NationStates Jolt Archive

I listen to the news often and am continually hearing complaints from farmers/farming lobby groups about how they need money, their job sucks, they hate their job, etc. etc. If the job sucks so badly and the money sucks so badly why don't they just change professions?

Getting paid money to not grow crops (as in the US), and then getting guaranteed prices for them considerably above market prices within an effective monopoly on the produce (as is the case in the EU), and it's a pretty good deal. Don't listen to them; farmers have got it better than pretty much any industry in the US or EU in terms of free money and protected markets.

Getting paid money to not grow crops (as in the US), and then getting guaranteed prices for them considerably above market prices within an effective monopoly on the produce (as is the case in the EU), and it's a pretty good deal. Don't listen to them; farmers have got it better than pretty much any industry in the US or EU in terms of free money and protected markets.

As they should- they have by far the most important job

As they should- they have by far the most important job

No, they don't. Agriculture is 1% of the US economy and 2.2% of the EU economy. In the developed world, agriculture is not a significant sector of the economy at all, and our protections hurt those who do depend on it.

By paying them those prices, we are putting poor farmers in countries where the money and produce is desperately needed out of business and are worsening poverty in Africa and Asia as a result. We need to make our farmers compete rather than protect them. It would result in lower prices for consumers, more poor nations able to compete, and overall better balance for world food supply.

New Zealand farmers don't seem to have any problems. They continue to produce extremely high quality products. It's very successful.

No, they don't. Agriculture is 1% of the US economy and 2.2% of the EU economy. In the developed world, agriculture is not a significant sector of the economy at all, and our protections hurt those who do depend on it.

By paying them those prices, we are putting poor farmers in countries where the money and produce is desperately needed out of business and are worsening poverty in Africa and Asia as a result. We need to make our farmers compete rather than protect them. It would result in lower prices for consumers, more poor nations able to compete, and overall better balance for world food supply.

Testify!

and they allways scream for extra subsidies, when it rains too much or rains too little or it is too cold or too hot or it hails...
also they dont pay taxes on gasoline, which amount to about $3.50 per gallon where i live.

Getting paid money to not grow crops (as in the US), and then getting guaranteed prices for them considerably above market prices within an effective monopoly on the produce (as is the case in the EU), and it's a pretty good deal. Don't listen to them; farmers have got it better than pretty much any industry in the US or EU in terms of free money and protected markets.
Sorry to disagree about this, but the price supports only affect some very small areas of farming. By and large, traditional farming is a very risky business. If I planted crops, I'd have to borrow to buy seed and then hope that it wasn't a dry season. If it rains, I hope it doesn't rain too much. Or on the wrong days. If my crops go bad, I'm pinning my success on a second growing season. There are no guarantees in farming. It's worse than speculating on the market.

Why do people persist in this insanity? It's usually a family tradition and most independents love it. I wish I could buy a big farm.

What farmers dont have a gas tax?

Let's look at corn, in Minnesota, for an example.

Over the last couple of years, corn prices were modeate in 2004, in Spring 2005 the demand was low, there was an 11% drop in corn growers. Corn demand returned, lower supply and higher demand (higher demand from the the fact that ethanol gas became more popular during the high gas prices this last year increased the ethanol production to meet demand).

In fact, the average price of ethanol went up almost 50% during the last year due to increase in demand.

With corn production in number of farmers being down by 11%, to compound that Minnesota's 2005 average yield is was forecast at 155 bushels/acre - down 4 bushels/acre from last year's 159-bushel average...

Increasing the demand for their product and reducing the amount of the product, the standard 'supply and demand' economics would suggest that a bushel of corn would sell for more today than it did at the end of 2004.

Bushel of corn 2004 average in Minnesota: $2.30-2.35/bushel price range
Bushel of corn 2005 average in Minnesota: $1.83 with a basis of 47 cents under.

Go figure. Demand is up, production is down, so how can it be worth less? But the system of establishing price through speculation of traders is unpredictable.

i think that the majority of farmers in the UK who are complaining are from 3rd or 4th generation family farms. they did the job because they loved it and now many have been driven out of the business these last few years, whilst it is big corporation farms who make all the profit.
the recent subsidy payment change - originally to help the smaller farmers - is now set up to pay those with more land, more subsidies :(

blanket statements such as "they allways scream for extra subsidies" don't help anybody and just widen the gap between the publics perception and the truth - many farmers just want to produce food for people to eat.

