Simple Question. Will you vote for Trump?

[dennishoddy]

In a perfect world, I'm with you. However, our govt has decided that there is a vested govt interest in cheap food. Fed people are happy people and hungry folks are pretty pissy. As such, subsidized crop insurance is the vehicle to keep us farmers in business through natural disasters. They are quite frequent and without subsidies, crop insurance would not exist. This would mean more of us go out of business and less food being produced and food costs dramatically higher than they are.

Imagine corporate farming taking over the family owned farms. Loaf of bread $10, pound of burger, $20, we would hear some complaints then.

 

[Nraman]

In a perfect world, I'm with you. However, our govt has decided that there is a vested govt interest in cheap food.

I don't want to derail the original thread, it's just that I always thought it was more than subsidized insurance.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21643191-crop-prices-fall-farmers-grow-subsidies-instead-milking-taxpayers

THE father of Major Major, a character in Catch 22, a novel by Joseph Heller, makes a good living not growing alfalfa. “The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce.” Each day, Mr Major “sprang out of bed at the crack of noon... just to make certain that the chores would not be done.”

To this day, to be treated as a farmer in America doesn’t necessarily require you to grow any crops. According to the Government Accountability Office, between 2007 and 2011 Uncle Sam paid some $3m in subsidies to 2,300 farms where no crop of any sort was grown. Between 2008 and 2012, $10.6m was paid to farmers who had been dead for over a year. Such payments explain why Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, is promoting a rule to attempt to crack down on payments to non-farming folk. But with crop prices now falling, taxpayers are braced to be fleeced again.


American farm subsidies are egregiously expensive, harvesting $20 billion a year from taxpayers’ pockets. Most of the money goes to big, rich farmers producing staple commodities such as corn and soyabeans in states such as Iowa.

When it comes to growing corn for ethanol (nothing to do with global warming, just a ploy to milk the taxpayers) the billions are found to pay.
With what little the small farmers get, the government justifies a need that pays billions to agricorps such as ADM (supermarket to the world) that has Bob Dole as the main lobbyist.
Today most farming is done by multibillion dollar corporations with top quality lobbies in DC.

 

[tntrex]

Imagine corporate farming taking over the family owned farms. Loaf of bread $10, pound of burger, $20, we would hear some complaints then.

This is already happening. You just dont hear about it.

 

[dennishoddy]

This is already happening. You just dont hear about it.

I know a lot of them have, but around here anyway the family farm still is in the majority.

 

[tntrex]

I know a lot of them have, but around here anyway the family farm still is in the majority.

Just like beef right now going insane all over. 3 or 4 corporations own over 80% of the entire beef market. You got those giant companies who own packers now own most feed lots. So they control what goes into retail and they dictate live cattle prices at purchase . That my friend is near perfect monopoly without even being sniffed out.

 

[dennishoddy]

Just like beef right now going insane all over. 3 or 4 corporations own over 80% of the entire beef market. You got those giant companies who own packers now own most feed lots. So they control what goes into retail and they dictate live cattle prices at purchase . That my friend is near perfect monopoly without even being sniffed out.

Pork producers are the same.

 

[farmerbyron]

[video=youtube_share;WpKiP_gmDS8]http://youtu.be/WpKiP_gmDS8[/video]

 

[farmerbyron]

Just like beef right now going insane all over. 3 or 4 corporations own over 80% of the entire beef market. You got those giant companies who own packers now own most feed lots. So they control what goes into retail and they dictate live cattle prices at purchase . That my friend is near perfect monopoly without even being sniffed out.

The cow/calf operation is still almost entirely a family farm operation. It's the feedlot finishing that is big business. And if they are running a monopoly to suppress live cattle prices, they've done a pretty poor job of it in recent years. They have to operate on some pretty slim margins and stay afloat through volume.

 

[farmerbyron]

Today most farming is done by multibillion dollar corporations with top quality lobbies in DC.

Many family farms are now set up as LLCs for liability and tax purposes. That doesn't mean they aren't still family operated farms.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-are-gigantic-now-even-the-family-owned-ones/


And here's the second thing that's wrong about our understanding of the disappearance of family farms: 96.4 percent of the crop-producing farms in the U.S. are owned by families, and they represent 87 percent of all the agricultural value generated (non-family owned farms are defined as "those operated by cooperatives, by hired managers on behalf of non-operator owners, by large corporations with diverse ownership, and by small groups of unrelated people"). That hasn't changed since about

 

[Nraman]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/01/29/halperin_trump_willing_to_take_risks_anticipates_and_thinks_10_steps_ahead_willing_to_adjust.html

"Here are three things that Trump showed in what he did with this debate gambit," Halperin began. "One is he's willing to take risks, no one else in the field takes as many risks as he does. Two, he thinks ten steps ahead. People think he bumbles into stuff. He anticipates what's going to happen, thinks it through, understands how other people will react."

"Finally he's willing to adjust," Halperin observed. "He's willing to think about watch how things go with incredible media savvy and say I need to recalibrate this just a little bit. In those three areas there's no one in the field who is his equal. Every day he's doing those three things better than anybody else. That's what's going to make him hard to stop."