Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

fb.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 432 posts

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#101

Post by autoexec »

WarmWash wrote: post #48
jwcooper wrote: post #27

The problem isn't with the farmers. The problem is the monopolies that surround the farmers. They buy their seeds from massive corporations that have patents on seeds. They sell their produce to global multi-national corporations that set the prices they'll purchase at. They buy their machinery from John Deere or Case IH at extremely high prices. They have no negotiating power and are squeezed between these massive c…

The fix is more expensive food. Everyone loves the mom and pop businesses but shops at walmart for those rock bottom prices. We can have our fresh family farms back, but you're paying double for your food. We have the system we have because people value cheap/affordable over everything, regardless of what they upvote on the internet.

> Everyone loves the mom and pop businesses but shops at walmart for those rock bottom prices.

People shop where they can afford to shop. Walmart is famous for not paying people enough to shop anywhere except walmart. The fix is to make sure that people earn a living wage and to actually enforce the Robinson–Patman Act and aggressively go after price fixing. Suddenly walmart's prices won't undercut the mom and pop places and they won't have to charge as much to just barely survive. Opening a store that isn't part of some massive chain would stand a chance at being profitable and affordable. More competition leads to more innovation and more opportunities.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#102

Post by Spooky23 »

WarmWash wrote: post #48
jwcooper wrote: post #27

The problem isn't with the farmers. The problem is the monopolies that surround the farmers. They buy their seeds from massive corporations that have patents on seeds. They sell their produce to global multi-national corporations that set the prices they'll purchase at. They buy their machinery from John Deere or Case IH at extremely high prices. They have no negotiating power and are squeezed between these massive c…

The fix is more expensive food. Everyone loves the mom and pop businesses but shops at walmart for those rock bottom prices. We can have our fresh family farms back, but you're paying double for your food. We have the system we have because people value cheap/affordable over everything, regardless of what they upvote on the internet.

That’s not really true, but we’ve incentivized mass scale farming. I know farmers who can sell produce at competitive prices growing in Upstate NY, but they only get a couple of harvests of most crops, even with advanced techniques that let many crops get planted in March.

The government spent lots of money to turn the California and Arizona deserts into the garden of America. New Jersey planted subdivisions.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#103

Post by runako »

jmyeet wrote: post #75
toomuchtodo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson is not for me, the lesson is for these farmers who will go bankrupt, lose their farms and land, and commit suicide in some quantities of each. Perhaps don't trust someone who only tells you what you want to hear, and yet never delivers. Most unfortunately, the lesson will fall on deaf ears while we all carry on. A cautionary tale, for sure. Sometimes we trust the wrong people. Fool me once, shame on you. F…

No candidate is owed votes. Candidates must earn votes. If voters didn't vote for your candidate, your candidate failed. The voters didn't fail. The candidate did. And what we have in the modern Democratic Party is an intentional choice not to promise or do anything but to expect votes and simply say "Trump bad" (which he is). That's not a policy platform. And people, rightly, rejected it. If that creates problems fo…

> what we have in the modern Democratic Party is an intentional choice not to promise or do anything but to expect votes

Do people really believe this? That there are no policy programs from Democratic candidates? Nothing on healthcare, childcare, eldercare, education, housing, energy? Just no promises at all?

I ask because that is obviously false, but it seems to be a common misapprehension. I'm wondering what candidates could do beyond talking about their policies at length (which they do) that would get people to believe that they have policies.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#104

Post by 9rx »

lithocarpus wrote: post #57
WarmWash wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fix is more expensive food. Everyone loves the mom and pop businesses but shops at walmart for those rock bottom prices. We can have our fresh family farms back, but you're paying double for your food. We have the system we have because people value cheap/affordable over everything, regardless of what they upvote on the internet.

This is true to a degree, but, if big ag subsidies were phased out, small local farms would have a better chance of being viable. I guess you could say this raises prices, but on the flip side, small farm prices could start to come down if they were more viable.

> if big ag subsidies were phased out, small local farms would have a better chance of being viable.

Maybe. The subsidies that we always hear about is a portion of insurance premiums paid by the government. Presumably if the government pulled out of the subsidy, the risk/reward of insurance would tilt towards not having it. Many farmers already forego having insurance even with the reduced price.

Which would mean nothing until something bad happens. But when something does happen, that means some big farms could collapse. But it would also mean small farms are just as likely to collapse right beside.

I expect you are ultimately right: That once the collapses occur, it would be hard to rebuild a large farm before it ends up collapsing once more, leaving farms unable to ever grow beyond being small again. But is that what you imagine for small farms?

