Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

fb.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 432 posts

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#231

Post by spacecadet »

unglaublich wrote: post #166
cik wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, much of this is a political issue. America wants food standards that are different from many trading partners; fair enough. But it makes it impossible to export many farm goods as a result. This is outside of the current political climate, and has been going on for ages. It's just coming it a head now.

People outside of the US look down on inferior products like HFCS, bleached chicken, hormones used in beef cattle, prevalence of GM crops, the preventive use of antibiotics in poultry, hen battery cages, and permissive-by-default use of additives. If at least all those bad farming practices would lead to very affordable food, then one could make an argument for it... but currently the US just does worst of two worlds…

you do know those are industrial food manufacturing outcomes not farming outcomes? Ain't no one bleaching my families chickens, or giving their cattle growth hormones. Americans have been tricked and mislead by marketing and conglomerate, some of which is European.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#232

Post by hluska »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #182
unglaublich wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People outside of the US look down on inferior products like HFCS, bleached chicken, hormones used in beef cattle, prevalence of GM crops, the preventive use of antibiotics in poultry, hen battery cages, and permissive-by-default use of additives. If at least all those bad farming practices would lead to very affordable food, then one could make an argument for it... but currently the US just does worst of two worlds…

> bleached chicken I don't understand this meme that appears whenever US vs "Europe" food/crop standards are discussed. I Googled for more info, and I found this quote: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/15/nx... > Less than 5% of poultry processing facilities still use chlorine in rinses and sprays, according to the National Chicken Council, an industry group that surveyed its members. (Those tha…

That’s really the whole point - EU food standards indicate that the need to use acids to prevent bacteria growth is the problem. The EU system is based on having higher sanitation requirements at all steps from feed to cage to plate.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#233

Post by jfengel »

sellmesoap wrote: post #227
jfengel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republican party has a well polished message assigning blame to anyone else: gays, Muslims, illegal immigrants, trans people, feminists, government employees, etc etc etc. If only they can put those people in their places, prosperity will rain down on the proper Americans. As it did in the 1950s when those people didn't exist. It works. And it will keep working.

I think a lot of it comes down to the rural/urban divide, in a rural setting there's a lot less convinence, fewer services. A need to be more self suficcient. While urban settings have many amenities and services, they also tend to be hotspots for mental illness, crime, lack of housing for those who don't or can't make enough money to afford increasing rent and food costs, it's harder to police (more resources needed…

Subsidies for farmers ensure surplus capacity. Lead times are long and you can't risk even a temporary failure. So you spend more money than current supply and demand would justify.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#234

Post by UncleMeat »

sellmesoap wrote: post #227
jfengel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republican party has a well polished message assigning blame to anyone else: gays, Muslims, illegal immigrants, trans people, feminists, government employees, etc etc etc. If only they can put those people in their places, prosperity will rain down on the proper Americans. As it did in the 1950s when those people didn't exist. It works. And it will keep working.

I think a lot of it comes down to the rural/urban divide, in a rural setting there's a lot less convinence, fewer services. A need to be more self suficcient. While urban settings have many amenities and services, they also tend to be hotspots for mental illness, crime, lack of housing for those who don't or can't make enough money to afford increasing rent and food costs, it's harder to police (more resources needed…

In the US money tends to be distributed from more populated regions to less populated regions. The idea that rural americans oppose social spending because they don't have access to these programs is false.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#235

Post by UncleMeat »

throwaway422432 wrote: post #165
bruce511 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am not a US citizen, just an observer. What is the alternative when the Democrats appear just as much beholden to corporate finance, and position themselves as the party for city dwellers? I also disagree on the wealth redistribution. Government agencies are managers of risk. * Is there a risk to the country's food security if farmers go bust on mass? Then the Government needs to mitigate that risk. Fairly simple.…

Democrats write constantly about trying to reach rural americans. I've never seen democrats meaningfully position themselves as the party for city dwellers. Instead I've seen democrats simply refuse to describe cities as hellholes full of crime, laziness, and sexual promiscuity like the republicans do.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#236

Post by elsjaako »

silisili wrote: post #138
jadenPete wrote: post #6

This question may be naive, but why is the agricultural industry so subsidized? I understand the moral argument, but why, economically, does subsidizing farms result in a more efficient allocation of resources? I've heard that it's because farming as a business is full of unpredictability, but if that were the case, wouldn't there be a significant market for private insurance, and wouldn't the cost of that insurance…

You have to realize the vast majority of farmland is in states suceptable to floods, droughts, hurricanes, pests, frosts, etc. You can read stories of an off year where locusts were so bad they darkened the skies, for example. Compounding this, farm equipment is freaking expensive. It's not abnormal for a large farm to have hundreds of thousands in payments on machinery. In a good year they make hundreds of thousands…

You've repeated the part that the parent poster claimed to understand ("I've heard that it's because farming as a business is full of unpredictability"), but skipped over the part they didn't understand ("wouldn't there be a significant market for private insurance?") with the statement that insurance is a parasite.

