British journalist Anna Jones spent a year traveling the world on a Nuffield Scholarship to explore how largely urban populations and media have become disconnected from farmers. In Rapid City to present her research to the annual South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association convention at the end of November, Jones made an observation on farmers’ suspicion of journalists that could explain some of rural America’s willingness to swallow Donald Trump’s baloney:
“When the majority of people live and work in urban areas, it is natural and right that newspapers and news programs cover the issues most relevant to them — health, housing, education, unemployment, transport and so on. But urban bias is endemic within the mainstream media. And this can spill over into bias against intensive and large-scale farming systems, driven, at times, more by stereotypes and ideology than informed understanding of the subject.”
That disconnect isn’t exclusive to the U.K., however.
“I saw a lot of this when I was in the U.S. There is a severe lack of agricultural specialism among general news journalists.
“It works both ways though. There is deep-rooted suspicion of the mainstream media among farmers. Many believe journalists attack them unfairly on issues like the environment and animal welfare, but some farmers struggle to separate criticism from legitimate challenge. Knee-jerk defensiveness and a lack of transparency are key barriers to a constructive relationship with the media [Maria Tibbetts, “British Journalist Studies How the News Media Portrays Agriculture Worldwide,” The Fence Post, 2017.12.05].
Funny that a rural industrial sector feeling put upon by urban media would elect as their champion an urban celebrity created by urban media.
Jones reports South Dakota’s Cattlemen received her much more warmly than their Trumpism might suggest:
At first I wasn’t sure how the generally conservative ranchers of South Dakota would respond to a 4ft 11ins embodiment of the ‘liberal BBC’. Would they accuse me of spreading fake news? Would they get defensive about Donald Trump? Would they have preconceptions about who I am and what I believe?
No, no and definitely no.
Never have I been welcomed with such warmth, curiosity and open mindedness. Never have I enjoyed such frank and open discussion in a spirit of community and friendship. Never have I experienced such gratitude for sharing a different perspective [Anna Jones, “The End (or Just the Beginning?)” Jones the Journo: Notes from a Nuffield Journey, 2017.12.07].
Part of the warm reception jones enjoyed came from familiarity. She visited South Dakota in 2013 to cover the aftermath of the big October blizzard. She also visited South Dakota during her Nuffield research, during which she learned from KOTA news director John Petersen that simple demographics and media market forces crowd agriculture out of the news cycle even in Rapid City:
“Well, most of our viewers are town dwellers,” he says. “Rapid City’s population is over 74,000 and they are not involved in the ag industry directly. It’s certainly not a topic at the top of their list. We know from our market research that weather-related coverage is the most popular and issues like tourism, education and taxes.”
In June 2016, KOTA TV was broadcasting to a large area with a small population; around 200,000 people across western South Dakota and northwest Wyoming. If farming stories are failing to cut through in a sparsely populated region, economically dependent on agriculture and dominated by vast cattle ranches and cropland, then urban bias is worse than I thought [Anna Jones, “Help or Hinder? How the Mainstream Media Portrays Farming to the Public,” Nuffield Scholar Report, 2017.08.12].
As Jones indicates, if farmers and ranchers want more media coverage, they have to accept the good with the bad. They also need to stop suing and lobbying legislatures for anti-free-press laws like South Dakota’s agricultural product anti-disparagement law and other states’ “ag gag” laws that make it hard for reporters to tell honest stories about problems that arise in America’s food production system.
