ideology Uh, the Democrats never, as a national party, had a “60s radical ideology”, and since the 1990s have been a solidly pro-big-business center-right neoliberal party barely distinguishable from late 1980s Republicans but for some equal rights stands; that's weakened a bi…

Black Lives Matter seems very throwback racial politics to me. Is that a DNC thing, specifically? No, but clearly there's an embrace of the movement in order to secure their votes and energy. So yes, as a national party, democrats are all about griping for oppressed minority groups. 60's radical ideology is what I understand stems from the Marxist shift from class struggle to oppressed identity groups in the 60's as…

> This is cultural Marxism.

No, it's actually Marxism losing relevance in favor of something radically different, but in any case it's fairly irrelevant to the Democratic Party which never generally adopted a ”New Left” position, following classical moderate, non-Marxist pro-labor focus into the 80s, then abandoning that and anything like the Left generally for the center-right neoliberalism of Clinton's “Third Way”.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#354

Post by outsideoflife »

sambe wrote: post #340
outsideoflife wrote: post #331

Many 'family farms' even in the dainty UK are multi-million $ businesses, run by people who know how to shear sheep and bunt hurdles and wurzels. They complain about the effect of market prices, and the worry they create, but they are taking on these risks unhedged (and farmers being unhedged makes me giggle). Similar size businesses would we hedging their FX risk through their local bank with simple FX forwards. Far…

I know of UK farms that hedge their crop and currency prices. There is a common theme of wanting to be both hedging and getting the upside, but I don't think they are all unhedged.

>There is a common theme of wanting to be both hedging and getting the upside

I see that in my professional life x10. When I suggest 'options' (so you get the option of taking the hedge or the market at the strike date) they scoff at the margin. We are back to Brexit again, they want to have their cake and eat it!

I'm sure you are right that there are some farmers, especially the 'agi-businesses' that are hedging. There seem to be many more that are winging it.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#355

Post by grasshopperpurp »

murph-almighty wrote: post #349
pm90 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we are not doing a good enough job of promoting civic duty, including payment of taxes? After all those taxes are used mostly for Medicare, Medicaid and the Military, all of which seem like worthy causes to pay for right? Not including State and Local taxes used for more immediate local functions, of course.

I lean liberal but a significant portion of my family is conservative. Their thinking with regards to taxes is that it's spent on one of the following: - Welfare, which is supposedly rampant with fraud to the point that most people who are on welfare don't "need" it - Unspecified government waste Not that these don't exist- it's just that it's the majority of government spending, according to them. If taxes are cut,…

Do they know that 20 billion goes to farm subsidies? I would guess that they don't mind that type of welfare.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#356

Post by CalChris »

murph-almighty wrote: post #349
pm90 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we are not doing a good enough job of promoting civic duty, including payment of taxes? After all those taxes are used mostly for Medicare, Medicaid and the Military, all of which seem like worthy causes to pay for right? Not including State and Local taxes used for more immediate local functions, of course.

I lean liberal but a significant portion of my family is conservative. Their thinking with regards to taxes is that it's spent on one of the following: - Welfare, which is supposedly rampant with fraud to the point that most people who are on welfare don't "need" it - Unspecified government waste Not that these don't exist- it's just that it's the majority of government spending, according to them. If taxes are cut,…

Welfare is welfare but then we're calling welfare welfare. The F35, on the other hand, is another form of welfare except that it's patriotic welfare.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#357

Post by alistairSH »

roel_v wrote: post #68
alistairSH wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stigma of being a bumpkin/Luddite Which is a terrible assumption to make. Many farmers (at least here in the mid-Atlantic) are college-educated absolutely not bumpkins/Luddites. Unsurprisingly, agricultural programs have a useful blend of business/economics and science.

That's why it's called a 'stigma' - a reputation, not a fact.

Yes, I was agreeing with you.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#358

Post by grasshopperpurp »

yock wrote: post #243
CydeWeys wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop using the Internet for starters, then. Billions of dollars of tax money went into developing it.

That's just foolish. I'm not going to forsake the benefit of something I'm forced to pay for. I can, however, still advocate for changes to that system. That isn't hypocrisy.

You'd be just like the current generation of Americans in power. Get fat off of all the rich government programs, then cut them as you no longer need them - forget the people who are currently in the position you once were. To me, it's disgusting and selfish, but America seems fine with it. America is doing fine, right? Oh wait . . .

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#359

Post by alistairSH »

princekolt wrote: post #277
linkregister wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree; most of the produce at Whole Foods is mass-produced organic food, which is in between the quality of megafarm produce and small-farm produce.

But how objective is the difference between all these three? I have the impression most of the people who buy speciality crops wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them in most cases on a blind test.

Personally, I'm not sure I could tell in a blind test, though I'd like to think I could.

But, I do know that when I travel abroad (outside the US), the produce seems to taste better. Maybe it really does, or maybe it's just my own biases.

Regardless, we try to buy a substantial portion of our produce at farmers markets, when available (they aren't usually open in the winter months near DC).

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#360

Post by arca_vorago »

My educated guess (I was a sysadmin in a major north Texas age company) is the hidden nature of the mergers, acquisitions, and interdependency the huge ag firms and bankers have fostered on what used to be family farms, and don't be fooled, true family farms are rarer and rarer these days.

I don't know when it changed so much from my great grandparents days, but when I see farmers with brand new ford raptors and 500k tractors less than a few years old it seems to fly in the face of what my grandparents described as life on a farm.

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