111–120 of 432 posts
There’s only two meat packers… two. Where are the cattle farmers to go? It’s like this across the industry thanks to monopolies like ConAgra, Tyson’s, etc.
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It's just shocking to me how certain demographics are so eager to vote against their own interests. I mean, name one thing that Trump has done to help farmers more than he hurt them with the tariffs? (Subsidies they already had, regardless of the party in power.) What are they getting in return for their vote? The safety of knowing that trans athletes are banned and some Guatemalans in far away "liberal" cities have…
GOP has long pursued a strategy of getting rural whites to vote against their self interest. This is why they play up cultural issues such as trans people using women's bathrooms and such other topics that uneducated people can readily grasp.
The party really abandoned rural voters and farmers. Money in politics didn’t just affect Republicans — the democrats abandoned the traditional party structures and followed the money. There’s no more democratic picnics, etc.
I’m not defending the GOP. They’ve embraced evil imo. But people followed their message because nobody else is talking to them.
"These loss estimates reflect national averages; actual costs of production and returns vary by region, management decisions and ownership structure. For example, producers who own their farmland may face lower total costs by avoiding cash rental expenses, resulting in higher returns."
So, can we trust this to say what it appears to be saying? Or might it be meaningless like many broad averages, and we should use more specific data that includes supplier behaviors?
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Growing excess amount of food is part of food security, but farmers are going bankrupt because they focused on labor efficient agricultural commodity products to the exclusion of everything else. For many farmers, it's not even a full time job I rather we focus on increasing food security in other way. Maybe we shouldn't be turning corns into cows as that reduce the amount of energy we are able to access. But how do…
~60 million acres of corn and soybean in the US, the size of Oregon, is grown exclusively for biofuels. This is unnecessary as you mention, as are the subsidies to farmers for these row crops.
I haven't studied the economics of the biofuel farming.
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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.
Eh. The "inefficent calorie conversion" take is sort of lazy and misses the nuances. I just looked it uo, and it seems that only about 55% of yields are for feed, and there is definitely some more nuance there, since a lot of feed meal comes from stalks and parts if the plants humans would not consume. This notion of calorie inefficiency also misses the mark on what would be planted and harvested instead to contain t…
Indeed the argument to remove beef production has always struck me as an interesting starting point to a longer conversation.
So ok, cattle are gone, and there's now say 30% more grain on the market. Presumably this lowers prices to humans? Do people suddenly eat 30% more bread?
Health, and weight, issues aside (not sure an increase in carbs at the expense of protein is a win), do people just shift to other protein (like chicken). Does this mean a huge oversupply of grain, and a consequent drop in prices?
Let me put it another way. Does removing a market currently consuming 30-50% of the crop make things better or worse for farmers?
IMO Having livestock feed as a market keeps prices up, and as this article points out they're still too low. Killing off the cattle market kills off grain farmers too. I'm not sure that's the win people think it is.
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Almost 78% of farmers voted for Trump [1]. These are the guys that got Trump elected. Polls show that support for President Trump among farmers remains high, hovering around 50-60%. That means these are the guys that are keeping Trump in power. When support among farmers drops to 20% level GOP legislators will feel emboldened to remove Trump from power. [1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-farmers-voted-trump-feeling-210…
It's just shocking to me how certain demographics are so eager to vote against their own interests. I mean, name one thing that Trump has done to help farmers more than he hurt them with the tariffs? (Subsidies they already had, regardless of the party in power.) What are they getting in return for their vote? The safety of knowing that trans athletes are banned and some Guatemalans in far away "liberal" cities have…
Nobody votes against their own interests. That is something that only stupid caricatures do, not actual people. If it seems that way to you, that should be a very strong signal to reevaluate your understanding of the situation. Most likely, that means either nobody is representing their interests or you have misunderstood what their interests are.
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.
My point is this exactly mirrors the situation in health insurance, university degree prices, and many other industries we permanent subsidize. Companies create machines to use people to access the nearly unlimited pool of money available.
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~60 million acres of corn and soybean in the US, the size of Oregon, is grown exclusively for biofuels. This is unnecessary as you mention, as are the subsidies to farmers for these row crops.
Do those crops contribute to the negative numbers reported since most people don't buy biofuel? Or does it contribute something positive to the numbers with government subsidies guaranteeing returns? I haven't studied the economics of the biofuel farming.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/03/environm...
https://ethanolrfa.org/media-and-news/category/news-releases...
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Subsides tend to get absorbed by monopolists of all kind. This is why UBI is a nonstarter. It will just get absorbed by landlords. This is why you need to break up monopolies or tax them. The problem is societal endorsement of monopoly rights all kind to the point of invisibility. Witness any conversations about IP rights and lands. But also farmers are in this situation because they chosen to compete in an overcrowd…
Commodity markets are necessary for survival. If we cannot make them work as a society something is deeply wrong. Someone needs to be farming the food we all eat... If every farmer decided to just plant saffron who would farm the wheat and rice and vegetables that it is used to season?