You can learn more about what Jones learned about worldwide perceptions of agriculture in the media in Jones’s thirteen-minute presentation to the 2017 Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust Annual Conference:
Oh, its not just Ag producers that have a problem with the media. The vast majority of Americans have no trust in the media. When the media spouts out errors at the rate they did last week on National news outlets only a fool would not see these attempts to trash this president as anything other than unfair attacks and the American people don’t cotton to unfair nasty attacks. Just look at what the media has been covering up for the government that any person with a rational mind sees as criminal: 1) Fast&Furious; any way you look at it if the government is feeding automatic weapons to Mexican drug lords and no one gets in trouble for it something is wrong and where is the media on this? 2) The IRS using intimidation and their bureaucratic size to suppress the voice of right leaning political organizations, where is the media? 3) Clinton using her position in the government to make money, and the media does what? 4) the vacuum Obama left in Iraq and his bumbled attempt to fill it with his secret creation ISIS which turned into a murdering mass of animals, 5) Obama using the government’s most powerful secret services such as the NSA, CIA, FBI and DoJ to spy on Trump, but it wasn’t just Trump. It was everyone that ran against the democrats “pre-‘determined president”. Now you can go ahead and say “Oh, provide a link”, “you have no proof”, “It’s a conspiracy” on and on but what I posted is what the majority of the people see and you can’t argue that away. It is what the people see the media protecting and when the people see the media protecting a government that is clearly being used for nefarious things trust in them falls. It’s not just your slanted stories Cory. It’s everyone who professes to the normal man to ignore the reality in front of there eyes but to believe the lies we are being told by the media. I know this hurts but its not Ag or the normal citizens that has a problem here. The media have created a delusional world for themselves think they are the enlightened because they sit in front of a camera or push a pen. There is an old saying “The pen is mightier than the sword” but what those in the media still fail to realize it they have turned that pen against themselves through silly lies that are easily seen through. . .
Old Sarg demonstrates why media will never please these folks. The media deals in the fact-based world, and to do down many of Old Sarg’s rabbit holes is a waste of time and resources. If you are continually seeking “alternative facts” that uphold your delusions, you can never be satisfied with anything the press does. The press is not there to husband the delusions of the deluded. There is no reason for any legitimate media to address the delusions of people who are scared little rabbits afraid of the modern world. And they shouldn’t. These people should never be served by the press, because to do so would change the press into the purveyor of fiction for the mentally ill.
That said, I agree that many rural issues are not covered in the major national media. That’s not surprising. It is a little surprising that KOTA and other local media don’t spend more time on rural and ag issues. These issues were huge in the 1980s, during the ag crisis, but since then it’s dwindled.
That’s not true in Wisconsin. We have lots of ag stories. I live in the second largest city, the state capitol, and we have lots of reporting on the ag industry and rural issues. What’s the difference? As Cory points out, SD has a law that may chill local reporting on some issues. Sure, you could do rah-rah stories on ag issues, but anything that’s controversial that any clown could sue over is not going to be covered. Pink slime should have been a local story, as should many others, but you won’t see it in any local paper, because no local paper can survive a lawsuit. And, what good reporter wants to to rah-rah stories exclusively. Why have a beat reporter on ag issues when you have to cover them as if it was a paid advertisement, not a real story?
OS … Provide a link”, “you have no proof”, “It’s a conspiracy” ??
Folks … When someone exceeds the median on the “kook meter” their comments are beyond the necessity of repudiation.
OldSarg,
“have created a delusional world for themselves”
RWNJ’s really love projection.
Pretty much everything OldRags spits out is easily refutable by any of the mainstream media.
He accuses HRC of profiting and totally ignores the constitutional violations of Drumpf and his money making from being appointed potus by Putin.
Whata wombat.
OldSarg, Google is your friend. If you would actually watch or read mainstream media you would see all kinds of stories on the following:
Fast and Furious:
https://tinyurl.com/y7pya9sn
The IRS scandal:
https://tinyurl.com/yajrs2nq
You bringing up Clinton making money while in office while Trump keeps all of his businesses open for graft and corruption with the impenetrable wall of a “pinky swear” between him and his sons who continue to run his businesses is ironic.
Blaming Obama for Iraq after a Republican President led by his war mongering VP led us into the debacle is like blaming divorce attorneys for their clients’ failed marriages. They didn’t cause it, but they had to end it.
Maligning our intelligence agencies in the name of politics is right out of the Trump playbook. Keep up the good work. Love your conspiracy theories. You missed Hillary created ISIS and the pizza parlor in New York with the child molesters in back. But you know enough not to talk about child molesters when your party is electing Roy Moore to the Senate.
And where’s the unbiased truthful media sources that you turn to for your real news? Breitbart? Trump’s twitter account? RightWingNews.coms?
People bitch about coverage all the time. I worked for a weekly and no matter what we did or didn’t cover, we heard a lot of bitching. We heard a lot of people praising our coverage, too. So, it’s all a wash.
