Posted on 02/15/2002 2:58:58 PM PST by RJCogburn
Farmers: Get a Job!
It kind of makes me wonder what country I'm living in when I pick up the newspaper and read this from the Associated Press:
"With crop prices mired near record lows, the government says farm earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new farm program or approves more emergency payments."
Hello? Is this free enterprise, profit-and-loss America, or have I crossed over into the Twilight Zone: Welcome to Cuba?
Before we dissect this "news," let's step back and appreciate the big picture. For many years the environmental movement has been warning that the out-of-control human race will imminently starve itself to death because of the Malthusian notion that population growth will outstrip food production.
Well, it hasn't quite worked that way. Instead of starving people and wealthy farmers (which is what should have happened if the doomsayers were right), we have fat people (see the recent Surgeon General's report) and farmers bellyaching about low crop prices.
The bad news, then, is good.
Getting back to the AP story: I'm a magazine editor, and I have yet to read in the newspaper that "editors' earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new editor program or approves more emergency payments." Do you know what I and my fellow editors have to do if our earnings drop to a level too low to live on? We have to look for higher-paying jobs! I assume that mechanics and real-estate salesman have to do the same.
But not the farmers. They have apparently been bestowed with the Divine Right to Farm. If they can't make enough to live on, they have the legal power to loot the rest of us so they can stay on the farm anyway. This sounds like insanity. Would someone please explain it to me?
Maybe the yeoman farmer, the noble man of the soil, is too busy lobbying for taxpayer subsidies to learn a little economics. But when a line of work won't pay a satisfactory income, it is the market's way of saying we have enough people doing that; go find something else to do. Why should farmers be an exception to a perfectly good rule?
An economist at Texas A&M was quoted saying, "Congress is looking at these numbers and saying, 'We can't live with that.'" Hah! He means that members of Congress won't let us taxpayers live with that, since they aren't planning to subsidize the farmers out of their own pockets. I can live with it, thank you. Besides, I gave last year, and the year before. I'm thinking it's time for the farmers to stand on their own two feet.
Do you realize that 30 percent of the wheat farmers' gross income comes from the government? Thirty percent! The guys that grow other grains and soybeans get 20 percent of their income from Washington. Can you say "socialized agriculture"?
I know how the farmers would respond. They need special treatment because they have to contend with the weather and price fluctuations. Like that's something new. Farmers have been plagued by drought, floods, and pests since biblical times. Uncertain prices are just as old. Guess what: the free market long ago evolved ways for farmers to transfer the risks to people willing to accept them in return for the prospect of high profits. They're called insurance and futures markets. The government has screwed up crop insurance because it thinks it can handle it better than private companies. The futures markets still work. The principle is simple. A farmer doesn't know what the price of his crop will be when he plants it. But there have always been risk-takers who are willing to bet that the price will be even higher than the farmer is happy to accept. So the risk-taker promises to buy the crop from the farmer at an agreed-on price. That gives the farmer a guarantee against a lower price and the risk-taker the chance for a real killing. Everyone is happy.
In other words, farmers don't warrant special treatment. Capitalist technological advances have made it possible to grow more food on less land and with fewer farmers. Why don't we face it already?
Future of Freedom Foundation | February 2002 | Sheldon Richman
The tenets of the New Deal era farm supports are no longer needed. Bring in gigantic corporations and Nafta, plow under family farms, and allow "guest workers" from Mexico to pick all the veggies that can't be harvested by hand.
Individual families aren't needed.
The only reason the price supports exist is because there is currently a policy to have non mega-farms supplying the food chain. If you want mega-farms and corporations, get rid of the supports. If you don't want mega-farms and corporations, keep the supports.
It's a policy decision.
Do you have a recipe for "capability." I sounds awfully good, and I thought I would prepare some for the family this weekend.
Truth is, if we stopped every penny of farm subsidies tomorrow, there would not be one potatoe less in anybody's pot the next day, next year, or ever because of it, and it would probably be a lot cheaper darn soon.
