Wing, I wish to say, I never thought you were anti farmer at all.
Market share.. good point. Except, as far as the North American farmer is concerned, they HAVE the market cornered... a 'monopoly' if you will, on FOOD. Most everything sold for the basic foodstuff to stay alive, on this continent, was GROWN here. Yes, there are the odd rarities such as bananas, and of course, commercial fisheries... but farmers have market share sewn up.
I merely believe, if you speak to any person owning say, 200 acres, and using a figure I found elsewhere on this board, $4000.00 USD for one acre of tillable land, assuming decent fertility.. (thats $800,000 in assets for only his/her land btw) and ask them if they FEEL they are getting a fair shake for feeding all the USA/Canada/Mexico, that they would answer no. Most 'farmers' aren't farmers at all, anymore, they are employees of agribusiness, as you pointed out. But you see, farming as a lifestyle is NOT a suitable business model ! Not with the present systems in place... and the reason for this is, inheiretence taxes practically destroy the chances to keep a family farm in the family, so that land gets sold to cover the taxes.. property taxes for 'raw' land only cleared for cultivation that in some places are simply astronomical. Therefore, these agribusiness corps are doing QUITE well, and they MAKE the market move as they wish, since their conglomerate not only sells the seed, the herbicides, pesticides, but they also have interests in the buying of the harvest.. or perhaps another conglomerate has no land, but has interests in the seed company, the chemicals, and buys enormous amounts of crops.
Point being.. Intel can sell to whom it freakin pleases (yeah I saw the censored in my previous post.. all I typed was d*amned) and Dell, Gateway, and the other PC makers can go suck eggs. Farmer Brown is STUCK. He can't sell his taters/beef cattle/apples to anyone but the commodity brokers. THEY are the real wholesalers, NOT the producer of the actual crop.
Food is considered by most, to be one of the basic needs in life, for absolute survival. All that infrastructure needed by Mcdonalds merely contributes to the END price, not to the actual WORTH of the product, with the single exception of cookin it. Yes, there is a HUGE amount of jobs/employment and so on, to support that order of fries (would you like a hot apple pie with that?) So my question is.. what happens if we just cut OUT that middleman between Mcdonalds and the hypothetical Farmer Brown with 200 acres of taters... maybe Farmer Brown would be able to make a good living as an independent and family farmer, passing his land to his children along with the traditions and knowledge gained.. (assuming taxes are somehow lowered or made reasonable) as well as, Mcdonalds might be able to cut the cost of aquiring said taters, thereby reducing the price to the consumer. Of course, since we're doing this, we HAVE to eliminate all price supports, and govt friggin interference. Believe me, I have WORKED for the Fed gov.. we had a standing joke:
What is the single biggest lie ? "I'm from the govt, I'm here to help you"
Anytime you involve a bureaucracy, it tends towards self sustaining, self perpetuating, useless entropy. This is true whether we are speaking of a governmental entity, or a huge internal corporate structure. There WILL be people that will send your forms back, because you did not give an email address... whether or not you have a computer.
I think, Wing, we are on the same page.. but spouting different rhetoric. I want no part of govt subsidies, nor price supports nor protection. Hell, right now, China can grow, export and sell their apples all over the USA for less than what I spend to spray my apples with Surround during a season. I won't go into the obvious political ramifications, but one bite of MY apples, is all it normally takes to sell 5 lbs. However, for the vast majority of this continent.. or even my own living area, there is NO chance to compare.. the chinese apples are killing all the apple growers in Washington state.. so I make my entire crop, specialty apples that we remember from childhood. Cider, the RIGHT way, not the pasteurized homogenized, de-taste-ized crap they sell at Safeway. Heck, I even give lil bits of yeast for personal fermentation experiments, and vinegar mother acetobacter for apple cider vinegar.
My business model WORKS, because where I live, there is enough older folks to recall what real apples tasted like, what real cider was like, and letting cider turn hard, on that first frosty night when you let Mother Nature distill your cider into apple schnapps. I sell bakin apples (everything EXCEPT granny smith) because real dessert apples have that unmistakable tang... that granny smith lacks.
And you're right btw.. in order for you to keep up with these young people exiting college with their eager little smiles, you had best keep up your education.. just as a farmer dang well best keep up his experience in planting schedules, watching the weather, determining when is best to spray, watching his weed level, sprayin for critters.. maybe it does not sound equitable to you, but I assure you, each time he made a mistake, it cost him, and he WILL remember.
Farming IS a business, but no, it is NOT the same as designing software.. and the govt only cares about software if its Microsoft.. (ooops wait, Bush got rid of that lawsuit) whereas they have NO choice, regarding food. If the crutches are yanked out, from the farmers support, without a commensurate elimination of artificially low returns on investment, then we ALL starve.
Oh and yes.. that also means a hell of a lot of people lose jobs. This has been building to this final point, for more than 70 years, and has become exponential since the late 1960s.
So, Wing.. what do we do? We cannot lose the subsidies, unless we eliminate the low prices too. We cannot lose the low prices for harvested crops, without basically gutting several large multinational agri-conglomerates. Monsanto may not sell me the fertilizer.. but they make it.. and they own stock in the companies that would buy my apples. I asked, they do.
And finally (ditto your comment) I really agree with you.. I wish we COULD go back to family farms.. hard work gave good returns and we fed our kids and raised em right and pretty much ignored everything outside our community. Those days, however, are gone. Our population exploding, our tillable, arable land, shrinking, and thousands of family farms going to either real estate speculation, or agribusiness farms... I just don't see it happening, rather, the opposite. When I was very young, I recall my great aunt in Macomb Illinios getting a sign to put on her fence, *Heritage Farm 100 Years* for having a farm that was in the family for over 100 years. She threw it away and said, if I can't sell my cattle for what it cost to raise them, why even put the sign up?
Two years later she sold the majority of her acreage to Western Illinois University. Now, there are empty dorms where cattle used to grow along the crick.
....which is one reason I'm still on the treadmill working hard to gather the necessary funds to make the shift...such a circle...just hope to be alive, strong and kickin' enough to enjoy the lifestyle when we attain it!