In South Dakota you have to sell journalists or news outlets on stories. This was true even in the 80s and 90s when there was a lot of journalists and media competing for stories. SD journalists have to be generalists because there aren’t enough people, especially now, for one journalist to cover one beat. So, you probably don’t have ag or rural life writers doing just that any more. Maybe a few radio stations still do some of that, but not TV and not newspapers. Weekly papers do, but the circulation isn’t much. The dailies won’t cover something if they don’t know about it, and they don’t know about it because they don’t have dedicated beat reporters on just ag or rural beats.
A lot of rural folks just assume that nothing important happens there. Nonsense. If you want coverage, you gotta sell it. I got calls from people living in Countryside and Rapid Valley about their worries about water quality. I did stories, but I didn’t know there was a problem until someone told me.
Not a one of you are any more than parrots, minus the bird body. . . Just the [—].
There is not a one of those incidents that I mentioned that you can convince yourselves or others they are not showing a government out of control. 1) Whether the scandal being intentional or not, is it not outrageous to you that the Sec of State used her position to enrich herself scandalous? 2) Do you honestly think there is something redeeming about providing weapons to drug lords? 3) Do you somehow find it acceptable to use the government’s secret surveillance organizations to spy on our own citizens a good thing? COME ON! You can’t defend these acts by either party. The only reasonable conclusion anyone can make of your defense of these acts is either you are a bumbling blind idiot or you are so bound to being a slave to the government that you have given up all free thought. Please, one of you explain to me the justification for doing a single one of these acts.
Old Sarah Huckabee Sanders Wannabe- how did HRC enrich herself? What magical proof do you have that all the experts at real media could not uncover?
Which of the tea party outfits that violated nfp rules on political activities were unfairly targeted for investigation?
How many guns were walked into Mexico under Operation Wide Receiver when dumbass dubya was potus?
When Des Moines, iowa water plant sued upstream counties for nitrate dumping, people all around the state sat up and noticed. When Des Moines water bills increased greatly because it costs so much more to remove nitrates from drinking water in the city, city people sat up and noticed.
You can’t do it. You all know the government has gone beyond its bounds yet you hide your cowardly heads.
You want to know how your beloved Hillary enriched herself? “Forbes estimated in 2016 that, based on the Clintons’ tax returns of 15 years, that they had amassed approximately $240 million since leaving the White House in 2001, although Bill Clinton had made $189 million.” http://fortune.com/2017/09/12/hillary-clinton-net-worth/.
How much do you think a loser deserves to make off the backs of the American people Stupid, I mean “”mike from idiocy?
1. Sec of State used her position to enrich herself ~ Didn’t Happen
2. Providing weapons to drug lords? ~ Didn’t Happen
3. The government’s secret surveillance organizations spy on our own citizens? ~ Doesn’t Happen
4. Bumbling blind idiot, bound to being a slave to the government. ~ Nobody Here Like That
5. The justification for doing a single one of these acts? ~ Didn’t happen so no justification
~ Have a Holly Jolly Christmas. Here’s your present, OS. (The most prominent of anti-anxiety drugs for the purpose of immediate relief are those known as benzodiazepines; among them are alprazolam (Xanax), clonazepam (Klonopin), chlordiazepoxide (Librium), diazepam (Valium), and lorazepam (Ativan).)
What is frightening about Trump’s war on the First Amendment are the number of his supporters that can’t discern the difference between real news, republican talking points, LIES, and distortions.
There is no such thing as fake news, what Trump and his supporters do is lie, it’s as simple as that.
Whataboutisms have been running rampant since Trump took office in an attempt to cover up the Russian collusion investigation and the most recent calls for Trump’s resignation for multiple sexual abuse allegations.
Trump followers are often fond of saying, “get over it, Hillary lost” and yet they are the ones that can’t get over it. Trump can’t open his yap without going into the 2016 campaign mode.
Tonight there is a real fear that Alabama will elect a pedophile to the senate and will bring disgrace to the republican party. republican senate leadership is so concerned that they are convening a meeting in the morning to figure out how they will handle Moore should he be elected.
If the village idiot wants to wallow in yesterdays’ headlines, let him, it proves nothing except their foolishness.
