Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance • Hacker News Board

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#121

Post by bruce511 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:24 AM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #62

nemomarx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pricing anything into the cost of food would be political poison. Paying farmers to grow nothing is considered preferable to that

It's not always about price. Paying farmers to grow nothing ensures they stay open if we need them to grow something. When I farmed we had set aside land paid for by the government. When there were predicted shortages on food in the future, we were allowed to farm that ground. You don't want farmers going under. It just takes one bad year that way and we're all fucked. I've never lived through a proper famine, but Gr…

This exactly.

The fuss made about agricultural subsidies by non-farmers is misguided. Dropping subsidies doesn't make food cheaper, it makes it go away.

Consumers are addicted to cheap food, so they pay taxes instead to make up the difference. Given a progressive tax system this actually is a very efficient approach to take. And overall, as a % of the total budget, these subsidies are insignificant.

What is hurting farmers are reduced markets. USAid used to buy up a lot of surplus production (effectively a back-door subsidy), lots got exported to China et al. Given the economic antagonism towards the US (thanks to things like tarifs and insults) demand for US food exports either dropped naturally (eg Canada) or with reciprocal tarifs (eg China).

Politicians like to say "we don't make things here anymore" ignoring the most fundamental production of all (farming). They destabilize foreign trade, and (if we look at more labor intensive crops) target farm workers for deportation.

To be fair, agriculture states are also red states, so it's fair to say they voted for this.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#122

Post by IG_Semmelweiss » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:36 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #121

Loughla wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always about price. Paying farmers to grow nothing ensures they stay open if we need them to grow something. When I farmed we had set aside land paid for by the government. When there were predicted shortages on food in the future, we were allowed to farm that ground. You don't want farmers going under. It just takes one bad year that way and we're all fucked. I've never lived through a proper famine, but Gr…

This exactly. The fuss made about agricultural subsidies by non-farmers is misguided. Dropping subsidies doesn't make food cheaper, it makes it go away. Consumers are addicted to cheap food, so they pay taxes instead to make up the difference. Given a progressive tax system this actually is a very efficient approach to take. And overall, as a % of the total budget, these subsidies are insignificant. What is hurting f…

The vast majority of countries have barriers preventing our highly efficient production from selling in their countries. Think Argentina and meats, Switzerland and all things cattle, EU and pretty much everything.

Tariffs were one way to pry open those markets, but of course, the few agricultural products that were already selling , were affected in the retailiation . It will take some time for things to sort out.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#123

Post by dpe82 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:38 AM UTC

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…

It's not just that; being a very small undifferentiated supplier in a volatile commodities market with very high fixed capital costs, unpredictable/uncontrollable production capacity and long production lead times is a very difficult business, regardless of the industry.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#124

Post by bruce511 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:44 AM UTC

csours wrote: post #107

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 list…

I agree. Personally I don't understand the love that agriculture shows to the Republican party, but hey you get what you vote for.

It seems like this whole year has been implementing policy after policy that screws over agriculture.

USAid (big purchaser) gone. 40 billion sent to Argentina. Antagonize Canadians (Canadians !!) so they boycott American produce. Tarif China so they'll reciprocate on soy beans. Deport farm workers. Tarif imports of steel so machine costs go up. Tarif fertilizer so production costs go up. Tarif everything else to reduce consumer spending power.

Despite all this farmers will continue to vote republican this year, and in future years. I presume they have reasons, but I confess they are hard to understand.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#125

Post by UltraSane » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:47 AM UTC

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.

Please provide examples

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#126

Post by jiggawatts » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:57 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #124

csours wrote: post #107

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 list…

I agree. Personally I don't understand the love that agriculture shows to the Republican party, but hey you get what you vote for. It seems like this whole year has been implementing policy after policy that screws over agriculture. USAid (big purchaser) gone. 40 billion sent to Argentina. Antagonize Canadians (Canadians !!) so they boycott American produce. Tarif China so they'll reciprocate on soy beans. Deport far…

I've been curious about this myself, and I listened to some pro-Trump people who seem otherwise intelligent that tried to explain this effect.

One common theme has been that farmers are by necessity highly independent. They can't rely on government services as much as city folk, because everything and everyone is potentially an hour's drive away. They don't see the effect of their taxes being spent, because their local roads are dirt roads, there's no traffic lights, no police cars[1] or ambulances zipping by on the regular, etc...