Can you explain more why insurance is a parasite? Maybe a state-run insurance would be better?

Subsidies (AFAIK, please correct me if I'm wrong) typically either get paid when farming supplies (tractors, seeds, fertilizer, land etc.) are bought or when the final product is sold. So they are paid when things go well for the farmer, but not (or less so) when the farmer has a bad year.

I feel like the risk of bad years would be better managed by paying farmers when bad years happen. You know, like insurance.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#237

Post by modo_mario »

nehal3m wrote: post #177
modo_mario wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and in some cases on immigrant labor. Why tho do you feel the need to defend big agri businesses skirting employment law and pressuring wages downward by bringing in illegal people? I find it a bit weird looking at the US how they seem to kneejerk into different camps depending on what the other side does with some old outliers like bernie who retain their line. >Ironically they may tolerate local govt, and had fede…

>Why tho do you feel the need to defend big agri businesses skirting employment law and pressuring wages downward by bringing in illegal people? They said immigrant. Why do you feel the need to equate that term to illegals? They are not the same thing.

Because their (in)dependence was questioned on various fronts in the context of the american bipartisan system and more specifically the republican party and it's policies aka "the party that hates them".

Wrt the subsidies, consumer market and all that i don't have much to add but wrt the migrant workers the point of contention to my knowledge is mostly illegals (regardless of the actual number deported, the perhaps brutal way in which this is done, etc), ICE, etc. It's also my understanding that illegals are far far more present in farm work and a few other industries in the US (and to lesser extent in europe) to the extreme extent that those without legal work authorisation make up nearly half or more of the farmhands. (USDA estomated 42% few years ago but others had good reason to suspect between 50 & 60% or a even more) So yeah there's no real way to not think of illegal farm work there.

In that context and the opposition there's some elements like Bernie that seem to stick to their line and call this kind of faux open borders a right wing position whilst the rest of the democrats and their base seem to kneejerk the other way in response to recent events and republican standpoints and suddenly seem to have started supporting illegal entry, employment, etc

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#238

Post by bluGill »

d--b wrote: post #213
bluGill wrote: post #50

It is the ecconomy. Harvest have been above average around the world the past few years. In turn supply and demand puts prices low. one bad year and harvests will be down and prices way up. i've been working for John Deere for 15 years - I have seen this cycle several times already. people blame various politics when it happens, but the fundamentals are enough to explain nearly all of this. Anyone in farming knows th…

> overall operating expenses remain well above pre-2021 levels. Rising costs since 2020 have been driven primarily by sharp increases in interest expenses (+71%), fertilizer (+37%), fuel and oil (+32%), labor (+47%), chemicals (+25%) and maintenance (+27%), alongside notable gains in seed (+18%) and marketing costs (+18%) These numbers are huge though. I think it is fair to say that this time it may be different.

Looks like inflation to me - we all pay the same interest and everything else has been going up.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#239

Post by alecco »

Animats wrote: post #157

Much of this is an antitrust problem. The inputs to farming, especially seeds, fertilizer and machinery, are controlled by monopolies and near-monopolies. There have been too many mergers. On the sell side, there's monopsony or near-monopsony, with very few big buyers.[1] Farmers are caught in the middle, with little pricing power on either side. There's not much question about this. There are antitrust cases, but wi…

Yes, and they equipment size keeps becoming bigger and more expensive, making it harder to afford for smaller farms. Meanwhile, China is disrupting this by building small and affordable farm equipment for the rest of the world, thus lowering international prices.

Also new technology is helping previously nonviable soil to be useful.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#240

Post by modo_mario »

ben_w wrote: post #174
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldnt they at least have to try? Who else gets to throw up their hands before even trying to raise wages and offer an attractve (as much as is possible) employment offer to domestic labor before they get to skip all that to get to the good stuff where they get to pay even shittier wages, afford less rights or access to judicial review for their workers, and basically totally control them thru deportation threats s…

You can try, but the unemployment levels in the USA have not generally been low enough to find enough workers in total in recent decades. Worse, even the last few % of unemployment is a deliberate policy choice to prevent a rapid cycle of wage inflation as everyone competes for a limited supply of workers: The farmers would have to pay enough for "seasonal work spending all day doing manual labour in the sun without…

>not something which is an easy one-liner.

It seems to me like it would initially make inflation spike a lot if applied abruptly but regardless of the timeline would also increase the standing of the lower classes doing menial work substantially. This also has an effect on those other cushier low wage jobs as they then have to compete with the previously unattractive fieldwork. And they bloody well have to compete because food prices would rise and people are sensitive to that.

There's more to it of course and maybe it's in some way good but there's no way the current way of doing things with half or more of farmhands being illegally employed does not provide downward wage pressure for americans. We don't have to be wishy washy about that bit.

>look at this from the point of view of those workers

The government has no mandate to benefit them over it's own citizens beyond the obvious (foreign aid, disaster relief, etc) though.

Post reply on HN