Sorry to disagree about this, but the price supports only affect some very small areas of farming. By and large, traditional farming is a very risky business. If I planted crops, I'd have to borrow to buy seed and then hope that it wasn't a dry season. If it rains, I hope it doesn't rain too much. Or on the wrong days. If my crops go bad, I'm pinning my success on a second growing season. There are no guarantees in farming. It's worse than speculating on the market.

Correct. 72% of that money (about 13 billion/year) goes to the top 10% of farmers in the country, all of which are corporate or large-scale producers. However, they are the ones with the greatest effect on market prices.

i think that the majority of farmers in the UK who are complaining are from 3rd or 4th generation family farms.the major beneficiaries of EU subsidies in the UK as in many other european countries like spain or denmark is the nobility/royalty

the major beneficiaries of EU subsidies in the UK as in many other european countries like spain or denmark is the nobility/royalty
Huh.....

Getting paid money to not grow crops (as in the US), and then getting guaranteed prices for them considerably above market prices within an effective monopoly on the produce (as is the case in the EU), and it's a pretty good deal. Don't listen to them; farmers have got it better than pretty much any industry in the US or EU in terms of free money and protected markets.

No, they do not get a monopoly: the food-distribution companies have a monopoly, because they can charge whatever the hell they want. If the farmers don't like it, well, they don't really have a choice, because the food-distribution companies are regionalized and you can't move your farm to compete. That's why when prices spike for products like pork (as happened a few years back), it was large agrobusinesses like Tyson and ADM, as well as groceries like Albertson's and Smith's that rolled in the dough. Small farmers just went under.

Consider, if you will, what a typical farmer's season is like. Early in the season, he has to buy his seed. He has to buy his seed because modern patent laws have been manipulated by Monsanto to monopolize the crop market: if he were to save seed, Monsanto would sue him, render him bankrupt, and take his farm. So he buys his seed at exorbinant cost because he has no ability to negotiate prices, and the seed that Monsanto produces is the only one that doesn't die when you spray herbicide on it like (Monsanto-made) Roundup. During that season, he has to worry about too much rain as well as too little, as well as any of about a thousand different things that could, theoretically, ruin his crop. If it's a good year, then he will make a good harvest. Unfortunately, as weather is regional, usually so will all the other farmers, meaning that the crop yield will be booming and the regional distributors, citing supply and demand, will offer him bargain basement prices for his goods. If it was a bad year, the bank will simply forclose on his property, as quite a few farmers are one or two bad years from losing the family farms that have been in their family for generations. All the while, he has to pay some astoundingly steep entry costs to get his crop raised and produced, such as buying land, buying extremely expensive farm equipment, and putting enormous amounts of manual labor into the product, all for a miniscule and probably non-existent profit.

You are confusing the experience of very, very large food production mills like Con-Agra with those of the actual farmer. Being an actual farmer pretty much sucks. It doesn't help to have self-righteous pseudo-economists tell us we have it easy.

No, they do not get a monopoly: the food-distribution companies have a monopoly, because they can charge whatever the hell they want. If the farmers don't like it, well, they don't really have a choice, because the food-distribution companies are regionalized and you can't move your farm to compete. That's why when prices spike for products like pork (as happened a few years back), it was large agrobusinesses like Tyson and ADM, as well as groceries like Albertson's and Smith's that rolled in the dough. Small farmers just went under.

That was more in reference to the EU policy of gigantic sugar subsidies for sugar-beet producers, not American producers. They have a guaranteed price support and there are very high tarriffs on foreign sugar, granting them an effective monopoly on its production.

You are confusing the experience of very, very large food production mills like Con-Agra with those of the actual farmer. Being an actual farmer pretty much sucks. It doesn't help to have self-righteous pseudo-economists tell us we have it easy.

Yes, it does. However, you're not the ones getting the money from the government for it, and you're not being allowed to compete because of it.
Subsidies hurt small producers and concentrate power in the hands of large ones.

farmers whine because they are independant businessmen who are are the mercy of an incredible number of factors, almost all of them completely beyond their control.

