The pro-corporate Farm Bureau reports that the Trump era has brought the highest yearly increase in Chapter 12 family farm bankruptcies since the Great Recession:
While well below historical highs, Chapter 12 family farm bankruptcies in 2019 increased by nearly 20% from the previous year, according to recently released data from the U.S. Courts. Compared with figures from over the last decade, the 20% increase trails only 2010, the year following the Great Recession, when Chapter 12 bankruptcies rose 33%.
During the 2019 calendar year there were 595 Chapter 12 family farm bankruptcies, up nearly 100 filings from 2018 and the highest level since 2011’s 637 Chapter 12 filings. Given that there are slightly more than 2 million farms in the U.S., the 2019 bankruptcy data reveals a bankruptcy rate of approximately 2.95 bankruptcies per 10,000 farms, slightly below the rate of 2.99 filings per 10,000 farms in 2011.
During the fourth quarter of 2019, there were 147 Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings, which was up 14% from the prior year but down 8% from the third quarter of 2019. On a year-over-year basis, Chapter 12 filings have increased for five consecutive quarters. The continued increase in Chapter 12 filings was not unanticipated given the multi-year downturn in the farm economy, record farm debt, headwinds on the trade front and recent changes to the bankruptcy rules in 2019’s Family Farmer Relief Act, which raised the debt ceiling to $10 million (What is Chapter 12 Family Farmer Bankruptcy?, Farm Bankruptcies Rise Again and Outlook Improves for 2019 Farm Economy, but Uncertainty Remains) [Dr. John Newton and Caleb Pascoe, “The Verdict Is In: Farm Bankruptcies Up in 2019,” Farm Bureau: Market Intel, 2020.01.29].
Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies reached a decade high in South Dakota and nine other states:
Hmmm… is this the “winning” Senator Marion Michael Rounds was thumping his chest about in his anti-socialist blurp against Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez before the State of the Union?
Absent the socialist bribe checks Trump sent out to stifle farmer gripes about his destructive tariffs, 2019 farm income was the second-lowest in the last decade. With the socialist Market Facilitation Program winding down following Trump’s surrender in the trade war and only partial steps toward undoing the damage of global tariffs, the USDA projects that farm income will drop this year another 9%.
Maybe stats like these and conversations with the bank will help South Dakota farmers realize that triggering liberal snowflakes by flying Trump flags won’t pay the mortgage. It’s time to slap some Warren/Sanders/Buttigieg stickers on your tractors!
To make up for the project 9% loss and for the current double digit loss, every ag producer, except the loud mouth rich ones, need to follow Iowa, better hope like hell Sanders wins this thing to open fair markets.
Sitting in front of the banker to beg for next years operating money, is gonna be a sweat lodge for the producer. The banker already has his marching orders, to keep down exposure for the bank while making seem like they’re all in for the sweaty guy. Truth is, they already have a buyer for his place, the loud mouth Chubby guy.
bankers have very short memories when things go sour, one only has to go back to the 80’s!we need mandatory ” country of origin labeling,(cool)for starters.gov.noem & our congressional crowd need to go back to school & learn something helpful to farmers & ranchers instead of fronting for the corporate boys like they did in 2015. for god’s sake stand up for once for family farmers & ranchers.
Ireland looks to have figured it out after a century of the do nothing two political party’s there. Sinn Fein, yep, those guys, are in it as equals. This will shake up the system for more social programs that help all and especially, the working farmers and the rest of the working folks with the economy and health needs. Sound familiar, it should, because that is what we see right here.
“An exit poll gave Sinn Féin 22.3% of the vote, a statistical dead heat with Fine Gael on 22.4% and Fianna Fáil on 22.2%, two centrist rivals that have dominated Ireland for a century.
Full results are expected on Monday or Tuesday, but early tallies from count centres across Ireland on Sunday suggested the republican party had indeed made unprecedented gains and realigned Irish politics.
It did so in large part by appealing to voters who felt left behind by a booming economy and chafed at soaring rents, homelessness, insurance costs and hospital waiting lists.”https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/09/irish-voters-have-made-sinn-fein-mainstream-election
Farmers here seem to shut the hell up about what they want Mr. Kammerer. In those days of yore you speak of, farmers drove tractors to Washington to protest. Now, they are silenced by the bankers and the local loudmouths who vie for the land grab when they go teats up.