These are all left wing sites buddy:
1. Sec of State used her position to enrich herself ~ Didn’t Happen: Happened: Driven by insatiable greed while crying they were near-broke, the couple schemed and Hillary used her position as secretary of state to leverage lucrative deals for the Foundation as well as six-figure speaking fees for Bill Clinton. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3659123/Slush-funds-pay-personal-consultant-Huma-Abedin-luxe-Caribbean-holiday-daughter-Chelsea-payoffs-silence-Bill-s-sex-accusers-Hillary-used-donations-Clinton-Foundation-personal-piggy-bank.html#ixzz516Db7ejV
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
2. Providing weapons to drug lords? ~ Didn’t Happen: Happened: November 8, 2011 – Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This operation was flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution.,” he says. http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/world/americas/operation-fast-and-furious-fast-facts/index.html
3. The government’s secret surveillance organizations spy on our own citizens? ~ Doesn’t Happen: Happened: On May 13, 2013, the Associated Press announced telephone records for 20 of their reporters during a two-month period in 2012 had been subpoenaed by the Justice Department. AP reported the Justice Department would not say why it sought the records. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Department_of_Justice_investigations_of_reporters
You are lying or an idiot. Porter are you really “mike from idiocy”?
Roger, you have already proven yourself two faced. Your post does not matter. Not worth a 30 second read.
Village idiot says my post doesn’t matter, it matters to me and to other readers.
Village idiot often responds to comments he can’t understand by saying, “it does not matter”.
No one cares. You’re pissing in the wind.
Funny—this post was about the farm community’s disillusionment with an urban-centric press that doesn’t give their issues enough airtime. Shall we get back on track?
Operation Wide Receiver under dumbass dubya walked guns across the Mexican border, none of which were recovered and became the basis of Fast and Furious with same agents and same failed policy. Didn’t happen in 2011, idiot.
OldIdiot Sarah Huckabee Sanders wannabe-
ABC News also examined Clinton’s speaking records and found many instances in which he took in money from groups with pending interests at the State Department. State Department ethics officials had to sign off on these speaking engagements, but rarely did they say Clinton could not accept payment for a particular speech.
Nothing illegal and no quid pro quo implied or accused. Idiot.
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/
Here’s OldSarahhuckabeeSandersWannabe in action-
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, Moore lost. Decency won out-barely in Alabama.
Wrong link above. http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2017/12/not-mistakes-but-lies.html
Thanks ton’s Sarge for your rant that is completely off the topic.
Agriculture is viewed increasingly by a public that doesn’t have a clue about what is involved. And why wouldn’t they be clueless since it has been so long since they had anything to do with it. A century ago everyone was either a farmer or just off the farm. Farmers are no longer a market for much of anything including media and urban viewers just can’t give a d—b. Sad. In the early nineteen eighty’s a poll was taken on the street that asked the participants what they would like to do for a living if nothing stood in their way. Four out of five said they would like to be farmers.
I don’t believe that it was ten years ago that ag economics professors were telling their students that unless they could generate a half million in gross farm income a year they might as well go do something else for a living. Now SDSU professors are saying that prospective farmers need 1.2 million in gross sales to be viable. How long before its 2 million?!
The problems in this country have absolutely nothing to do with anything that Sarg and his ilk are ranting about. They encompass not just agriculture but every aspect of our lively hood. There is hardly a company that hasn’t been gobbled up by some anonymous holding company in very recent history. How long before all of agriculture and our entire economy isn’t owned and controlled by a tiny handful of people or is it right now. Marie Antoinette learned the hard way what happens if you can’t keep the people fed. The “Cheap Food at Any Cost”is working for the time being. We are producing feed grains to feed to a vertically integrated livestock sector at rock bottom prices. The Chinese owned Smithfield hogs are getting fat and generating Yuan’s for their owners at our expense.
Thanks for allowing this RANT!
Clyde
Excellent, Clyde. I’m not boycotting but I won’t buy Smithfield pork products, anymore. They were always too salty, anyway. Had to parboil the hams for a few minutes to even make them servable to guests. I personally don’t trust Chinese business people to have concern and empathy towards their market patrons (us). Too many examples of where the Chinese government doesn’t regulate and dangerous items hit USA stores. Kinda the way USA wants to go under the current political party.