Of course, that's all theoretical. In the real world, the government wouldn't let the food supply fall apart like that. If farms didn't have insurance, it would simply come in and bail them out when destructive events occur. It is a lot simpler, and no doubt cheaper (the subsidy is offered on the condition of being willing to give production data back in return), to implement a solution ahead of time rather than panicking later.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#105

Post by ericd »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #70
cperciva wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cattle are inefficient consumers of grain , but highly efficient consumers of grass . Most land used for pasture can't effectively be used for anything else.

This argument might sound good, but those cattle are fed crops, not just sunshine and the grass they walk on. Most crops grown in the US are used as animal feed. They are dependent on arable land that could be used to grow food for humans directly and much more efficiently. We just like the taste, so we accept the inefficiency.

[dead]

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#106

Post by bix6 »

keithnz wrote: post #25
tananaev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend checking history of deregulation of agricultural industry in New Zealand. It didn't lose the industry. Actually the opposite happened. Persistent government subsidies are almost never a good idea long term. I understand that some temporary support might make sense in some cases, but not permanent one. It prevents innovation and optimization. And in the long run it usually makes more damage.

Having been in the NZ ag tech industry for the last 25+ years, US subsidies and tarrifs drove a lot of innovation in NZ (also Europe) and then US manufacturers in the spaces I've been in have pretty much collapsed when faced with better tech as farmers switched to using our ( or the European) tech.

Curious what sort of tech? Like better tractors and such?

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#107

Post by csours »

Of all the guns that rural Americans love, the humble foot-gun is the most beloved.

---

Someone else can argue the morality, ethics, economics, and politics of it all, but VERY simply, US Federal Government Agencies are machines for redistributing wealth from cities to rural areas.

Rural America voted quite heavily to stop those subsidies. That's what efficiency means.

---

Maturity means suspending judgement and listening to people you disagree with, but I feel that's very out of style these days.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#108

Post by autoexec »

sgc wrote: post #81
reillyse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has a very robust, high quality and cheap food system. Food is extremely high quality, environment is managed and wealth is distributed with support for small farmers. High quality food is a fraction in Europe of what you pay in the US. There is additional cost to taxpayers of Europe but US taxpayers are paying a ton for the US system too but just getting worse outcomes. This can be done.

This is like the education or gun debates, or basically any quality of life message you might have. It's almost impossible to get your message heard. There will always be some non-reason why everything is oh-so-different in the US. It's very frustrating to live here with all the matter-of-fact head-in-the-sand know-it-all bloviating. Meanwhile our teachers are suffering enormously, our education is terrible, our road…

There are some very wealthy people who have spent massive amounts of time and money making things they way they are. They've got things set up in a way that benefits them. They go to great lengths to keep Americans convinced that the way things are can't be changed and it's an uphill battle trying to convince Americans otherwise. Even if most Americans wise up they'll still use the resources they have to stop the changes we want from happening. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know it won't be easy.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#109

Post by thinkcontext »

itake wrote: post #26
jadenPete wrote: post #6

This question may be naive, but why is the agricultural industry so subsidized? I understand the moral argument, but why, economically, does subsidizing farms result in a more efficient allocation of resources? I've heard that it's because farming as a business is full of unpredictability, but if that were the case, wouldn't there be a significant market for private insurance, and wouldn't the cost of that insurance…

You can't eat private insurance. The consequences of not being able to produce enough calories is severe. It is much better to overproduce and everyone gets fed than producing just enough and a climate event erases out 20% of our calorie production.

The US produces an unbelievably enormous calorie surplus way beyond what is needed for the health of the country and in fact its detrimental.

The biggest is not even used as food, over half of corn acreage is used for ethanol. That's an amount of land that's truly beyond comprehension. Its a horrible program as well, corn ethanol is worse than the gasoline it replaces in terms of carbon footprint when taking land use into account. And it raises the price of food. And we even subsidize it multiple times, we subsidize the crop as corn and then we subsidize it as ethanol. Biodiesel and renewable diesel (different products) have spiked in recent years as well, most of that is made from soy, canola, or corn oil. They have similar problems though aren't as bad as corn ethanol.

Another huge negative surplus is the amount of liquid calories, mainly soda, that are consumed. Most nutrition science that I've read points to the enormous amount of liquid calories as the part of the US diet that is driving obesity epidemic. There are of course other aspects to the obesity as well.

Finally, substituting some of the US consumption of beef with chicken and some of the chicken with beans.

To recap US overproduces calories to the point that it hurts the country. It damages the land, the ocean with dead zones, the climate with carbon. We pay for it multiple times in subsidies and with higher food prices. It hurts our health which we pay for in suffering, shortened lives and health costs.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#110

Post by autoexec »

exabrial wrote: post #83

Oddly enough the way to help is to removing the subsidies. Exploiting famers, using them as a middleman to the American taxpayer, is extremely lucrative.

Some subsidies are useful. Some aren't. The trick is to stop the ones that aren't helping without collapsing our food supply.
Post reply on HN