“Sinn Féin manifesto’s states that the “lack of transparency in pricing, evident in the sheep and beef sectors, must be tackled by regulation and legislation”, something it promises to bring before the next Dáil.
“The lack of fair competition in the meat-processing sector in Ireland is a core reason for the crisis facing Irish farming. The Irish processing sector is highly concentrated: the three biggest factory groups now control 65% of all meat processed in the state.
“This forces farmers to accept the artificially low prices offered by these corporate giants,” the manifesto states.” https://www.thejournal.ie/general-election-parties-farming-agriculture-4986532-Feb2020/
All of this is familiar here. There, they seem to be serious about it…why is that?
Farm bureau (trump supporting) farmers hope their neighbors go broke (or die) so they can pick up the land.
Great news for Ireland. They also have a democratic electoral process that might be worth a closer look. Maybe we can follow their lead?
It’s always heartbreaking to me when people are their own willing enemies. That’s one of the cruelest things the GOP has done through their Faux Noize propaganda.
It’s not Left v. Right. It’s Top crushing Bottom (everyone else)
Insane Imbecile is not your friend. The GOP is not on your side. You are their dupes.
How do I reconcile this with earlier reports that net farm income is up 10% this year?
https://dakotafreepress.com/2019/12/12/farmers-31-socialist/
Farmers will not be the only ones going under. Chubby will toss them another anvil for the quick sinking along with the rest of us.
“President Trump on Monday will request a 6 percent cut to non-defense spending as part of his $4.8 trillion budget proposal for 2021, breaking from a bipartisan spending agreement inked in August.
The request includes $740.5 billion in defense spending, but just $590 billion for domestic spending, which includes everything from health and education to transportation and foreign policy.”
You make a deal with Chubby and it’s like making a deal with the devil Hisownself. The only way to save the family farm and the rest of us is to vote for Democratic change. If it has an R beside the name, it means Run like hell away from them, the R brand is completely toxic.
o, sometimes you have to read a little bit farther “Unfortunately, almost a third of that income will come in the form of government handouts” from the same link. There, fixed it for ya.
It is called “Farmer’s Bribes” and will be on the 1040 form from the IRS this tax season. It is just underneath the line item “Silence Porn Star Payment” line item for the Gross Adjusted Income…Heavy on the Gross.
Jerry, but those handouts still count as income, right? Or is you point that the actual income from farm production is down 9% – but the Government has supplemented that up to a net 10% increase? Or is this a story about the haves and have-nots (like the rest of the economy?
I am really asking here – not trying to poke holes.
I am so frustrated about the whole “positive” economic narrative that the GOP/President Trump keep touting – using facts and statistics that only show a strong economy for the top income group, and the rest falling further and further behind, but somehow ignoring the evidence of their own finances to march along with the GOP talking points.
What happened to the old question: “are YOU better off now than a year ago?” to put people in mind of THEIR REAL economic status?
More good economic news, if you are deaf, dumb and blind…. https://www.newsweek.com/consumer-confidence-fell-after-trumps-new-trade-agreement-china-1483446
o, of course the Bribes are income. Farmers just don’t know how they will list that income on their tax forms. I have yet to see any special line item for those Bribes other than a capital gains scenario.
That question of “are YOU better off now than a year ago?” should be asked by Democrats not only on the national scene but right here in South Dakota. Are you better off not only financially, but are you better off with affordable healthcare, housing, job prospects…the list goes on. Why isn’t that being asked? If the economy is so damn good, then what do voters have to show for that. Are you still in the basement at Ma’s house helping here scrape by? How much do you owe on your student loan yet? All of these things.
o, lots of things can cause bankruptcy. In general they are being over extended for the circumstances you end up facing. Lets say that you own ground prone to flooding. Every year that you lose your crop to flooding your insurance check is diminished. The payment is figured on an average of the yield of that field over 5 years….no crop…down goes the average. Not many farmers have bet on year after year of hill to hill flooding like we have been getting lately.
Just one example. But an increase in bankruptcy is an indication that the risks have gone up.
