Farming

Great Debates
1

I don’t spend a whole heck of a lot of time over here and I’m probably going to violate a whole bunch of rules, but here goes…

Over in the BBQ pit someone posted this:

Round here the farmers moan and say that prices must rise because it is

Too sunny

Too rainy

Too windy

Spring was early

Spring was late

Crops failed in Africa

It was a terrible year because harvests were good!

A 2yard wide footpath next to a hedge in a 100 acre field will reduce yields dramatically .Yet the foopath has been there over 500 years.

The French, US, Germans, Dutch, Japanese etc etc subsidise their farmers so we have to do the same.

The price of diesel fuel has been increased by government taxes, despite the fact that farmers use untaxed fuel.

Supermarkets are to blame, somehow.

Cows are mad

Radiation poisoning

Dioxin poisoning

Geez, life is way too hard to be a farmer I guess but it all looks so nice on the candy boxes and jigsaw puzzles.

I replied with this:

My father owns a 400 acre dairy farm and milks about 40 head. He’s selling his milk for 10.5 cents a pound. That’s 90.3 cents a gallon. Buy milk recently?

Corn is selling for about $1.30 a BUSHEL. It costs more to put corn in the ground than it does to sell it, so he’s letting 40 acres go to weed this summer. Any idea how much a box of corn flakes costs?

The above prices are only because of price supports, you know.

My father DOES pay tax on his diesel fuel when he buys it. As a small businessman he does get to write off the fuel as an operating expense, however.

And, yeah, farmers do bitch about the weather a lot. The trick to farming is to be the only place around that has perfect weather. It doesn’t happen, which is why it’s easier to make a living at Vegas crap tables than on a farm.

So why do people do it? For the same reason people hang on to the mom and pop grocery store for as long as they can after the new Safeway/Giant/Cub moves it. Or to the family hardware store after Home Depot moves it. Or the local five and dime after WalMart moves in.

My grampa used to have a pretty corny bumper sticker on his truck that in a roundabout way sums up my feelings about the subject: If you complain about farmers don’t eat with your mouth full.

Anyone have any comments?

2

The price of diesel fuel has been increased by government taxes, despite the fact that farmers use untaxed fuel.

My father DOES pay tax on his diesel fuel when he buys it. As a small businessman he does get to write off the fuel as an operating expense, however.

Anyone have any comments?
**
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Farmers are allowed to buy “dyed diesel fuel”, which is federal tax free, as long as they use if for farming purposes. If he is not aware of this, that is his fault.

3

:o :o :o

I knew that. Completely forgot about it, though. Thanks for reminding me, DanITWD.

4

The entire world agriculture market is distorted by government controls and subsidies and IMHO they should be phased out everywhere. Agriculture should be like any other business regulated by the market. I do not see any reason to intervene. All developed countries subsidize and protect their agriculture and so you end up paying people to not grow things, paying other people to grow things the market doesn’t want, many bureaucrats to run the whole scheme, and a few more bureaucrats to figure what to do with the surplus (now they want to sell it to Cuba). In the meanwhile half of the world is going hungry…

5

Ditto!

6

It is axiomatic that in the modern world, famine is not a production problem, it’s a distribution problem. Half the world goes hungry because the distribution network is screwed up at the local level. I blame the Somalian warlords for the famine over there, not the USDA.

7

If all farming were allowed to go to the “free Market” the way it used to be we would have years of surplus, and years of shortage. Prices for food would vary dramatically. With the amount of people complaining about gas prices, I feel that people would not tolerate wildly flucuating food prices.

Also, “free market” farming causes problems like the dust bowl.

Also, most government subsidy framing programs are subsidies for companies like ADM or Cargill.

8

Let us not forget that in most of the countries of the world, the food supply has been held hostage by war, trade embargo, etc. For those countries (France is the most vocal, but by far not the only one) the “free market” is simply another name for being held hostage the next time trade is disrupted. Agriculture is basically a national defense measure.

Every attempt during every round of trade negotioations to deregulate agriculture has failed miserably. When the U.S. tried it unilaterally a few years ago, the rest of the world did not follow, and it plunged American agriculture into a steep depression.

As a result, they grow more food than they need, or more expensive food than they can buy on the free market. Subsidies follow, which distorts the market.

So when you hear a U.S. farmer complaining about competition, particularly foreign competition, that’s what they’re complaining about.

9

I was the one who posted to that thread so declare me guilty.

It was meant to be taken tongue in cheek - humourously.

Yes farming has problems, so does everyone else.

