Here is where low crop prices are from:
The programs, as briefly described below, were designed and refined to provide the most plentiful food ever, at the lowest prices in human history, not to help the farmers.
If you care to read it, here is how, and it is a tribute indeed to the skilled bureaucrats who put it all together. .
For the past 50 years or more the farm programs (really food programs, as they were designed primarily from the food available angle) have been carefully crafted and annually refined. .
The final acreage allotments, price supports etc. aren’t put into place until the very last moment, so that the desired crop size can be more precisely met. The goal is to produce just enough excess food stuffs to keep the price down, but not so much as to drive too many farmers out of business in that crop cycle. .
Price supports are in place so that farmers can count on a certain ‘floor’ price for their crop, sort of a minimum wage. This money will allow them to plan to be in business for the next year. .
Acreage allotments set by the USDA allow for a big crop, more than the consumers can use. As a result, there has always been a huge surplus hanging over the market, keeping prices down, sort of a maximum wage. .
Imagine some guy standing in your boss’s office asking for your job everyday, willing to work for just a bit less than you are. Not at the employment agency, but actually in his office. With that kind of situation, it’s going to be hard for you to ask for a raise, and it’s also hard for crop prices to rise significantly with the surplus. .
Fifty years ago, when this was just beginning, a lot of farmer didn’t enroll. As the years passed, these programs began to squeeze every farmer. It is now to the point where nearly every farmer in the United States is enrolled. Very few farmers have the financial resources needed not to enroll, because a particularly large crop can force prices so low they can be driven out of business within one crop cycle. That means that the government has control over nearly every aspect of crop size, how long the farmer will store his crop after harvest, and at what price he will sell it for. .
All of the above is designed primarily to keep food stock supplies up, prices down, and food cheap for the consumer. Secondarily, it’s designed to keep farmers poor, so they will be forced to enroll in the program next year. .
A quick trip through the Midwest, our breadbasket, will reveal the accuracy of the success of the Secondary target. Small towns, who rely on the financial earning of the farmers to survive are poor. A trip through the countryside will show farm families who live a very simple life. I’m not asking you to feel sorry for any of them, anyone could move elsewhere. I did. .
Ethanol has been the straw that broke the back of the cheap food train, but it could have been just about anything. .
With the introduction of ethanol, farmers found an escape route from their predicament. No longer is there enough money and power in the farm program subsidies to keep them trapped. .
Farmers are now free to do what their hearts have desired to do for decades, produce enormous crops……. And then get paid for those crops by willing buyers who will pay a price that ensures a fair profit. .
Now that the complainers about the farm program subsidies have gotten their wish, they are complaining that food prices are too high. .
Rush has stated that the most expensive commodity traded in the United State is ignorance. The ignorance, even here at Free Republic, about where and how our food is produced, and how it comes to our tables, is a good example of the accuracy of that statement.
And farmers really aren’t absolutely free to
produce on a scale they’d like, as high energy costs
have driven up their seed, fertilizer, fuel,
land, prop taxes, repairs and machinery. These
has become a huge economic barrier.During planting season 500 plus dollars a day fuel through tractors
is common, and these guys around here aren’t huge
operators either. They aren’t much further ahead than
when getting supports as costs are killing them.
And you are correct about farm programs, they were designed
to keep us in cheap food and just barely keep farms
in business.The powers to be didn’t want poor working
stiff to have to pay parity for food, as they were afraid
there’d be revolutions putting them out of office.
And hung up in a trees, or up against firing wall.
From 1950 to now if we had parity, milk would be
10-12 bucks a gallon, if you used fuel, gold,
lawyers fees, hospital costs, taxes, etc, as
benchmarks to go by. Ed
Sure. As long as the government requires that we burn it. What are the farmers going to do after people realize how expensive "clean air" is and how minuscule is the effect of oxygenates in fuel? What will they do when people realize that "global warming" is a scam?
If the past foretells the future, farmers will be as hooked on ethanol as drunks are hooked on, well, ethanol.