Prices for nearly every major U.S. crop are below what it costs to grow them. But a drop in rice prices means another blow to farmers in Mississippi’s agricultural belt.
Farmers voted for him the first time, and their business tanked, and survived only because they got a bail out.
So they voted for him again, and predictably, the same thing happened. Now they want another bail out, but PeeWee Himmler wants all the money to go to the Gestapo, so Trump doesn’t care about farmers. It’s not like he’s going to hungry.
They’re getting what they voted for.
Whenever something is expensive, I always look at the quality of life of the people profiting off of bringing it to market.
Every industry now has gatekeeping mega corporations consolidated into a handful of players that have entered into illegal trusts to run prices up. At least 50 percent of increases have been such corporations increasing their profit margins with the existing inflation as their excuse.
It’s not legal, we don’t need new laws, existing laws could bring these guys to heel. Except the courts are captured, regulators are captured. If only we had a strong leader in 2021 we could’ve had a loud aggressive campaign to bring these chiseling corporations to heel one way and or others.
What we got was perfunctionary attempts, with no backup, no air support, and no campaign. A token leftist, perhaps the only one despite 30% of their electorate consisting of them, that could achieve nothing without the campaign to overcome the corrupted system by massive public pressure and pressure of other crimes and perversions being brought to light and prosecuted for those protecting the powerful in unlawfully gouging us.
It would be popular too, and these current guys would not be in power. Remember that next time the establishment democrats tell you there was nothing they could do, as if they, and as if we, were too dumb to know how real politic is played.
I remember watching an egg farmer live stream and she said that they have only increased their prices 10-15% when the shelves were at a nearly 100% increase.
The bird flu was an excuse to raise prices by the few remaining agribusiness conglomerates. I presume there are three or so left controlling the market as it is with beef and chicken and pork individually.
The farmers and producers are getting squeezed, if anything they are making less in real value. Big money without any constraints destroys the free market, and itself. Our lawmakers increasingly actually believe the ad hoc free market arguments about letting the market sort everything too, a recipe for future economic crashes.
This means that your agriculture is imported? ironically one of the few areas most nation protect with toll barriers.
I can’t get my head around that industry. In my area there are several vegetable farms, most are sold long before harvesting. So one year they had a amazing cauliflower year. Yields above expected. But they could not sell the excess as there was no buyers. So I could drive past looking at happy elks gorging themselves on delicious cauliflower before they plowed it into the field. And then I went to the local grocery store and bought plastic wrapped cauliflower from Spain…
Inspite of all the advances in agriculture it is still a very volatile industry. Everything from weather to climate to insects to pests to weeds to infection can affect the yield. In addition with scale come problems in harvest, storage, processing. Although there is a lot of mechanisation it is till very labour intensive.
The logistics of agriculture are outrageous. I just don’t get why you wouldn’t try to make something out of an unwanted crop. You really can’t find one use for that much plant matter? Ferment and/or distill it, get in touch with food banks, anything.
Cauliflower is used to make like noodles for fat people too, there are uses for it.
My main exposure to crop farming has been through the series Clarkson’s Farm, so I’m no expert …
… but from what I understand it costs a hell of a lot of money to rent the equipment needed to harvest the crop, and then you still need to store and process it. If there is no guarantee you can sell the end product, sinking loads of money into the harvest is less appealing than just cutting your losses and letting the crop rot.
As extra benefit, plowing them back into the soil means the nutrients get recycled, so less fertilizer needed next year.
It seems like the kind of market inefficiency capitalism so often touts itself as the answer to. Why not make an agreement with a brewery to take the rice, and share any profits from sake? Just as an example, I don’t know if that exact scenario could work with this sort of rice. Pairing up excess produce with businesses who don’t mind getting free materials shouldn’t be that hard.
Which would be a good function of the government, to make sure produce finds a market, and doesn’t get wasted. As long as we subsidize, and we should to protect our abilities to grow food if not for sugar and corn, we should be doing it to lower costs for citizens and to make sure nothing gets wasted.
Like in 2020 during the pandemic, crops were rotting in the fields. They were throwing around trillions of dollars to subsidize corporate profits, but we couldn’t be bothered to make sure crops didn’t get wasted.
thats why its extremely subsidized.
Then it is a waste of money as well, no?
Part of the reason you subsidize is that overproduction most years is a feature. You dont want a “not enough food” situation in the lean years, and growing enough to make sure of that guarantees that the farmers go broke.
That said, the specifics of how and what the US subsidies go to are pretty bad: we mostly pay for the creation of cattle feed and motor vehicle fuel.
I get that. It’s a shame that food isn’t treated as a pubic good that simply needs to be provided for free at the point of consumption. I know some people would maybe overeat, but it’s not like making them pay has solved that problem.
We subsidize for corn syrup and sugar to a large degree too, products americans get way too much of, because they are artificially cheap, it’s a cheap filler in processed foods.
i heard they get money for not selling crops in the us, that fits the bill. Elks arnt going hungry thats for sure.
May the farmers have the day they voted for.
they had did have several times during his 1st term, they dint learn from that.
Have they Tried blaming Dems yet while CONTINUING to Vote Republican? That Strategy TYPICALLY Works REALLY REALLY Well!
Don’t worry, hedgefunds will buy your farms for pennies on the dollar, hire temp labour to farm for a pittance and collude with government and other players in a rigged market and charge exhorbitant prices. Welcome to the late stage capitalism you voted for while you still could.
the majority of US farmers are millionaires milking this corporate welfare state for every $ they can, they have loads of special rules just for this purpose, just like the corporate mega-farmers…they’re in league with each-other. farm lobby is just really good at PR, pretending they oppose each other
profit for hobby farms is just extra on top of whatever dividends the rich people running them pull out from others work
Ironically, they got exactly what they voted for
multiple times, especially since he did the same thing in his 1st term, only now there is nothing but loyalist in his cabinets now.
Please do not confuse real farmers with cosplay farmers. Real farmers are not as right-wing as you think. Real farmers understand global economics and climate change because they are directly experienced. Cosplay farmers that have a pickup, a horse, and a field of mud with unsuccessful farming prospects are who you are thinking of.
I’ve never met a liberal farmer in my life, and I grew up in bumfuck Iowa. These are the real farmers, and the vast majority of them are conservative.
the cosplay farmers are usually the owners, the farm workers are usually “migrant workers”