Behind each comment there is a point that can be debated , from the way that supermarkets chains can dictate pricing and the resulting destruction of the small retailer, to genetic modifiation of crops through to how greed by between the collusion of the English Conservative party(right wing) and the farm feed producers created the monster of Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis(mad cow disease)
Through the 1950’s 60’s and 70’s British farmers enjoyed a massive, subsidised boom as more and more arable land was brought into production.
The motive for this was to make sure our food supply was secure after the traumas of two world wars.

The value of large loans quickly depreciated as inflation ate into them and our agricultural industry re-equipped, yet still farmers wanted more ,and they got it by the ton. Advances in farming techniques plus insecticides, progress in crop technology, huge advances in animal husbandry gave the farmer an immense increase in income.

Then we joined the European Common market. Here agriculture was based around small weekend farmer units which were not viable so the European Commision decided to force prices up to guaruntee returns for their electorates.Britain needed none of this and the result was that farmers had even more incentive to overproduce which they did.

Result - A policy that was geared to small French and German smallholders caused a massive glut in stored food which could not be sold off for fear of damaging world trade.The US competed , rightly so, and produced even more excess food and guess where the money came from to subsidise all this.

Yup, the taxpayer.

Throughout all this period of time British industry had all its subsidies cut and millions were thrown out of work. The logic was, why should lame duck business be allowed to spend the public purse, yet at the same time the most prominent political party in power for much of this time, the right wing conservatives led by Ms Thatcher continued to subsidise her natural supporters in the farming community, all the while blaming the Europe.

Fine, I guess that is the way of the world.

Eventually there was bound to be a reaction against all this excess and sure enough the modern day farmer is besieged from all sides, the environmentalists, animal rights, the ordinary taxpayer and a whole host of others.

It was costing the British government many thousands of millions of pounds every year and at the end of it we are poorer and the farmers are struggling.

I could start on about the problems the rest of us non-farming folk have trying to make ends meet but at least we do not rely on a false pricing structure to insulate ourselves from reality.

Sadly the only way out that some smaller farmers now see is suicide.

Subsidy sucks.

10

labdude wrote:

Oh sh*t.

Does this mean gasoline subsidies are right around the corner?!

11

We farm… why? Because we love it and believe in the value of what we’re doing… I teach… why? Because I love it and believe in the value of what I’m doing… I don’t love either of them 24-7 nor do I give up my right to occasionally bitch about the weather, the costs, the prices, the kids, their parents, my colleagues or the folks who run both of the aforementioned shows… but even with the bad things, I love both aspects of my life and can’t imagine giving up either one just for a bigger paycheck…

By the way, neither of our farms gets subsidy money in any way, shape or form as far as I know… we are also completely organic…

12

I hope you realize that I wasn’t slamming on you in any way.

I agree about subsidies to a point. The Mayo clinic charges on a sliding scale - the more you make the more you pay. I wish there was something similar in American agriculture - i.e., you subsidies decrease in proportion to your production. For that matter, I wish that was in effect for lots of stuff, from health care to welfare.

Our land has been in the family since the 1870s. It’s very hard to give up that legacy when you know that you’re being pushed out by monied people with hundreds or thousands of cows.

It’s hard to watch people blame subsidies and point to a journalist (Donaldson?) as the reason for their loathing.

It’s hard to see the creek that runs through our pasture get choked over by marsh grasses because the people who farm upstream plow and plant and fertilize and pesticide just a little bit more and a little bit closer to the wetland that borders their property.

It’s hard to read about the Minnesota River’s pollution problem when you know that huge feedlots and chicken farms are most of the problem.

On the other hand…

My ex-father-in-law’s 1/4 acre lot backed up to a drainage ditch that flowed to the Occoquan River that flowed to Cheasapeake Bay. He and his neighbors had this thing about lawns, and I swear they put down more poisons to keep their grass green than my family ever has to earn a living.

Taxpayers spend millions, if not billions, dredging and re-dredging shoreline to keep beach front property from sinking into the surf.

Am drunk and tired so I’m going to stop here…will check in tomorrow or Thurs to see if any of the crap I’ve just typed makes sense.

13

The coop that I worked for had three types of diesel #1,#2 which were taxed and tractor fuel which is colored red. The red fuel is for off road use and is untaxed. No road use tax.We were cautioned to make sure that we used the taxed fuel in our trucks because if caught with even a little color in our tanks the fine would be heavy. A farmer pays tax on fuel that is used in his on the road vehicles.He just doesn’t get charged tax on fuel that is used off road.
All gasoline was taxed.