Posted on 02/09/2005 11:39:53 AM PST by NormsRevenge
The family farm is not extinct by any means. That there are many corporate farms is also true. Lets get the facts right. I personally know MANY family farmers and ranchers. My wife's relations among them.
Cotton actually likes desert climates (like Egypt). It needs hot weather AND water, which is why the San Joaquin Valley of California is prime cotton country. It would not grow in large quantities there without Central Valley Project water (led by Bernie Sisk D. Fresno [deceased] and former chairman of the House Ag Committee for 20 years). Rice is grown in the California delta around Sacramento where there is ample water. I am for ending subsidies, but lets get the facts right.
Actually the grape industry is doing poorly (profit-wise). I know the wine grape and raisin side of the business personally via my wife's family. Prices are down and production is up.
I am sorry, but in this day and age, they need to face the music and compete just like the rest of us. If they cannot make a profit with rice and cotton, then grow other crops or raise livestock.
Years ago I offered to not grow corn but they would not pay me because I did not own a farm.
A major problem for Central Valley growers that will not go away is the fact that for years, their bread and butter was the "jug wine" business (Carlo Rossi, Gallo Port, etc.). As more Americans have grown more savvy about the wine they drink, and more foreign growers (Australians, Chileans, Argentineans) export low price, high quality wines, people are increasinly avoiding jug and box wines. Since Central Valley grapes are lower quality than those in Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, etc., which can be sold at a premium, alot of growers from Lodi down to Fresno are caught in a bind.
Reminds me of when cotton farmers in California cried 'foul' when they were caught growing the same amount of cotton as previous years, even though they had been paid to take 50-75% of their acreage out of production. They claimed they had: the space between the rows!
If they still can't compete after all these years of recieving subsidies and incentives and guarantees, then maybe they shouldn't be in business.
Lobby Sacramento instead, CALIFORNIA Rice Commission.
You're right -- my comment was a stretch. Unfortunately, many family farms are hooked on subsidies too. It's a strange situation. Part of the rationale for subsidies originally was to make sure family farms didn't go under so as to assure the country of a continuing food supply. Yet the economies of scale -- and subsidies -- have been incentives for more corporate farming.
Now the government is creating agricultural "outsourcing" through NAFTA, to the detriment of our own farmers who must compete against foreign growers who aren't restricted by EPA rules, etc. It's well past time to start unsnarling this tangled ball of twine. I don't want to see family farms go under but I'm tired of some of the games farmers play. I used to own a farm so I know a little about the subject.
yes, that's the big problem. Probably only a handful of Congressman would do right by the Constitution.
"It's well past time to start unsnarling this tangled ball of twine." Darn right you are. And doubly so for fingering the different regulatory regimes here vs elsewhere. Many folks don't quite get that part. The subsidies are bad in and of themselves, the EPA and other rules are REALLY perverse.
As do I. Most Americans believe their food produce is grown in the back of their local grocery store, if in fact they even realize it has to be grown.
Muleteam1
I was just recalling an article I read years ago that stated if there was no interference in the market (through irrigation subsidies, farm subsidies, govt interference ...) that there would be no market reason for growing cotton in the West. The article stated without subsidies, more cotton would have grown in the delta regions down South and that the farmland in Calif would have been used for other crops. It highlighted the fact that since cotton requires very large quantities of water, the increased expense out West for water would resulted in farmers moving to other crops. Of course with NO subsidies, we would get our sugar (and many other crops) overseas at much cheaper rates. If I have time I will locate the article.
Trying to remember some funny saying about not knowing how the sausage was made... You are very correct that the lack of experience with agriculture (except as a consumer) affects people's understanding of ag policy. And not for the better.
Keep in mind that there is also dryland cotton, i.e., the storm-proof varieties grown around the High Plains of Texas. Much of this cotton did really well this past wet year.
Muleteam1
I am reminded of the long-distant telephone conversation with my wife today regarding her inability to find out why a buzzer continued to sound when she got out of her 2004 Pontiac minivan. I made the statement that I will never again buy an American automobile until they get kick the politicians out of the engineering rooms. In a democracy, we are given a lot of power to destroy an industry through sheer ignorance.
Muleteam1
thanks for the info, you..learn something every day.
I fully understand that cotton likes heat and water. I am at the moment sitting in an office in Huntsville Alabama, and I assure you that there are hundreds of thousands of acres of cotton fields around me because there is lots of heat and lots of water here, and neither the heat nor the water is subsidized.
The point is, many cities in California periodically suffer from water shortages, while cotton and rice are grown with water sold at prices much below the rates of water sold to those cities. It gripes citizens of Los Angeles or San Francisco suburbs to no end when they are told there is such a water shortage that they can't water their lawns or even take showers, and then they drive down Interstate 5 and see acres and acres of rice and cotton sucking up water in the desert.
Even with those subsidized water prices, the California cotton growers need additional subsidies to make enough of a profit to stay in business.
You don't see anything wrong with this picture? The market is telling these farmers that their way of life is no longer profitable, so they should find something else to do -- just like people who made buggywhips, or 8-track tapes, or ...
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