The answer was there. You just wanted it spoon fed to you. You should put that in your posts when you ask questions:
"I want a spoon feeding, in a nutshell answer. Nothing intelligent"
That way people don't spend any time to bother answering you.
The answer was there. You just wanted it spoon fed to you. You should put that in your posts when you ask questions:
"I want a spoon feeding, in a nutshell answer. Nothing intelligent"
That way people don't spend any time to bother answering you.
This is what I was getting at.
Cost of land has gone up. Cost of equipment is up. Fuel has tripled or quadrupled in the last two decades alone.
One would have to be mad to try and get into farming/ranching right now.
I have to lolz if you think that the farm program is there to inflate prices of food. Just look at how many fewer dairies there are in OK compared to 30 years ago. The family dairy will be extinct within a decade. Only huge dairies like Braums that control all of their inputs will be around. I do not envy dairy farmers at all and would gladly pay much more than the $4 per gallon I currently pay for milk.
Ideologically, I would love to have the farm program go away but unless you completely disband the USDA and all their market reporting, that is not a workable system. I loved the govt shutdown. The USDA market reports were not being put out and commodities were rising. The market advisors I get emails from were all in a panic over the lack of information. When the govt reopened and market reports started back, it has been a downward spiral ever since. So I am all for axing the farm program just so long as they disband the USDA altogether and give us farmers an unfettered free market for our produce.
You're right. Thing is not just anyone can up and decide that they want to be a farmer. The economics buying land, equipment, livestock, feed, and fertilizer all at the same time does not work. You pretty much have to be born into the profession. And even then, it is a tough row to hoe and make it all work out on the bottom line.
Ok, I didn't mean to conflate the price controls put on specific products like milk with the more general issue of direct payments, etc referred to in the Cato report. It's an entirely separate form of meddling when the .gov sets a price floor and then helps enforce it by throwing tariffs on imports of those products.
My uncle is a wheat farmer in Kansas, and says much the same thing as you, he wishes we didn't need the farm bill subsidies but they have too thoroughly rigged the game. Well, I say he is a wheat farmer, but he planted a substantial amount of corn the past couple years because the price of corn is too high to ignore. Largely due to the stupid ethanol mandate.
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