No Farmers... No Food...

[jyoutz]

I think Hay Dude hit the nail on the head. It would be hard to pass the payout for a lifetime of hard work.

What about settling family estates? It’s not like one sibling gets a viable operation and the others get nothing.

 

[Hay Dude]

And there are situations like that for sure. In the west, many of the ranches get broken up by dad, leaving no economical operation for the next generation. Or broken up/sold when the estate is settled. In my own family, my father in law’s ranch has to be sold because subdivision so that each of the 8 sons/daughters receive a share will not retain enough land and operating equipment/livestock for each to have a viable operation. This works best when the farmer/rancher only has 1 or 2 children.

Not many farmers have traditionally had 1 or 2 kids. Yeah, maybe a few, but most have 4-8 children.
Then what happens is 4 don’t want to farm and 2 of them do, then the 2 have to buy out the rest and they end up broke.
The answer with that is to sell off parts of the farm to buy out the children who don’t like farming. Then there’s a much smaller profit margin left for the 2 that want to farm.
Real difficult, so many of the aging parents just sell it off and split the proceeds exactly even so children arent left resenting each other.

 

[jyoutz]

Not many farmers have traditionally had 1 or 2 kids. Yeah, maybe a few, but most have 4-8 children.
Then what happens is 4 don’t want to farm and 2 of them do, then the 2 have to buy out the rest and they end up broke.
The answer with that is to sell off parts of the farm to buy out the children who don’t like farming. Then there’s a much smaller profit margin left for the 2 that want to farm.
Real difficult, so many of the aging parents just sell it off and split the proceeds exactly even so children arent left resenting each other.

Agree. That’s the difficult thing about family farms and ranches. Probably why industrial farming is becoming the most dominant operations.

 

[BackRoad]

Another new twist on this story is the potential upending of the migrant/undocumented workers system that are the true backbone of our agricultural machine. Not trying to get political here, but it is a thing that we will have to watch over the next 4 years.

Interesting...I wanted to challenge this statement since the perception is the majority from the recent waves of illegal immigrants are freeloading and not working - which historically has been in construction, ag and service jobs.

I started researching stats...and came to the heart breaking conclusion that I no longer trust government sources for accurate or truthful information.

Government reports indicate current unemployment among illegal immigrants is 3.x%. So 2m immigrants, that's only 60,000 immigrants across the entire country getting government support. But if that's the truth, why is Chicago, New York, San Francisco and other metros complaining about the on-going excessively high cost of housing and feeding illegals? Why the need for scrambling to find housing? None of it passes the sniff test.

This is like finding a cheating spouse - trust is broken, therefore you trust nothing they say...

 

[jyoutz]

Interesting...I wanted to challenge this statement since the perception is the majority from the recent waves of illegal immigrants are freeloading and not working - which historically has been in construction, ag and service jobs.

I started researching stats...and came to the heart breaking conclusion that I no longer trust government sources for accurate or truthful information.

Government reports indicate current unemployment among illegal immigrants is 3.x%. So 2m immigrants, that's only 60,000 immigrants across the entire country getting government support. But if that's the truth, why is Chicago, New York, San Francisco and other metros complaining about the on-going excessively high cost of housing and feeding illegals? Why the need for scrambling to find housing? None of it passes the sniff test.

This is like finding a cheating spouse - trust is broken, therefore you trust nothing they say...

Much of that support is transitory when they first arrive and before they find jobs. Both things are true. Not saying this is good, just the facts.

 

[NorTracNY]

Much of that support is transitory when they first arrive and before they find jobs. Both things are true. Not saying this is good, just the facts.

It's likely both Backroads and what you say are correct. Yes, there is aid going to people in transition, but I don't believe for one second that the "current unemployment among illegal immigrants is 3.x%". I haven't looked up where this came from, but it's absurd. The unemployment numbers are just estimates. That's why we will hear later updates on numbers as the government uses different ways to determine the values and the later ones that come out are believed to be more accurate. I know in NY, the governor was pushing to get these people to work, but laws actually prevented it.

There are different types of unemployment...

• U-1: The percentage of people unemployed for 15 weeks or longer
• U-2: The percentage of people who lost their jobs or completed temporary work
• U-3: The official unemployment rate, which is the percentage of people who are unemployed and have actively looked for work in the past four weeks
• U-4: The percentage of people who are unemployed plus discouraged workers
• U-5: The percentage of people who are unemployed plus discouraged workers plus other marginally attached workers
• U-6: The percentage of people who are unemployed plus discouraged workers plus other marginally attached workers plus people who are employed part time for economic reasons

What would be better is, what is the labor participation rate of illegals. Even for US born men (age 16-64) in this country, that rate is just 67% if they have just a high school education or less. No one should believe that 96+% of illegals over the age of 15 in this country are actually working and paying taxes. I'd be shocked if it was over 60%.