The current farm program is going to do in everyone if something isn’t changed. We couldn’t grow crops on 20 million acres in this country last year and all we have for prices are what we should be guaranteed every year. If we had grown a normal crop every producer would have been below his break even. We have that to look forward to this coming year with the only bright spot being that the R party and Trumpy want to stay in charge. How much tax money that will take is yet to be seen. After he is re-elected along with a R senate is scary.
So 130 billion cut to medicare and drug prescription, more for the milatary.Where is the man in the empty suit to say something and slick Mike .Whoops I do not have any documents lets just pass it.
“The towns are rolling up on us. That is the truth.” “If we don’t do that [establish steady trading partners and make investment in rural America akin to that in the rural electrification program] in next number of years, we will lose rural America,” she said.
– Beth Ford, President & CEO, Land O’Lakes to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve annual economic outlook for the Ninth Region. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-towns-are-rolling-up-on-us-warns-land-olakes-ceo-of-rural-america-at-annual-fed-summit-2020-01-09
She added that the rise in farm income corresponds to the 64% increase in government payments. It’s not what farmers want. It’s not sustainable.
Perfect headline example of undeniable truth wingnuts claim is fake news.
https://the-immoral-minority.com/donald-trumps-major-campaign-strength-is-an-economy-that-is-not-of-his-making-and-is-doing-worse-under-his-leadership/
drumpf the dumb did not build this economy. He inherited it, just like everything else in his life.
So how do you go about investing in rural South Dakota? I can tell you for sure that if you go into a small town and want to make any kind of improvements, the locals will be up in arms because they view that as raising property values…raising their tax. They won’t have it because they’re that broken.
The only way possible to help main street is for the federal government to do that and that ain’t gonna happen the way things are presently. All of these small towns could stand infrastructure projects like water and sewer and just being cleared of old debris for starters.
I recently spent 110 days in rural Iowa. I was taken aback by how wealthy the small towns and farms appear. Trains and trucks ran everywhere. The miles of paved county roads boggled my mind. Yet, rural Iowans, rightly, bemoan the economic slide of rural towns and farms. They have no idea that they are 1-2 decades behind rural Nebraska, Wyoming, or South Dakota, in the economic slide of their rural towns and farms. That slide is accelerating. The national democrats ignored it. Hillary Clinton’s nonsense that, “America is already great”, symbolized democratic hubris. The republicans showered it with platitudes then create policy exacerbating rural decline. Compromising “moderates” like Klobuchar do nothing to change the inertia — in fact trump came within 45,000 votes of winning Minnesota. The margin was so close that the trumpsters consider Minnesota a swing state. That’s why he made numerous recent visits.
Rural voters went for trump seeing someone who would shake up the entrenched order. Trump did that shakeup — but with the wrong solutions: trade wars, pretending to bring-back obsolete jobs, building a wall, scapegoating immigrants, tax cut for those who didn’t need them, subverting the ethanol industry without creating a rural alternative, etc. It’s long past the time for adults to take charge of our national policy — so we stop ‘rolling up our rural towns’ and ‘risk losing rural America’.
John, as a rural iowan who has spent more than 110 days here, i totally disagree with your premise that rural iowa has trains running everywhere, etc. Having lived in this one spot for the past 41 years, I have seen many rural farmsteads fail, get bulldozed and the land all farmed, but by fewer and fewer owners, many not even local.
Small towns are barely hanging on. Equipment dealers are few and far between. Farmers I have known for decades have died off or moved to nursing homes and their children sell the land. drumpf didn’t fool me in the least. But NW iowa hasn’t been represented in DC by a Democrat Since Berkley Bedell’s last year as congressman in 1987 and this part of the state was the 6th district. We are now the 4th district because of declining population, mainly from small towns and farms.
Wingnuts have given iowans nothing but more cafos and dirty water and environment. They took away local control of cafo sightings thanks to Farm Burro. They pushed through an oil pipeline and gave the company imminent domain to condemn land for the pipeline. I wouldn’t vote for a wingnut for a position above township level where they can’t personally hurt anyone by their actions.
John, those paved roads and such were when there was a viable agriculture community. Back when there were markets to sell to and there were Democrats in the Senate that had an eye out for them while understanding business. Those days are long past. I do agree that it’s long past time for real thinking adults to remove the petulant, so called republican crooks and liars, from anything that has to do with power.
