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Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

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Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#331

Post by loeg »

Spooky23 wrote: post #96
loeg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama did not run as a progressive, lol. Much of the rest of this is equally ahistorical. Living conditions and wages haven't gotten worse over the past 50 years.

Were you in high school or elementary then? Obama ran on “hope” and “change” very foofy stuff. Ultimately you may be able to support your position by virtue of his saying very little at all. Wages have in fact fallen for the majority of people in real terms.

Again, wages have not fallen in real terms. You're just making this up.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#332

Post by yohannparis »

legacynl wrote: post #268
dathinab wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting Side Note: bleached/chlorinated chicken The things which makes this a no go in the EU is ironically not the chlorination per-se, but the fact that chlorination is needed. Like basically the EU thinks the way the US allows farmers to keep and raise chickens is so bad/unsanitary that chlorinating them isn't sufficient to make them safe for (repeated) consumption. Which makes sense given that some of the thi…

> but the fact that chlorination is needed. 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 y…

You just said the same thing.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#333

Post by FireBeyond »

triceratops wrote: post #88
kiba wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsides tend to get absorbed by monopolists of all kind. This is why UBI is a nonstarter. It will just get absorbed by landlords. This is why you need to break up monopolies or tax them. The problem is societal endorsement of monopoly rights all kind to the point of invisibility. Witness any conversations about IP rights and lands. But also farmers are in this situation because they chosen to compete in an overcrowd…

> This is why UBI is a nonstarter. It will just get absorbed by landlords Not necessarily. People live where they live because there are jobs. If they don't need jobs because of UBI, or they can take lower-paying jobs, they can move wherever housing is plentiful.

Not necessarily? Not that we've had one recently at the federal level, but there are multiple studies that show that state or city level minimum wage bumps tend to show an increase in average rental price, by the same percentage, within sometimes as few as four months.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#334

Post by slavik81 »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #245
delfinom wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's actually because of the gun control crap that Dems push. Farmers really like their guns, not because they need it to compensate for themselves, but because they really do largely live in areas where the local police response is 30+ minutes because they are in sparsely populated counties that are just farms, farms and more farms.

> I think it's actually because of the gun control crap that Dems push. Anything specific? Because from where I sit, the Dems aren't anywhere near as strict as they should be wrt to gun control. Or are you just believing the stuff you're hearing from conservative media? Are you really of the belief that "farmers" need assault rifles? What about bump stocks? How many school shooting have we had? What legislation came…

The proposed bans on open source 3D printers in Washington and New York would be examples of bad laws proposed by Democrats in the name of gun control. https://hackaday.com/2026/01/19/washington-state-bill-seeks-...

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#335

Post by silexia »

Farmer here.

Farmers in the USA have to pay far higher wages than other countries due to labor protection laws, and have to pay far higher equipment and chemical costs than other countries due to environmental laws.

We need either massive subsidies to make up for the effect of these laws, or massive tariffs to even the playing field with countries using slave labor and toxic lakes.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#336

Post by triceratops »

FireBeyond wrote: post #333
triceratops wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why UBI is a nonstarter. It will just get absorbed by landlords Not necessarily. People live where they live because there are jobs. If they don't need jobs because of UBI, or they can take lower-paying jobs, they can move wherever housing is plentiful.

Not necessarily? Not that we've had one recently at the federal level, but there are multiple studies that show that state or city level minimum wage bumps tend to show an increase in average rental price, by the same percentage, within sometimes as few as four months.

You have to live in or near the city to collect the higher minimum wage. With UBI you could live anywhere. Even outside the country maybe. They aren't comparable.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#337

Post by FireBeyond »

BroadacreRidge wrote: post #59
jadbox wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang. What are the good options here (without throwing people under the bus)? IMHO, the patents on seeds has been an immense pain to the midwest and should be made void with a phase out plan that starts with the most common seeds (which are causing legal havoc by mixing into neighboring farms via wind).

Can you elaborate on the "immense pain"? I don't disagree that monopolies in big AG are a huge problem, but last time I saw someone make this point, I looked into it, and there were relatively few cases of big AG suing small farmers over stuff like this. My understanding of one of the main cases that gets referenced in these discussions was where a farmer bought roundup ready seed, promised not to use it to breed, pe…

Relatively few that got to court.

While some farmers certainly did as you described (and while personally I disagree with the whole concept, leaving that aside for now), others just caught wind drifted seeds on their land.

The issue was that Monsanto et al would often put the onus on small farmers to prove they didn't deliberately breed the seed. Being civil, the issue became more "balance of probabilities" versus "beyond reasonable doubt". When you have Monsanto's army of lawyers, and a "generous" offer to "settle" for a licensing fee and agreement to purchase, then many of those small farmers rolled over. Often the ones that ended up in court were those who did actually have either sufficient resources, or were sufficiently pissed off to "stand their ground".

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#338

Post by labcomputer »

gruez wrote: post #278
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…

>inferior products like HFCS, [...] prevalence of GM crops The others I agree with, but there's no evidence that HFCS or GM crops are bad.

> The others I agree with, but there's no evidence that HFCS or GM crops are bad.

That's a clever slight-of-hand.

Sure, GM crops are not intrinsically bad... it's just that they enable the farmer to spray pesticides and herbicides which are very clearly linked to bad outcomes in people who consume the food.

So the only way to ensure you're not eating food sprayed with those things is to choose a non-GM alternative.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#339

Post by HWR_14 »

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…

If it was that simple farmers in the US could just voluntarily adhere to higher standards. It's not like those things are legally required.

Re: Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance

#340

Post by labcomputer »

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…

> 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.

All farmers are rich. You have to understand that "farmer" doesn't mean "someone who works on a farm". It means "someone who owns a farm".

If you own a farm today (meaning, you didn't go bankrupt sometime in the last 150 years and move on to something else), it is because you were successful at the business of farming.

Farming is a business that doesn't scale down. To be successful at farming in the last century, you need a lot of land. You also need a lot of equipment. Thus, the net worth of your "average small farmer" is 10's of millions of dollars.

When Republicans talk about tax cuts (especially the estate tax), who do you think they're talking to? Farmers.

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