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Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

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Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#121

Post by watwut »

tarsinge wrote: post #117
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #42

“We’re heading to a place where we don’t have farmers; we just have food production.” This. I don't know what the solution to this is. I have a small farm, and raise meat sheep. But it's very much a hobby. The problem is, though, that almost all of the other farmers in my area, the ones I meet at the feed store or the livestock auction, they're also hobby farmers. There is exactly one “real” farmer (meaning that it's…

> And people understandably don't want to double their grocery bills just to buy local I think that could be the root cause. People are used to food not costing enough, a living animal should be costly. I don’t understand why food should not be important in a budget. And since we need to eat less and better, it could even help making transformed products uneconomical and we would mostly stick to raw products, and get…

Poor people, which is significant part of population have food as important part of budget. They also eat less well, because for them the price and easy availability top pretty much everything.

The richer classes eat more well and buy more expensive food even when they have choice. They are also healthier and eat healthier.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#122

Post by rmason »

heavenlyhash wrote: post #119
BariumBlue wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only possible reason that a farmer can't charge more than $1.35 for a gallon of milk is that some other farmer is able to produce a gallon of milk for less than $1.35 Not necessarily - if you have demand for 300 units of milk and there are enough producers to match, then when demand halves, the producers are still producing 300 units of milk and paying for the costs to produce that amount of milk. To offset tho…

Oh boy. If you and GP think there's a purely unregulated Laissez-faire market for dairy products in the U.S., you've got some fun reading to catchup on. A sibling comment lower down the page provides some links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996881

What can change things dramatically at least in the upper Midwest is if the US is able to convince Canada to eliminate or greatly lower the tariff on milk and cheese.

In our area of Michigan a huge new cheese plant is going in and the only justification I can see for that large an investment is they already know the dairy tariff is ending.

https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2018/08/09/55...

St. Johns is a small farm town North of Lansing which is Michigan's state capital.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#123

Post by dbs »

Large scale agriculture will add up, until someday it doesn't. This fable told by Jeremy Grantham explains it quite well.

My favourite story is about the contract between the farmer and the devil. The devil says, "sign this contract and I'll triple your farm's profits". But there are 25 footnotes, as there always is with the devil. Footnote 22 says that 1% of your soil will be eroded each year, which is actually horrifyingly close to the real average over the past 50 years. The farmer signs and makes a fortune on a 40-year contract. And his son then signs up for the next 40-year contract and makes a fortune. And his son then signs up for the third and final contract. He still does very well, and in the final 20 years the family has accumulated enormous wealth, but the soil has gone. It's the same story for all his neighbouring farms and everyone is out of business. My sick joke is that at least he will die a rich farmer when all the starving hordes arrive from the city.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/apr/16/jer...

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#124

Post by fouc »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #42

“We’re heading to a place where we don’t have farmers; we just have food production.” This. I don't know what the solution to this is. I have a small farm, and raise meat sheep. But it's very much a hobby. The problem is, though, that almost all of the other farmers in my area, the ones I meet at the feed store or the livestock auction, they're also hobby farmers. There is exactly one “real” farmer (meaning that it's…

I think there's still lots of room for hobbyist farms. New techniques like permaculture farming is making it easier.

There's also demand for locally produced organic food by health & environment conscious folks.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#125

Post by chiefalchemist »

DareRight wrote: post #107
chiefalchemist wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But if you're going to do whatever one else is doing, that's not a plan to prosper. It's suicidal. For example, I didn't see a single mention of "...so we're going to go organic..." Again. Don't get me wrong. Food supply is important. One article does not a trend make. That said, sharing a bad idea with 100 or 1000 other people (farmers) still makes it a bad idea. I realize change isn't something most farmers se…

So you're saying, "Grow something unusual."? Something like... water chestnuts? Or mint? Convert your wheat crop to mint? Commodities are commodities because there is such a huge demand for them. Niche products are not some super easy to get rich with scheme. If you want to succeed in the mint market, you'd better do you homework, execute perfectly, and get lucky. Just like in the commodities market.

