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Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

chicagotribune.com

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Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#111

Post by FireBeyond »

isaacdl wrote: post #60
hoistbypetard wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane. While that sounds like a bad rule when I first read it, I smell Chesterton's fence here. I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it.

It's a safety measure. When it comes to regulating aviation, in general, the FAA is concerned with protecting the public. The "public" doesn't generally have the knowledge to evaluate a pilot, aircraft, or the operation of an aviation venture. So, the FAA puts rules around these things. The private pilot is held to a much lower standard of skill than a commercial or airline pilot. But, that means that the FAA doesn't…

> If you aren't under pressure to make your paycheck, you're less likely to take your passengers into marginal weather. (One of the most dangerous occupations in aviation is medivac/aviation EMS. There, the pressure isn't generally monetary but moral: you want to help a sick patient, so you take more risks.)

Critical care (but not flight) paramedic (though I have transferred patients hundreds of times to them):

When we request Heli EMS tht providers are given patient details, but the pilot is strictly given "pickup" and "destination" (they used to be given patient weight, and may still be depending on location and size of helo, but generally not) - the goal being "evaluate safety based on weather conditions only, not a patient condition that tugs the heart strings".

Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#112

Post by bombcar »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #103
jckahn wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine there's some satisfaction in feeding people that money can't buy.

There’s an exceedingly strong cultural drive to keep farmland “in the family” even if it impoverishes or otherwise inconveniences the descendants. I had a coworker once who lives in this region and owns some amount of farmland in a similar situation. He could have sold it and moved his family to at any point; even now I think it would be easily done, if not as easy as in the past. But of course he still lives there,…

There's opportunities for the right person out there, I've seen it a few times - young man (or woman) who wants to run a farm or rural business or whatnot, either marries into the family or becomes "basically adopted" and inherits the business or farm.

You have tons of businesses that are viable (produce enough money to support a family) as long as you never load it with debt; because they do NOT produce enough to support a family and the debt load that would come from buying it.

So they're unsaleable.

Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#113

Post by FireBeyond »

cyberax wrote: post #105
hoistbypetard wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane. While that sounds like a bad rule when I first read it, I smell Chesterton's fence here. I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it.

> I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it. It's simple. Getting a commercial pilot license is a much more involved process than getting a private pilot license. A private pilot needs just around 30 hours of flight time to get a license. A commercial pilot needs at least 250 hours and a medical certificate that needs to be renewed periodically.

> A commercial pilot needs at least 250 hours and a medical certificate that needs to be renewed periodically.

That's true, but for anything other than the most podunk regional airline, you're going to need 1,500 PIC (pilot-in-command) hours before the airline will even consider you (although I believe I heard due to pilot shortages some airlines were willing to consider 1,000 hours).

Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#114

Post by thescriptkiddie »

in the long view, much of the US's economic success (prior to the post-wwii economic miracle) can be attributed directly or indirectly to cheap and plentiful food. this of course means that farming is not a very profitable business. but that could change if a handful of large corporations buy up a plurality of the farms and exert their monopoly power to push prices up. this would be very bad.

Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#115

Post by b112 »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #109
harmmonica wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the friendliest way to reply, but are you saying 65% does not mean most? Just wondering if we're violently agreeing. I shouldn't have said 80%. Was just trying to articulate that most is a high threshold and also not defined as an absolute number.

Cambridge does not have the best definition, imo, but even going by that the first definition would mean any plurality would qualify as "most" - setting the threshold potentially lower than 50%. I prefer Merriam Webster, which is far more clear. Definition 2 (defn 1 does not apply in this context): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/most

We have multiple parties in Canada.

There may be a minority government elected, with 40% of the seats, and 30%, 20%, 10% to other parties.

The 40% party will be described as winning the most seats.

Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#117

Post by teekert »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #44
xnx wrote: post #32

Farming is somehow still regarded as being some mom-and-pop heartland thing rather than the highly optimized manufacturing operation it has been for decades. Direct farm employment is now just 1.2% of the population. It was 40% in 1900. The special treatments farms and farmers get is an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.