Conversely, they do get frustrated by the likes of the EPA turning up -- invariably city folk with suits and dress shoes -- telling them what to do. "You can't burn this" or "You can't dump that!". More commonly "you can't cut down trees on your land that you thought were your property".

Their perception of government is that it violates their God-given rights regularly and gives little in return.

The further the seat of power, the worse their opinion of it. Local councils they might tolerate, state governments they view with suspicion, and the federal government may as well be on another planet.

Hence, their votes are easily swayed by the "reduce federal government" rhetoric.

We all know this is as an obvious falsehood: Trump grew the size of the federal government with his Big Beautiful Bill! So did every Republican government before him for quite a while now!

That doesn't matter. Propaganda works. The message resonates. The voters will vote against their own interests over and over and over if they keep hearing something that resonates with what they feel.

PS: A great example of this are the thousands of unemployed people that lost their coal mining jobs. Trump lied through his teeth and told them they would get their mining jobs back. Hillary told them they could be retrained as tech support or whatever. They. Did. Not. Like. That. They wanted their jobs back! So they voted for Trump, who had zero chance of returning them to employment because they had been replaced by automation and larger, more powerful mining machines. Their jobs were gone permanently, so they doubled down by voting against the person who promised to pull them out of that hole. Sadly, this is a recurring theme in politics throughout the world.

[1] As an example, this is why they're mostly pro-gun! They know viscerally that if someone broke into their property, they'd have to defend themselves because the local police can't get there in time to save them.perception.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#127

Post by lateforwork » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:10 AM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #117

insane_dreamer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's just shocking to me how certain demographics are so eager to vote against their own interests. 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 misunder…

That's like saying nobody ever gets swindled. If you think someone got swindled that should be a strong signal to reevaluate your understanding of how they wanted to spend their money.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#128

Post by tw04 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:13 AM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #30

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.

It would appear that to remain competitive they had massive consolidation, and with that an increase in animal density leading to major issues with water pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CraFarms So I guess yay deregulation, now with more capitalist privatized profits with socialized costs!

Downvoting without engaging in a discussion kind of directly violates both the spirit and rules around here.

I've posted pretty solid evidence that dregulation, did not, in fact improve the agricultural situation for New Zealand. It absolutely made a subset of corporations and mega-farmers extremely rich at the expense of the natural resources the rest of the country shares. Would LOVE to hear the arguments about how that's a good thing for the people of New Zealand or our planet as a whole.

But then again, that would require thoughtful discourse...

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#129

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:22 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #112

lateforwork wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s easy to say that. I grew up in a dairy county in upstate ny. Solid democrats. The board room of the local farm bureau had photos of FDR on the wall. 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 embra…

> The party really abandoned rural voters and farmers.

Not to defend the Dem party (only the lesser of two evils, at least lately), but in what way? Because farm subsidies seem fairly consistent regardless of which party was in power[0]

[0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-commodity-...

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#130

Post by 9rx » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:49 AM UTC

foofoo55 wrote: post #100

9rx wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> supply management is far better than the alternatives. Why, then, only dairy, poultry, eggs, and — at least until 2007 when the government bought back the quota — tobacco production? If the farmers growing the foods that are actually deemed important in a healthy diet end up bankrupt, no big deal? > It also ensures the market price is fair to farmers. Well, it creates a two-tier system where the 'blessed' farmers w…

Supply management does have its problems, but given the involvement of imperfect humans nothing will be without problems. Canadian pork, beef, and vegetable farmers that I personally know also complain that they can't enact supply management for their sector. They also envy the appearance of high profits, an easy life, and government subsidies & bailouts (yes, Canadian dairy farmers still receive those) for those in…

> consumers get stable and somewhat realistic prices [...] while farmers also get stable income.

Which? You can't have both. Input costs are subject to the whims of non-supply managed markets. When, say, input costs rise either the farmer has to absorb that cost (unstable income), or the cost has to be passed on to the customer (unstable consumer price).

> and supply

Oh? https://www.ctvnews.ca/atlantic/article/some-maritime-grocer..., https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/cana..., https://farmersforum.com/cracks-in-supply-management/