Western South Dakota had reasonably good roads at one time that were maintained by money from the federal government for the missile launch pads. When those were dismantled, the roads went to crap with county’s not having the resources to maintain them. Then we lost Tom Daschle and then we lost Tim Johnson and then we lost the country itself to the thieves and liars of today. There are no trains here anymore other than the one going through Wall and Philip to Pierre. There were 3 at one time that I can remember.
My friend Mike: I do not disagree with you. Your long term observations are priceless. Rather I offer my snapshot comparison to rural Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Certainly several Iowa towns have boarded up main street shops. I saw those. I saw towns where the only restaurant was Pizza Ranch, or less. I saw ‘help wanted’ signs in many businesses – as they grasp to remain viable. My volunteers heard from many store owners how cyber businesses like Amazon riddled their sales — over 60% of the owners were shocked learning that Amazon paid NO federal income tax for years. I saw towns which consolidated schools among 3 or more towns – with more consolidation in the planning. I saw towns without grocery stores. As JD Scholten says, Dollar General is not a grocery store.
Comparatively though, these towns and counties remain far wealthier than their western brethren in NE, WY, SD — viewed from a snapshot. But not for long. Paved Iowa county roads will return to gravel. Fewer bridges and culverts from the climate change increased precip – flooding will be replaced. My point remains, echoing Beth Ford, President & CEO of Land O’Lakes, and Andrew Yang, presidential candidate — we must do something to get the boot off the throat of folks or we will lose rural America and a significant number of our population.
Rural America could give a damn if they keep losing. In fact, they wear it like a badge of honor, “sticking it to those damn liberals”, is their one and only goal. Going down with the Titanic called South Dakota, is just another day. Look who is at the helm, no wonder we have an opioid epidemic. Yeah, I know, we’re on it.
We will appoint EB5 Rounds for another 6 here in the great state of forgetfulness. We can read this below and ignore what it means because most here, don’t know how they’re being used as they’ve gotten used to it. They cannot see the damage they’re doing to themselves. But they will, soon enough. Then they will blame you John and me for being right and not making them do the right thing to remove that boot from their own damn throat.
“Recall his repeated promises not to “touch” Social Security and Medicare? Even as the elderly population swells, his budget calls for removing half a trillion dollars of funding from the Medicare program over 10 years, including $135 billion from Medicare prescription drugs, and tens of billions from the Social Security program.
In 2015, he promised not to touch Medicaid, either. Now he wants to cut it by $920 billion.” Washington Post 2.10.20
Can farmer’s go to jail for unpaid medical bills? Oh, you betcha https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coffeyville-kansas-medical-debt-county-in-rural-kansas-is-jailing-people-over-unpaid-medical-debt/
Welcome to the rural debtor prison systems. All taxpayer approved when you vote for the republicans in charge. Got a family, tough.
The only way to fix the problems with rural america is to put more money in the hands of rural american’s! I don’t mean in the hands of CAFO operations or 10K crop farmers but in the hands of folks just to the opposite of those. Everything possible to help small farmers that might be willing to farm completely organically. How about just shutting off payments to operations that get too big. A meaningful cap to payments. Lots of ways…all that is needed is a will.
That will could be raised by a media barrage in rural america. Europe has a large farm economy along with a healthy small farm economy. Its possible.
I agree 100% with Clyde.
It would seem big ag wins though.
SCOTUS is an “architect. The Court’s interpretations of the Constitution and other laws become blueprints for the nation, helping to determine what form it will take and how it will continue to rise. For the past half-century, the Court has been drawing up plans for a more economically unequal nation, and that is the America that is now being built.
In our civic imagination, the Supreme Court protects the downtrodden and safeguards fairness. equal justice under law read the words over the Court’s entrance; justice the guardian of liberty proclaims the building’s eastern facade.”
But this is the exception, writes Adam Cohen, a former member of the New York Times editorial board, who has dispensed with these egalitarian conventions and written a book that is almost pure law. Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America does not pander to readers or mug for their attention.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-supreme-courts-enduring-bias/605545/
‘The modern Court has more frequently protected the interests of wealthy elites than of minorities and the vulnerable. Cohen writes that in the 50 years since Warren Burger replaced Earl Warren, “the Court has, with striking regularity, sided with the rich and powerful against the poor and weak, in virtually every area of the law.”’
