There is a whole slew of subsidies and Insurance that goes into the calculation. The documentary King Corn chronicles the tale of a couple of newbies who grow a patch of corn and it goes through all the details - securing the land, purchasing the seed, fertilizer, pesticides, navigating through the various agencies, what they do with the corn once it’s harvested. Pretty interesting.
Community-Supported Agriculture: individuals pay a flat fee at planting, for a share of the grown produce. The produce never goes to market, it goes directly to the shareholders. If a hurricane destroys the tomato crop, then no tomatoes for the shareholders, but the farmer has already gotten his fee, and will get neither more nor less.
My CSA farm is certified organic, which makes it an especially good deal at approx $20/week. However it’s pretty funny how people will shriek if the find - horror - a bug nibbling their organic produce.
In the EU, at least, they survive solely on government handouts. There has even been a trend, since the last “reform” of the CAP, for farmers to stop producing altogether, because it’s not profitable enough, and just sit back and receive their dole.
Farmers join together in a cooperative to have more buying and selling clout, but are still basically independent operators.
Farmer signs contract with Agricorp to sell X quantity of stuff at a firm price. If farmers produces more, he can sell the excess and keep the proceeds. If he produces less, he has to buy stuff from other farms to fulfill the contract.
In the first three cases, the farmer basically has to borrow money in the spring to pay for everything he buys, then pay it back in the fall with the money from everything he sells. He hopes he makes a profit. Generally the Agricorps that sell the farmer stuff (seeds, fertilizer, tractors, etc.) are different from the Agricorps that buy the stuff the farmer sells (corn, hogs, oranges, etc.)
Alternately, Agricorp owns the farm, and the “farmer” is simply a hired employee (this is often true in poultry operations and sometimes in livestock and orchards, but seldom with crops.)
The main thing for my farmer relatives is the spring loan from the co-op. To get the loan you need a contract for your harvest, so that’s the real main thing. The next big issue is crop insurance. An absolute must as well.
Seed, chemicals and such are bought from the co-op using the loan money kept in their accounts. The farmer never sees the money.
Co-ops are a key factor in a lot of family farms. But they impose rules.
And then there’s loans for equipment …
(Two years in a row, they had a contract with companies for their crop. Harvested it, sent it to them. The companies went bankrupt, and their crops were seized by the creditors and not paid for. So two years in a row they had to collect crop insurance to keep going. Yeah, it was clearly a scam in each case.)
That wasn’t five minutes just now.
Yes it was. No it wasn’t . Yes it was.
Well here’s the details of my florida claim
the tax had to be something to do with property
but otherwise the tax break was meant to be promote farming, but ironically promotes land speculation/developers , and non-disclosure scammers (I’ve got some prime Florida land … some of be best land, its right next door to a high school, shopping centre… very low crime rate…)