The Small Farm unnerving crisis..

[busterbrown]

A must read!! Not to mention,, Very depressing...


https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=business_&linkId=77820351&fbclid=IwAR0YiBW_0gxocoCZxRv_YXfsW1xQZebzvqhK2Yqz2nnFrr6Fyot6CgnsySg

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Knowing the area

this is Heart Breaking. Bottom Line,way to many Dairy Cows chasing zero profit. Like many smaller operators,they simply got run over by expansion and efficiency of scale.

Absorption of surplus Dairy Animals into the Meat Supply Chain and a balancing of numbers of Dairy Animals works when Grain Prices are high,cheap feed means cheap Meat Prices and the number of Butcher Cattle increase in direct proportion to grain prices .

In order to salvage the Dairy Industry for the Smaller Operators,the USDA has to buy up several Hundred Thousand Dairy Cows and turn them into Hamburger for the School Lunch Programs as well as a Give away to low income Families. This would not be the first time the Federal Government stepped in to save a vital segment of our Economy.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Thanks for sharing. The negative demographic patterns have sadly been continuing for ...

decades, putting the family farm at risk. One point that I didn't see addressed, was the impact perhaps positively, of CO OPs on family farm operations, where groups of farmers all get together to buy supplies/sell produce/etc.

Are not CO OPs helping? Perhaps one of our fellow DUer is a farmer that can answer this question.

Also, another long term effect could be that the political winds will change and a big chunk of farm support will disappear for rump and republican law makers who have solely concentrated on corporate farms and the like, ignoring the plight of tens of thousands of farmers. As the article mentioned above, support payments have been flowing mostly to the big farms, and not primarily to the family farm (where it is most needed).

In short, if a massive shift of population is occurring in farm land areas (moving away to better environments for jobs, etc.), then urban areas will pick up more better and accurate representation as it gets harder for rigged voter districts to maintain their advantage (republican lawmakers are favored).

[moondust]

3. Key paragraph.

~
Most family farmers seem to agree on what led to their plight: government policy. In the years after the New Deal, they say, the United States set a price floor for farmers, essentially ensuring they received a minimum wage for the crops they produced. But the government began rolling back this policy in the 1970s, and now the global market largely determines the price they get for their crops. Big farms can make do with lower prices for crops by increasing their scale; a few cents per gallon of cow’s milk adds up if you have thousands of cows.
~

"the years after the New Deal" were the years of "big gubment soshalizm" that Reagan attacked and did all he could to get rid of with "deregulation." That amounted to the unbridling of greed leading to more corporatization and wealth concentration that have been Republican orthodoxy ever since. I'm not sure there is a way to put that genie back in the bottle and return to some semblance of equality and sustainability.

There used to be a lot more to life than becoming a trillionaire.



K/R