While slapping stickers, small farmers and their elected officials should follow pragmatic liberal SCOTUS members. For example, ‘the Court’s 2012 decision that upheld the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. Along the way, seven members of the Court voted to strike down the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid. That was one of the kicks against the poor that Cohen charges the Court with delivering. But as we learn more about the case, it appears that two of those seven votes, by the liberal justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, may have been cast in return for Chief Justice John Roberts’s crucial vote to uphold the individual mandate. Kagan’s and Breyer’s pragmatism may well have bought enough goodwill from the chief justice to save health care for millions of Americans.’
Wouldn’t it be nice if small farmers could count on Roberts and other conservative SCOTUS members to favor egalitarian small farmers?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/13/supreme-court-monsanto-indiana-soybean-seeds
leslie, the last supreme court justice could have been stopped if the Dem’s had shown a spine. When the republicans refused to allow the democrats to select a justice the democrats in congress should have just went home for an extended vacation. No quorum, no government. The democratic party used to stand up to injustice.
Clyde, I thought a recess appointment would work temporarily, but an activist wingnut scotus gave an activist wingnut sinate great powers to stop what was, at one time, allowable.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2016/02/is-a-recess-appointment-to-the-court-an-option/
How is it that the “great American economy – strongest EVER” is now
– Seeing Farmers go under at an accelerated rate?
– Looking at NEEDING to cut Medicare and Medicaid?
– Reneging on a scheduled 2% raise for federal employees?
How the 1% measures a “strong economy” is not how the vast majority of citizens measure a strong economy. WHO the economy is working for is the question for which the GOP has blood on its hands.
o’s comment says it all. o is right on the money in pointing out the internal contradictions of the Trumpy “greatest economy ever” propaganda.
Then why is no Democratic candidate standing in the middle of a farm foreclosure auction asking “so this is what a great economy looks like?” Or at a closed down school, or Main Street with shuttered businesses, or WalMart where a 85 year old greeter is trying to make enough to pay for heart medicine, or a promising HS student not going to college because of the cost . . .
Why are we not saying,” We are NOT OK?”
Maybe it’s time to channel Joh Edwards’ “Two Americas.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22230-2004Jul28.html
No doubt: The plain facts of the eroding rural economy are right in front of us, but no one’s hammering home that fact to shake rural voters out of their Trump dementia.
o who knows?
I will suggest, however, that national budget proposals tell a more accurate story about the nation’s economy than individual anecdotes, which tell only narrower stories that can more easily be ignored or rationalized as individual failings, rather than the failure of national leadership, citing, for example, our current record low unemployment rate and the amazing stock market growth.
I wonder, rather, “why is no Democratic candidate” standing in the public arena asking the much more telling and profound questions you have raised about significant national economic issues, such as the purported need to cut medicaid, social security, renege on promised pay raises for federal employees, etc., if a low unemployment rate or stock market success is somehow a sign of a “great American economy – strongest EVER.”
This guy knows beans about drumpf’s “greatest ever” bologna.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/481321-since-you-wont-get-them-in-the-state-of-the-union-here-are
ps this in the Obama economy drumpf lied and said he had to
turn around.
pss there are millions out there that still repeat, verbatim, drumpf’s lies about Obama’s economy.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has purchased a Beverly Hills estate in a record-breaking sale. At $165 million, it is the most expensive property sale in Los Angeles history.
Bezos, the richest man in the world, purchased the Jack Warner Estate for an eighth of a percent of his net worth, which is an estimated $131 billion.
He purchased the property from David Geffen, a businessman, producer, and film studio executive, whose net worth is an estimated $9 billion. Geffen bought the property in 1990 for $47.5 million, which would be approximately $92.9 million in 2020 values.
This report from Cedar Rapids Gazette should get a smile even from Dakota wingnut lege when they see how goofy iowa wingnuts are…..(this will cost farmers income)
In addition to doing regulatory favors for brewpub hipsters, members of the Lege also had a thought for their less affluent constituents, and that thought mostly involved coming up with new ways of making it harder for people to qualify for food stamps (formally, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). You see, Fox News says there’s too much waste and fraud in the SNAP program, and so Iowa Republicans need to add tougher eligibility requirements.