Clyde gets me thinking that agriculturalists would be as grouchy with OldSarg as they are with the press, since both ignore ag issues in favor of their preferred attention getters for what they perceive as their larger, more profitable audience.
Clyde also makes a remarkable point about the institutional discouragement of work that, per that 1980s poll, a lot of people might actually like to do. (Any idea, Clyde, if attitudes have changed since then?) Lots of people have an innate fondness for agriculture, but not the kind of industrial agriculture that has taken over now. We grow up with our Fisher Price farm toys—chicken, cow, sheep, pig, all smiling, all clean in their idyllic barn. We carry images of farming as healthy, noble work in which a family can make an independent living. Then SDSU tells ’em nope, gotta be a big business, or there’s no sense in trying.
Farm work loses its appeal when it becomes just another wage-job. People will pick a lot of tomatoes and shovel a lot of cowpoop when it’s their own tomatoes and poop.
I wonder—is that part of the disconnect? Today’s farms don’t conform to the image we nonfarmers carry in our dreams, so we… resent the industrialized farms?
“Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!–” trump twitter 12.12.17
so come on cory, get rid of old sarg’s bull[…]: “you hide your cowardly heads” he says…. He thinks if trump can do it so can he here. ick!
Come on, Leslie. We can take him. We can continue to show, patiently, logically, and vigorously, that Trumpism in its native form and in OS’s imitation is illogical and un-American.
I like to have OldSarg here to kick around. Logic and reason pass him like ships in the night, but his ignorance is illuminating, ironically.
(Dang, I slipped and let the conversation become about OS instead of the real issue again. Get thee behind me, Satan! ;-P )
Clyde’s comment is really good. Dig into it, and into my subsequent questions!
Cory says: “I wonder—is that part of the disconnect? Today’s farms don’t conform to the image we nonfarmers carry in our dreams, so we… resent the industrialized farms?”
Dr. heal thyself! I think your unconscious was talking. Come down and work out your resentment some time.
City people love farmers … until they meet the ones that mainline FoxNews. Actually, city people love niche farmers. The ones that care more about everyone’s environment than how much money they make, no matter what happens to the land, air and water surrounding them. We all loved Mr. Green Jeans. Nobody likes to be around the farmer that comes to town on rainy days, sits in the bar and spits out bigotry about Muslims and Mexicans and Indians.
Clyde, back in the 80’s farmers were the perceived welfare queens of America and suffered constant ridicule after natural disasters.
Farmers were labeled as lazy and wouldn’t help themselves. They’d rather sit around and wait for the government to bail them out.
After the farm meltdown when only the wealthy could afford land to farm, absentee owners started getting the largesse meant to help the farmers on the land. Noem and Grassley and many others would have particular and peculiar insights into what it is like writing family favorable farm legislation.
Farmers and ranchers sue trump and his crooked USDA. The worm is turning https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/12/14/570889309/the-usda-rolled-back-protections-for-small-farmers-now-theyre-suing
Krebs is in deep doo doo and so are the rest of the Roypublicans who are now breaking these farmers and ranchers. The farmers and ranchers know that President Obama was a strong voice for their industry while trump and his supporters seek to make them serfs.
Mike from Iowa….you are right about the perception of farmers by the public in the 80’s. And thanks to the press of the Reagan right at that time people didn’t get too upset when the Reagan right put 50% of the farmers out of business. Then 50% of the balance in the 90’s. Now residents of South Dakota’s small towns and cities are wondering why their town is turning into a ghost town. Why there is no one left in town that hasn’t got white hair.
There is so many other ways that government policy towards agriculture could and should be handled. Much of European agriculture has been handled in a way to preserve their rural way of life.
Of course I’m advocating going against the great and glorious “FREE” market! Have you ever bothered to look at agriculture in country’s that don’t support ag? You will find that not only are the farmers poor but the entire population is poor. This country has been ranting about getting agriculture to the “FREE” market for decades now and it is pretty apparent to me that in reality those that pull the strings have no intention of doing that. If they did I believe that the whole of society in this country would change. They are only interested in keeping the American people fat and lazy with the “Cheap Food at All Cost’s” policy. After all if you keep driving down the cost of food people are less likely to notice how poor they have really become in the last few
decades.
