By definition, it is.
Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
231–240 of 284 posts
Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#232[flagged]
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738071 and marked it off-topic. It's not OK to follow users around HN and attack them for things they've posted in other threads, no matter who they are, what the topic is or whatever was in the original comment that you found objectionable. That's not what we do here.
Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the ick that comes with running other businesses Also non-judgmental curious question: what is this "ick" related to non-farming businesses?
Many if not most businesses involve lots of ethical decisions where you have to choose between taking advantage of people or making less money. Depending on one's values though I'd see something similar in some modern conventional farming where the land is being degraded, but there's still the righteousness that you are feeding people so it's justified. There are ways to farm and some other kinds of businesses too th…
I should clarify that I mean directly financially profitable. Obviously growing good food even if you lose money at it means people including your family and friends get to eat good food which has other benefits than cash.
Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#234I 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…
Ouch. Better in some ways and worse than others than the restaurant business, I reckon.
My mom's relatives have a long horn "farm" complying with the minimum requirements to claim various tax exemptions. :sigh: Their family business is aviation real estate, services, equipment, and aircraft.
I can walk to where sorghum and field corn is grown here in hill country because that's the major trade in these parts, apart from selling land for new housing developments.
Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#235I 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…
there is no type of farming that will beat t bills? none? people arent working on ideas to make farming more profitable? i just dont believe that american farms, which cover unimaginably vast areas and are unimaginably numerous, could be continuously funded by banks if they were losing money. thats impossible. subsidies cant explain it. i think youre lying or leaving out some context
> there is no type of farming that will beat t bills? none?
There is no type of farming that beats t-bills today if you buy the land today. There is a saying in farming: "Buying farmland never makes sense the day you buy it." The land you bought 50 years ago is looking pretty damn good now, though. The economic bet farmers not cashing out (or buying in) are making is that trend will continue.
Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I've been thinking about this situation as "the bakery trap". The labor dimension here is that the best possible career move for the person you've spent the past n years training is to i…
"The E-Myth" books talk about this (which is the worst name ever because the E is Entrepreneur not E as in email or emachines lol) - many small businesses are NOT small businesses, they're a job you own, and you can't sell a job.
First accountant I met with a year or so after a friend and I started our business 25+ years ago said: you guys don't have a business, you have a paid hobby.
Jokes on them because it's even less of a business now.
Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#237The US needs another Orville Freeman, someone who understands the intricacies of both economics and food production. Pretty much no-one in a position to affect subsidies and the legal system has a clue. And this isn't unique to the USA, watching Clarson's Farm is a prime example of a bunch of know-nothing politicians screwing things up. Which is how for example in TX, half of the rural community is getting AG exempti…
I'm not from the US, so no idea if Thomas Massie would be anything approaching what you described? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie
Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the price of food goes up, the public revolts. Not without a good reason honestly. I think you could definitely move the subsidies around, but subsidizing food is a basic good idea for any state really.
The US government also has a program of subsidizing/mandating biofuels that raise prices of both food and fuel for supposed environmental and energy security reasons that mostly don't pass a sniff test.
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Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US government also has a program of subsidizing/mandating biofuels that raise prices of both food and fuel for supposed environmental and energy security reasons that mostly don't pass a sniff test.
Yeah, biofuels is more of a PR program. You could cut that one without any real harm, and you could definitely cut back on corn in general and promote some other stuff or move things around
> You could cut that one without any real harm
The risk is going back to the time where we left corn in piles to rot. That's not harmful in any kind of immediate sense, but losing that energy to waste heat instead of converting it back into usable energy is less than ideal.
> and you could definitely cut back on corn
It's not that you try to grow too much corn, but its yield can be pretty unpredictable. Last year, with favourable weather, yields around here were nearly 100 bushels per acre higher than pre-harvest estimates! That is a hell of a lot of extra product that nobody ever expected before the combines started rolling.
And if you plan for those freak years every year, you're going to end up short more often than not. There is a lot of guesswork involved. That is what ethanol was originally intended to be: A way to buffer that guesswork.
> in general and promote some other stuff
Like what?
1. The consumer dictates what you grow. The consumer loves corn (mostly because it turns into meat). You'd have to compel the consumer to eat something else, and that is going to be one hell of an uphill battle. Many organizations have been trying to get people away from meat for decades and meat consumption is only going up. Meat doesn't necessarily have to come from corn, granted, but other options are more expensive. The consumer isn't going to pay more for meat either.
2. Corn equipment is compatible with other human foods (beans, wheat, etc.) that are also being grown in the crop rotation. If you expect a corn/bean/wheat farmer to start growing carrots in place of corn, good luck. They'd never be able to afford the capital expenditure to add carrot equipment to their lineup.
Re: Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually an FAA regulation. If you are not a licensed commercial pilot, there are extremely strict rules on how and when you can accept ANY money for flying, use of an airplane, etc. 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.
> 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 worse than that. It's due to some weakening in the checks and balances system of US federal regulations, as well as a hole in the system.
Historically, laws were written by the legislative branch (congress), enforced by the executive branch (the office of the president), and overseen by the judicial branch (federal courts). When oversight works, all three have to agree for an enforcement action to take place.
In somewhat recent history, congress has been passing regulations much less, instead passing authorizations for the executive branch to write their own regulations. On top of this, the judicial branch had, until last year, allowed executive organizations to use their own judges, without juries, and follow their own interpretation of laws and regulations, when it conflicted with a literal interpretation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._Jarkesy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra... for the recent rulings overturning those precedents.
The effects of those last two cases are still working their way through the relevant bureaucracies, so until then, the FAA will keep with their current interpretation of gaining experience as a form of commercial income (https://www.faa.gov/media/15611) and having a reputation as form of advertising (https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...).
Even then, there's a hole in the system that especially impacts overly broad definitions of commercial activity, which as far as I'm aware, no other executive organization has taken anywhere close to the extreme of the FAA.
That hole is that even with the precedent of the recent supreme court rulings, they only take effect when something goes to the courts. With real commercial activity, this happens regularly and often preemptively, because the costs and resources needed to take something to court are easily recovered by the extra income or savings of a ruling that follows proper checks and balances.
On the other hand, there is no incentive to spend the money and resources needed to regain rights for non-commercial activities, like carpooling (or airplanepooling) where no one is earning anything.