Not that some of the changes the Iowa legislature is talking about make a hell of a lot of sense!
The Gazette reports the bill, “House File 2030,” would require all Iowans receiving public assistance — not just SNAP — to verify their eligibility for the program four times a year instead of once, as is done under the current system. That just makes good sense to state Sen. Jason Schultz (R), the chair of the Labor and Business Relations Committee. Last year, he said he supported the proposal because it would result in “tens of millions of dollars in savings.” But now he has a slightly different take, insisting the new rules would bring “tens of millions of dollars in efficiencies.” Which must be equally good, although we suspect you don’t need to show your math to claim “efficiencies” instead of savings.
Not surprisingly, the proposed change is being opposed by people who aren’t paid by Americans for Prosperity or “Iowans for Tax Relief,” because if you quadruple the number of eligibility reviews, you’re going to need a lot more people to process the paperwork. Iowa’s Medicaid director, Michael Randol, told a state House subcommittee in late January that the state would need to hire between 250 and 280 new employees to handle all the new paperwork. Another witness at the hearing, Iowa Behavior Health Association lobbyist Amy Campbell, said the savings would likely only amount to about $30,000 a year, but the increased labor costs would come to some $3 million a year.
Why, that doesn’t sound efficient at all!
Thought you might be interested in a New York Times article mentioning that JBS, a giant Brazilian meat packer with a pretty checkered past, got $67,000,000 in Trump farm payments. Those same payments supposed to compensate farmers for Trump’s Chinese trade fiasco.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/us/politics/farm-bailout-jbs.html?referringSource=articleShare
Moar good news for farmers (pure snark make no mistake).
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/a-stunning-betrayal-swing-state-farmers-are-fuming-over-trumps-latest-gift-to-the-fossil-fuel-industry/
from above link…….
Bloomberg reports that the Renewable Fuels Association, National Farmers Union, and the National Biodiesel Board all called out the administration’s plans to appeal a court ruling that invalidated biofuel waivers that it granted to three oil refineries.
Specifically, the groups said that an appeal of the decision “would be viewed as a stunning betrayal of America’s rural workers and farmers,” and could potentially harm the president’s reelection prospects.
I fully admit I find this news extremely upsetting. It brings to mind all the faces of farmers and their entire families I have known over the years, children, women, men, grandparents.
The farm belongs to all of them, but our patriarchal culture unfairly places the expectation and responsibility of success on the man.
150 of them suicided in 2017-2018, a number that is far up. An investigation by USA Today and The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting says the number is very likely higher because some states only reported partial info and some suicides are not reported as such.
“The investigation found several key factors that contributed to the suicide crisis, including the drop in commodity prices since 2012, as well as increased farmer debt, bad weather that prevented planting, and a severe drop in exports to China ‘amid festering trade tensions.’”
What attention has Corrupt Creep given to these deaths? What has his gasbag Sec of Ag done, other than call farmers “whiners” and tell them to “get big or get out”?
Corrupt Creep could not be clearer that he does not give a damn about farmers, other than bribing them for their November vote.
Please farmers, you deserve better and you need to care for yourself for the sake of your family and everyone who loves and needs you. Vote for the Democrat in November. He will do better for you.
I wonder how many farmers took drumpf at his post signing Phase 1 deal word and went heavily into debt buying more land and larger equipment because drumpf landed such a great deal? I’m guessing not many unless they were mega farms to begin with.
A young friends brother just killed himself. He was farming the small family farm where they had grown up and working a job in town as well. Great country we’re living in right now. Doesn’t look as if it will get better. My son is quitting the business because he see’s no future in it and I can’t say I blame him.
I’m so sorry to hear that Clyde. 😢
Some good news from the ag section…. https://www.nwestiowa.com/news/primghar-brothers-named-master-farmers/article_cc7f74b6-75cc-11ea-bdb0-bb3d79e9d496.html
Know them well. Own a quarter section right west of my Chevrier adobe. ( No idea what that means)
Ahh. The Bard of Primghar now has famous Primghar neighbors.