If there was any chance of resurrecting rural America, farmers need a friendly press and they need a press that would keep their story in front of an urban population. That urban population would have to be convinced that it was in their best interest to help their rural neighbors.
We could easily bring folks back to the land by only supporting farms of a certain small to medium size. Support only so much production from each farm and let the bigger operations really play in the FREE market. Its fallacy to believe that American agriculture is efficient. The only thing it is efficient at is using a tiny bit of labor per unit of production. In many other measures of efficiency we lag behind. Of course such a program would require hiring a bunch of folks to police it since the big operations would have a big incentive to scam the system. Plenty of underpayed people out there that wouldn’t mind extra work.
Clyde
Paul Krugman nails it with this, Roypublicans despise the working class.
“”After all, the tax bill appears to be terrible politics as well as terrible policy. Cutting corporate taxes is hugely unpopular; even Republicans are almost as likely to say they should be raised as to say they should be lowered. The Bush tax cuts, at least initially, had wide (though unjustified) popular support; but the public overwhelmingly disapproves of the current Republican plan.
But Republicans don’t seem able to help themselves: Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they can’t contain it.
When I realized the extent to which G.O.P. tax plans were going to favor business owners over ordinary workers, I found myself remembering what happened in 2012, when Eric Cantor — then the House majority leader — tried to celebrate Labor Day. He put out a tweet for the occasion that somehow failed to mention workers at all, instead praising those who have “built a business and earned their own success.””
Somehow working class people in South Dakota fail to see what they are, working class people like ranchers and farmers. Wonderful people that are shocked to find themselves… the working class. Imagine that! That is almost as shocking as to see your summer tan wear off and to find out that you are a white person, even that red neck goes away, damn. Roypublicans then know how to rile up the working class with the lie of religion (freedom of religion, what a joke, but it works), freedom to farm along with minorities taking away their jobs, and please do not forget welfare, provides the base for frauds like NOem/Thune/Rounds/Krebs/Jackley and Opie to name a few. All crooks and liars that know how to stir up the working class to disregard their own best interests, sometimes right from the pulpit.
Clyde mentions the press. Each paper in South Dakota, be that a weekly or a daily has print in it from all of the crooks and liars each week. Lying propaganda from them declaring how fit they are to handle the responsibility of their elected office. They say that while slowing fulfilling the death warrant they are serving to the working class. I think our bellies are full of their constant lies and distortions, we can and must do better.
Darin, I find hard work a great way to work out my feelings. But (harkening to an earlier point) I find working in a setting where I have no autonomy only makes things worse.
(Holy cow—that makes me understand why I like working with my dad much more now than when I was a kid. When I was younger, helping Dad load wood or mow or whatever just felt like being bossed around. Now as a grown-up, when I choose to help, I’m happy to follow his directions. Autonomy… and maturity… but I digress….)
Mr. Green Jeans! Porter epitomizes the imagery quite concisely!
Clyde mentions Europe’s farm policy. Does Europe have CAFOs?
Cory, your point about resenting industrialized ag may hold water. Agriculture today is a long way from the idealized ag we grew up with. But, hey, is resenting industrialized ag really a bad thing? Is it really what this country should be aspiring to? We had agriculture that only had livestock leaving the farm. The waste stayed on the land and the animals grew to market weight on that land. We now think its more efficient to pull all the fences and raise thousands of acres of feed grains to be hauled to a grain elevator dozens of miles away and then hauled out to a CAFO where the fertilizer those animals create becomes a pollutant due to its concentration. The CAFO then must find somewhere to put the waste so he hauls it for miles to find a field where it won’t be too concentrated as to pose a further pollution problem. Do you see what I’m talking about? This is a very inefficient system in all aspects except for the tiny return to labor per unit of production.
Virtually every animal and fowl is now produced on contract to some big vertical integrator except cattle and sheep. As to cattle they are manipulated by the tiny number of packers controlling a huge number of cattle on contract and custom fed. When the market gets too high they just kill their own till they can drive down the open market and buy as they please. The list goes on but in my opinion modern industrialized ag is just wrong. In my opinion a progressive tax structure could go a long way towards fixing what I think are the problems but, hey, Repubs think we need to go the opposite way.
Clyde