> "Commodities are commodities because there is such a huge demand for them."

True. However, that doesn't mean, per the article, they are profitable. And if they are unprofitable, doesn't that mean supply is greater than demand?

Growing an unprofitable commodity and then saying "I'm not making money" doesn't make sense. Even if there oversight (e.g., Uncle Sam) and you trust that oversight (which we know is inconsistent) I would think it makes sense, if you want to be legitimately profitable, you'd try to mitigate the risks.

Farmers are being paid to grow food that gets destroyed. The masses are eating so much cheap food they're becoming ill more often and/or dying younger. The status quo doesn't feel sustainable.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#126

Post by YokoZar »

ceejayoz wrote: post #75
harryh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US goes to war with China, if we're literally shooting at each other and dropping bombs, I don't think it's going to be all that big of a step to expropriate some farms on our own soil that they happen to own.

If they're prepared in advance for such an action, that expropriation might be a bunch of bricked farm equipment.

This is a ridiculous hypothetical to begin with, fear over stuff like this is how we end up with nonsense farm policy.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#127

Post by robotbikes »

DareRight wrote: post #102
samstave wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The economies of scale in agriculture have become so strong that there's no way to compete on price any other way. And people understandably don't want to double their grocery bills just to buy local. Isnt this the reason for barter communities; bater some of your meat for some other veggies... or farm products.?

I also own one of those hobby farms. My simple answer is, No. At my scale, barter is pretty useless. How many vegetables will you trade me for one pig? It better be a lot because I only have 6-10 pigs to barter every year. We have a lot of hobby farms around here. But they all raise animals. Nobody is doing potatos or cabbage. I mean we all do a few onions and tomatoes. But nobody is growing enough of anything that t…

This is very much the case to a large extent, I think certain communities such as the Amish are able to maintain their farming practices because they share resources and build up labor sharing through mutual aid. They also tend to be somewhat culturally insulated and also hesitant to become dependent upon outside technology which helps them maintain the incentives to work together. But they also adopt cerain technologies on a community by community basis for instance cell phones (for business use) and small solar panel setups are common. Farming isn't really an option for a lot of rural people outside of a network like this because they don't own much land and so they just have to travel farther if they want to get a pay check.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#128

Post by maxerickson »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #42

“We’re heading to a place where we don’t have farmers; we just have food production.” This. I don't know what the solution to this is. I have a small farm, and raise meat sheep. But it's very much a hobby. The problem is, though, that almost all of the other farmers in my area, the ones I meet at the feed store or the livestock auction, they're also hobby farmers. There is exactly one “real” farmer (meaning that it's…

The Chinese investors would just lose access to their land. If it was much of a long war, they'd likely lose the title to it. It would inevitably continue to be utilized for food production.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#129

Post by Razengan »

maxerickson wrote: post #128
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #42

“We’re heading to a place where we don’t have farmers; we just have food production.” This. I don't know what the solution to this is. I have a small farm, and raise meat sheep. But it's very much a hobby. The problem is, though, that almost all of the other farmers in my area, the ones I meet at the feed store or the livestock auction, they're also hobby farmers. There is exactly one “real” farmer (meaning that it's…

The Chinese investors would just lose access to their land. If it was much of a long war, they'd likely lose the title to it. It would inevitably continue to be utilized for food production.

Humans are not above scorching the earth.

If they owned half the land for anything inside the territory of a potential rival, they would definitely be aware of their advantage and keep some cards up their sleeve for the possibility of losing access to that land.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#130

Post by ceejayoz »

YokoZar wrote: post #126
ceejayoz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're prepared in advance for such an action, that expropriation might be a bunch of bricked farm equipment.

This is a ridiculous hypothetical to begin with, fear over stuff like this is how we end up with nonsense farm policy.

I don't think it's that silly.

I have major concerns with how automation and interconnectivity have taken off faster than security efforts can keep up. It needn't be a state actor, even - a disgruntled worker at John Deere might push an update to a million tractors that burns out their motors, for example.

The next World War might just be us waking up one day and the lights don't work.

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