“Chevrier adobe”, according to the Translate app, is French for “adobe goat.” It’s also in the lyrics of a Guess Who song.
Let’s go with the “So Long, Bannatyne” lyrics, shall we?
✔
Dairy farmers are dumping milk because the milk / cheese market evaporated with the restaurants. Their likely next step . . . dumping cattle they cannot afford to feed into the over-supplied beef market. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-dairy-insight/u-s-dairy-farmers-dump-milk-as-pandemic-upends-food-markets-idUSKBN21L1DW
140 senators and representatives petitioned AG SEC, “stop yer whining” Sonny Perdue to “do something” to help cattle producers. Good luck with that. https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/states-congressional-delegation-urges-immediate-support-for-ag-producers/article_25b7b75a-fa9c-5fd9-ba25-03b721b41667.html
So we are dumping food while pushing families out of food security: seems like a (willful) supply and demand problem.
https://newrepublic.com/article/156912/trump-cutting-food-stamps-pandemic
Nationalize farming somewhat like the EU does. We basically do that here, right now, but it could be done following their guidelines as well. Dumping milk and dumping dairy beef on the beef market has been done secretly before.
Also, change the way we process milk from homogenization, that wastes energy to keep it cold, to pasteurization like Europe does. That would cut our carbon use by half or very near to it.
o, I see millions more US families that will be in dire need for food stamps. With an overabundance of food, and no one to buy it…what then?
Commods anyone?
The fact is that a farmer will overproduce as long as he see’s a profit can be made. When the overproduction affords only a loss he will go bankrupt. Those that have the cash will pick up that productive capacity until the industry is consolidated to the point that the tiny handful of production capacity owners left can get together and control production at a level that is very profitable for them.
Its been forty years of this constant clean out and many hours going up and down the rows with nothing to think about but how this scheme works. it seems to me that without concentrated wealth trying to end up with the scenario that I just described that the only truly efficient agriculture would be subsistence agriculture. When the country came up with the homestead act and filled this country up with starving folks from Europe that had none of the cash that could control markets we pretty much had subsistence farming.
With the system we now have we really have no choice but to continue subsidizing agriculture. Yes, in many instances it is inefficient and it sure isn’t being done now days in the interest of whats best for rural America or, IMO, whats good for the nation as a whole. What are the true costs of bulldozing all the farmsteads into a hole and burning them? What is the cost of turning once vibrant small towns into ghost towns? What is the cost of pushing intelligent, hard working, self sufficient farmers into the concrete jungles of our cities? When I was in the Navy I came to the conclusion that the only people capable of keeping the ship running were farm kids and hot rodders. How does our military run now????
IMO, we need to greatly reduce the influence of the big Agri input oligopoly’s. We have no choice but to plant genetically modified seed that requires their pesticide. Really no choice. They now control our land grant university’s so that no one is developing any alternatives for us. Besides that the vertically integrated multinationals that have taken over almost all meat production need to be broken up and/or taxed to death. We have gone to a system that requires the farmers that are left out here to produce dirt cheap feed grains that are then trucked many miles to a feed processor who then hauls the feed many miles more to giant feeding operations where the manure is then concentrated to the point of becoming a pollutant. The manure then is transported many more miles to find a site to apply it. This is what we call efficient in modern agriculture!????? When all this production used to be done on the individual small farm. Something about this to me makes no sense.
I think that every crop is below the cost of production right now even though 20 million acres didn’t get planted last year. The cattle market is shot and all the other meat markets are no longer in the hands of farmers. I imagine that if you have several hog houses all on contract you are still able to continue till the concentration of them leaves you in the same boat as the chicken broiler industry. Been plenty of documentary’s on the hopelessness of that industry.
Racist/white scumacyst Steve King of nowhere’s fourth congressionalsewer district, is leading the racist charge against Land’ o’ Lakes for removing Native American maiden from their butter packaging.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/rep-steve-king-leads-right-wing-outrage-over-land-o-lakes-butter-removing-native-american-character-from-box/
This rates right down there with googling Noem’s feet.
It’s too bad King can’t find something more productive to do with his time. BTW, I think you’re being much too gentle with him.