The highly optimized manufacturing operation has made farming into a powerful tool of statecraft internationally. Other countries become dependent on our beans and corn to [indirectly] feed their people or for inputs for their own industries. That gives us diplomatic leverage. Once you start thinking about that, a lot of the mystery or 'inefficiency' of farming in the USA makes more sense. For example, the subsidies…

It’s worth noting that this industrial scale is only possible with pesticides and herbicides that are very bad for insects and suspected hormone disruptors and carcinogens, etc.

Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#118

Post by 9rx »

arbor_day wrote: post #62

I own the farm and farm it in Illinois. I owe the land through an LLC, because farming is dangerous and I don't want to go bankrupt if somebody sues me. Farms are expensive and hard to subdivide, so people will put them into a legal entity and pass down to the next generation via a trust. All of my neighbors are doing the same, so we're all counted as "not farmers" here Farming is a terrible business. My few hundred…

> Farming is a terrible business. My few hundred acres (maybe worth $5M) will only churn out a few hundred grand in profit

Well, it is ultimately a real estate business. The "hundred grand" in profit is really there only to support the mortgage payments — meaning that's what other farmers are counting on, so they're going to drive the prices down to that point. It is like a tech startup. You are counting on the assets increasing in value when you exit. That is where the profit will eventually come from, hopefully. It is not a business for everyone, but I like it.

> Many of the buyers keep growing their farms because it's a status symbol.

And because the fun parts of the job end too quickly when you don't have enough acres. I'd at least like to double my acreage. That is where I think I'd no longer be in a position of "That's it? I want to keep going!" and instead "That was fun, but I think I've had enough."

That said, the machines keeps getting bigger, whether the farmer likes it or not, so perhaps in that future I'll need even more land to satisfy the pangs.

Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#119

Post by freeopinion »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #99
mbreese wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is... Chalk that up to my science reading skills -- I skimmed the text and skipped quickly to the charts, figures, and legends...

This is a use case where I think a current LLM shines. Ask it to summarize the important points of n papers, and slow read only the ones that pique your interest. It won't be perfect, but it will save you a ton of time while letting you focus on the things that need more attention.

I'm not anti-LLM even if the following statement sounds like it.

I don't trust LLMs, even to summarize for me. I have to fact-check every single statement. For instance, if I ask ChatGPT, "Is PLA more dense than ABS?" it answers, "No, PLA is not more dense than ABS." Those are direct quotes. In the third paragraph, ChatGPT says, "So technically, PLA is denser than ABS, not less — I misspoke earlier."

I find LLMs good for using words that I didn't think of. I can then reword a search to get better search results.

To be fair, the cherry-picked example I used above sounds a lot like a human. Humans make such mistakes and corrections. If a human had given me that response, I would shrug and ask more questions. But it would make that human not be my go to source.

It makes me shudder to think about code that is written in such a manner.

Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

#120

Post by harmmonica »

b112 wrote: post #115
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cambridge does not have the best definition, imo, but even going by that the first definition would mean any plurality would qualify as "most" - setting the threshold potentially lower than 50%. I prefer Merriam Webster, which is far more clear. Definition 2 (defn 1 does not apply in this context): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/most

We have multiple parties in Canada. There may be a minority government elected, with 40% of the seats, and 30%, 20%, 10% to other parties. The 40% party will be described as winning the most seats.

Ha, I gotta say after reading your reply I feel kind of dumb for even saying the 80%; I had blinders on. Most, when it's relative, is the highest of a set even if that number is super low. Totally spaced on that when I asked, but I was fixated on how it's used to define something that's a percentage like in the 65% example. It happens so frequently in journalism and it's frustrating because it's trying to make an argument that sometimes the numbers themselves don't support.

Anyway, appreciate you reminding me (and I deserved to feel dumb so also making me feel a bit dumb about it).

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