Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

But that's not the same as saying they're the same as Republicans. Not even remotely close.

The "both sides" stuff is an amateur, armchair take that tells me the person doesn't actually follow what's happening.

And again, you don't need any more proof that what they actually vote on. Go ahead, look up the bills. How does the "both sides" argument stand up to the fact that we have the most divided congress in almost 100 years?

>In truth, Bessent disclosed early in the Trump Administration that he owned several thousand acres of farm land in North Dakota through a limited liability partnership. He was supposed to divest those holdings 90 days after taking office, by April 28.

>In August, government ethics officials warned in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee that the secretary failed to comply with the rules and needed to sell the land. Bessent's Treasury ethics officials explained that the "assets are illiquid and not readily marketable."

>The August letter said Bessent "would be recused from particular matters affecting these assets." But that was just weeks before Bessent flew to Malaysia to meet with Chinese counterparts and hash out the framework of a deal that crucially included a commitment to buy American soybeans.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/21/trea...

It's why you can eat raw eggs and keep them out of the fridge in the EU/UK but not in the US, because the chickens are vaccination for Salmonella.

You're wrong. The whole point is this: in EU, you cannot chlorinate your chickens. This means that to sell chicken, you need to make sure that your chicken is good to eat without chlorination (by making sure your whole production chain is sanitized up to sufficient level).

In the US you don't need to make sure your production chain is super high sanitation quality because you can chlorinate the chicken afterwards. This means that you don't have to spend money/effort cleaning up your chains, because you can dip them in chlorine after.

From a health perspective there is honestly not that big of a difference. The resulting product in both cases is chicken that's safe to eat.

The real reason for the difference in policy is the incentives that it creates for the meat-producers. In the US there is no incentive to keep sanitation up in the production chains because the chicken will be chlorinated anyway. This actually incentivizes sloppy (cheaper) production methods over ones that are more sanitized but more costly.

On the other hand, in the EU you cannot wash chicken meat, so it needs to be kept clean and sanitized throughout the production process.

USDA estimated 42% of farm hands is doing illegal work few years ago. Other sources estimated to 50-60%. That is a fuckton and has an incredibly significant impact on wage pressures. It was also brought up in the context of GOP policy "the party that hates them" which has focused heavily on illegals and caused quite the uproar. It's hard to not jump to it in that cotnext and also more than those "US H-2A via for temp farm hands" i believe.

>how many native-born Belgians are still performing low-skill manual labour on a farm?

It's mostly migrant work indeed same as in the meat industry I observed. They proudly had giant old black and white wall covering pics of locals doing the work decades ago but now among more than a hundred there were maybe 2 belgians on the factory floor at any given moment. That said here in belgium I suspect the amount of illegal work in agriculture is lower than in the US and places like Italy.

>Call me cynical, but I am not nostalgic for the "smaller independent farm". If farms want to be smaller and independent in the 21st century, they need to distinguish themselves with product (usually: organic or "free range"), branding, and value add (example: create a cheese brand that only uses your special organic cow's milk). If they cannot or will not, then they will need to sell their business to the mega agg corps.

Call me cynical as well but that doesn't help for the most part.

I follow some such farms that do exactly that. 2 examples from sweden I know jump trough hoops for those organic and "free range" labels. Hoops that are made specifically for the massive operations. So the giant poultry halls get to add some square meters of semi outside space, pull in a big proportional subsidy and aquire the free range label whilst the guy trying to differentiate himself has to add elaborate construction to his chicken tractors for his free roaming chickens to follow the spirit of the law made for the massive operation.

I personally know and helped a peppers/tomatoes and respective seed operation. All heirloom, mostly organic and they too almost had to close their books because they suddenly needed seed passports and a load more paperwork and the legislators apparently hadn't considered that this was something that was also done by corporations that count with numbers smaller than 1mil. That's not me being hyperbolic. They straight up confirmed they hadn't thought it possible that someone might run an operation without boatloads of employees or an upstart.

Also small is relative in the context i described. Many of these were still big expensive operations making investments costing hundreds of thousands, operating a lot of land. Just run by a normal family rather than a big coporate structure.

Mind you the meat company i worked for was also a family operation but the family all drove Brabuses that cost more than my house and had spare money to invest in retirement homes, etc....Puts it a bit in perspective.

> If they cannot or will not, then they will need to sell their business to the mega agg corps.

I do not wish to live in a corporatocracy nor do i fancy a form of capitalism where healthy competition is impossible since nobody can enter or maintain in certain vital sectors.