Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there • Hacker News Board

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#171

Post by CalRobert » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #6

We gave up on farms in the 80s. Agriculture is just another industrial process now. Since we subsidize growing vegetables in the desert and abroad, the market for stuff like vegetables, dairy and meats is hyper-consolidates. There are viable farms on the fringes, but they cannot get capital to grow and cannot compete. I grew up in an area of upstate NY that was a breadbasket at one time, with a rich, diverse agricult…

An illustrative discussion of the death of small dairy : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368542

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#172

Post by dang » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #122

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many engineers in Europe live on small farms 20+ miles from their employer? Look, engineers can get jobs in the United States without owning a car, too -- but they'd better live in an urban area with public transit, or work remotely (and live in an area where they can still get where they need by transit, bike, or walking). I suppose it's possible that engineers in the French or German equivalents of rural farm c…

>How many engineers in Europe live on small farms 20+ miles from their employer? Not many, because their urban planning is better. Bottom line, car culture is not some fundamental invariant of reality for getting a job, as the original comment was suggesting.

Please don't take HN threads further into national or regional flamewar. It's not necessary and never ends well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#173

Post by neonate » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #145

SilasX wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How many engineers in Europe live on small farms 20+ miles from their employer? Not many, because their urban planning is better. Bottom line, car culture is not some fundamental invariant of reality for getting a job, as the original comment was suggesting.

What does living on a farm have to do with urban planning?

Probably a lot more in Europe. Density there is so much higher that you really can't compare their rural areas to those of the U.S. In Germany you can live on a farm and commute by train to work in a city.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#174

Post by SilasX » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #172

SilasX wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How many engineers in Europe live on small farms 20+ miles from their employer? Not many, because their urban planning is better. Bottom line, car culture is not some fundamental invariant of reality for getting a job, as the original comment was suggesting.

Please don't take HN threads further into national or regional flamewar. It's not necessary and never ends well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What should I have said differently to substantiate my point that that circumstance wasn't an inherent necessity?

Citing "they're already doing X" is the best way to refute "things have to be not-X", right?

I wasn't trying to start a national flamewar, and I don't see how what I said was unnecessarily inflammatory. If no one has a better way, I think I was within the guidelines.

In case it matters, I don't live in the place I was saying does things better.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#175

Post by burner831234 » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #36

AgloeDreams wrote: post #14

I kinda felt like this was an article that had a missing Character, like covering the 2016 election but not mentioning Bernie or Comey. The reality is that Walmart's Chinese-sourced non-food goods (including clothing, auto parts, and general household supplies) were priced 50+% cheaper than many non-food (and higher profit) items one could get from a grocery store, once you're at Walmart then, well you're at Walmart.…

It would seem the issue is with low incomes rather than with Dollar General.

This is the thing @lotsofpulp that everyone else seems to be missing. The amount of your income that is available to spend on goods after all of your other fixed expenditures. This has been so solidly tracked in terms of stagnant wages and applies to the SMB in the area as well.

Open a grocery and try to staff folks and have consistent supply of goods. Deal with shrinkage, spoilage and inefficient supply chains.

Meanwhile Wal-Mart (or other MNC) has a ton of capital, their employees are on social services and the cost of their goods for this town's store is in a negotiation of not one store but thousands.

People spend what they can. The middle class shows us this in their consumption of target over walmart and other such brand divides.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#176

Post by throwaway0xb » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #21

Can confirm, live in a rural farming/ranching area. Drive past farms (vegetable, grass, ornamental, and commodity) every day. Local grocery store trucks produce in from all over the country. The local grocery stores (Wal Mart, HEB) are also higher priced than even their stores in the nearby suburban area. We drive weekly to Aldi for most of our groceries, or to the bigger, nicer HEB with better food. The local farmer…

I grew up in rural Texas and when I visit back home I've noticed the farm stands are considerably worse than what I remember them being growing up. On the other hand I live in rural New England now and the farm stands here are excellent, albeit strictly seasonal.

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#177

Post by Animats » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

Think of it as the end of rural sprawl.

Most small towns were built to support surrounding farming and ranching. Once that stopped being labor-intensive, the small towns lost their economic reason for being. Farming today is something like 1.2% of the US workforce. Most of the income in many small towns is now from Social Security, disability, and welfare for the people who didn't leave. In time, they will die off. Their town will then go on this list.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni...

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#178

Post by zokier » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #6

We gave up on farms in the 80s. Agriculture is just another industrial process now. Since we subsidize growing vegetables in the desert and abroad, the market for stuff like vegetables, dairy and meats is hyper-consolidates. There are viable farms on the fringes, but they cannot get capital to grow and cannot compete. I grew up in an area of upstate NY that was a breadbasket at one time, with a rich, diverse agricult…

> We gave up on farms in the 80s.

1880s or 1980s?

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#179

Post by tomohawk » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #177

Think of it as the end of rural sprawl. Most small towns were built to support surrounding farming and ranching. Once that stopped being labor-intensive, the small towns lost their economic reason for being. Farming today is something like 1.2% of the US workforce. Most of the income in many small towns is now from Social Security, disability, and welfare for the people who didn't leave. In time, they will die off. T…

Sprawl is non-contiguous growth - subdividing land for housing that is not adjacent to already subdivided land. These towns are not that. In most cases, they are where they were planned to be based on euclidian zoning.

A lot of the small towns are gone. The towns that used to be medium sized are now small and its hard to get services and groceries there.

A lot of these towns would be viable if there was decent internet.

Missouri Start Quilt Co started in a small town and used the available buildings and infrastructure to jump start their business. Would not have been possible without good internet.

https://www.missouriquiltco.com/content/aboutus

Re: Farm country feeds America, but try buying groceries there

#180

Post by mjevans » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #167

refurb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? At some point in time these people had $X. They decided that it was better for them to shop at Walmart versus their local grocer. Is this surprising? No. Walmart offers better selection and prices. Economy of scale plays a big part in that. They had every choice to keep spending their dollars at their local grocer. And they decided not to.

The never-ending blame-shifting has to stop. Nobody killed the local grocer except for consumers. Consumers killed the middle class. Sometime, somewhere, someone walked into a store and saw a Philco radio made in Pennsylvania by unionized middle-class manufacturing workers and a cheap Japanese/Tawianese copy of the radio and bought the cheap radio. Sometime, somewhere, someone saw a mailer from Walmart and saw that t…

Competition only works for similarly sized players in a fair market.

As soon as any portion of the above is invalidated it's time to have a strongly regulated market, rather than just a lightly regulated one (the fair part).