Hank
The subsidies have nothing to do with ensuring enough to eat. They are all about guaranteeing an income to farmers whether they have a good or bad crop. Otherwise, the government could guarantee that everyone has enough to eat by buying up all the food and then giving it away to all for free. I believe in the free enterprise system and the farmers are not practicing in that type of system.
Do you realize that 30 percent of the wheat farmers' gross income comes from the government? Thirty percent! The guys that grow other grains and soybeans get 20 percent of their income from Washington. Can you say "socialized agriculture"?
Can you say idiot? Where does this moron thinks food comes from? I guess this pinhead never heard of drought, taxes, environmental regulations, hail, tornados, floods, et. al. American Farmers Feed the WORLD! How much More taxpayer dollars goes to welfare, People producing nothing? This guy whining about overweight people? That's the farmers fault? Sheldon Richman should spend a year in Ethiopia, then pop off.
What a Clymer.
< /RANT >
See who is getting the pork and who is getting porked
he would quickly learn that it is votes. The politicians are using your tax dollars to buy the votes of farmers. Just roam around that site. It will make you sick. I checked out one county in Nebraska and it looked like about 95% of the people in the county were getting farm welfare - uh, excuse me "farm security payments".
I'd like to see you repeat that ignorant statement to some of the farmers out in Minnesota or North Dakota.
So what do you produce for a living?
The U.S.A. Has the cheapest, freshest, highest quality, and choice of food in the world.
Maybe you should be in charge of food production.
I don't know whether to attack both of you or not.
I do know that the average american farmer puts in many more hours trying to survive with his family farm over the long haul
than any stock broking, pin striped, soft handed, computer geek American,
that calls himself "a man", just because he drives a fancy car and owns alot of propped up stock.
And I know that the average American Farmer considers our country's interest over his own during a war.
And I know... that there are no finer people to be called Americans in this country,......period, than our farmers, and ranchers.
Some people will not know this, but will write about it as if they do, and with little or no regard for the truth.
I will spend my remaining years defending these people with all that I have.
Yes, a few take more than they should, but most hate taking any!.
..and when they do, thy feel that they might have done something
that their forefathers would have considered a disgrace.
Go after the big ones that take advantage, but leave the little ones alone that are just trying to keep their land for their children,
and save it from from our governments overtaxation and landgrabbing.
I am not an expert on farm subsidies, but would someone please tell me why "safe" US produced foodstuffs are sent to starving countries and I cant find a fresh vegatable in my local grocery store made in the USA?
I am not trying to be flip-I really would like someone to give me the short true answer to this question.
The problem is that I might already be paying more than $12 for a gallon of milk;
$3 or so to the store PLUS my share of the farm subsidies divided by the gallons of milk that I use.
Might be a sight more that $12, just hidden, like the "hidden tax" that it is.
Probably due to the EPA, FDA, and all the other alphabet soup agencies that keep banning perfectly safe chemicals and pesticides in this country using junk science. Remember Alar? It's OK, but Merill Streep is an expert,I guess. ("What are we doing to our Children!!!?!?!) How many Alar deaths have occured in this Country?
I am not an expert on farm subsidies, but would someone please tell me why "safe" US produced foodstuffs are sent to starving countries and I cant find a fresh vegatable in my local grocery store made in the USA?
Probably for the almighty dollar. Could be time of the year. Living in CA, there is plenty of US produce.
I am not trying to be flip-I really would like someone to give me the short true answer to this question.
I tried! And as far as I know, it's the truth!
You pay a hell of a lot more for welfare and other goverment subsities (Freebies for people that don't work) in taxes than you do for you gallon of milk, jack.
Why? What would they do? Certainly you aren't emplying they would do something to prove what we all know, that at heart they are thugs, living off the actually earned profits of others, are you.
Hank
Yeah right, better living through chemistry.
---max
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