So would a farmer care to tell me what would happen to the market if there was absolutely no government interference, regulation, ore tax exemptions including no patents?

So would a farmer care to tell me what would happen to the market if there was absolutely no government interference, regulation, ore tax exemptions including no patents?

without the farmer having control over the price he receives for his product, there will be no really good solution to the problem. speculation drives the commodities market making the price of "corn" too volatile to depend on for a living.

without the ability to patent a hybrid, where is the profit in making new disease resistant strains?

No, they do not get a monopoly: the food-distribution companies have a monopoly, because they can charge whatever the hell they want. If the farmers don't like it, well, they don't really have a choice, because the food-distribution companies are regionalized and you can't move your farm to compete. That's why when prices spike for products like pork (as happened a few years back), it was large agrobusinesses like Tyson and ADM, as well as groceries like Albertson's and Smith's that rolled in the dough. Small farmers just went under.

Which means the US anti-competition legislation is failing - in New Zealand, we have a large number of meat processing companies - its the FARMERS, NOT the companies dictating the prices; if the farmer doesn't like the price on offer, they can go to any number of meat processing - same goes for milk or any other company.

If there is aproblem; its the US government not enforcing competition rules, breaking up monopolies and encouraging INNOVATION in the agribusiness sector - sorry, giving moneyht o farmers merely continues the same laziness; take the cash away, and force the farmers to change.

Oh, and if you don't like farming, sell your farm and invest the money in another business venture - farming in a business, not a chariety case that requires hand outs.

oh, and as for subsidies; lets say New Zealand gave $1billion to a software companies, and able to majorly under cut US software businesses, to the point that the US couldn't compete, and software companies were put out of business - would you say, "oh, thats ok to subsidise it!"?

Which means the US anti-competition legislation is failing - in New Zealand, we have a large number of meat processing companies - its the FARMERS, NOT the companies dictating the prices; if the farmer doesn't like the price on offer, they can go to any number of meat processing - same goes for milk or any other company.

If there is aproblem; its the US government not enforcing competition rules, breaking up monopolies and encouraging INNOVATION in the agribusiness sector - sorry, giving moneyht o farmers merely continues the same laziness; take the cash away, and force the farmers to change.

Oh, and if you don't like farming, sell your farm and invest the money in another business venture - farming in a business, not a chariety case that requires hand outs.

oh, and as for subsidies; lets say New Zealand gave $1billion to a software companies, and able to majorly under cut US software businesses, to the point that the US couldn't compete, and software companies were put out of business - would you say, "oh, thats ok to subsidise it!"?


You're wrong. Subsidies = bad. noob.

Please. American farmers have it good. They're the beneficiary of what is possibly the single biggest protectionism policy in the world, they get paid not to grow certain crops, and if demand on say, tobacco, falls off, they get subsidized to let them down easy. They get to sell vast amounts of subsidy-funded foodstock on the global market at undercutting prices that guarantee purchasers, and put small subsistence farmers in Africa and Asia who need the money a hell of a lot more than they do out of business with the government's help and blessing.

Getting paid money to not grow crops (as in the US), and then getting guaranteed prices for them considerably above market prices within an effective monopoly on the produce (as is the case in the EU), and it's a pretty good deal. Don't listen to them; farmers have got it better than pretty much any industry in the US or EU in terms of free money and protected markets.
That's what one of my buddy's told me. Maybe it's different in Canada. Huh? :confused:

Testify!
Usually I can follow you logic, except that one time you explained my mother-tongue and now.

If farmers didn't have an incentive to not grow crops at some time, the soil wouldn't yield as much, to conteract that more fertilizers would be used, leading to more pollutants in ground water, more algal blooms, more fish die, more animals die, then eventually up the food chain to us, which is, all in all, bad. Subsides aren't totally evil, just kind of. Its simple soil conservation. What's happened though is that subsidies have been brought too far, and the people wishing for a truely capitalist way of growing things aren't going to get their wishes either, there needs to be a happy medium.

I don't have a happy medium either. Sorry.

Which means the US anti-competition legislation is failing - in New Zealand, we have a large number of meat processing companies - its the FARMERS, NOT the companies dictating the prices; if the farmer doesn't like the price on offer, they can go to any number of meat processing - same goes for milk or any other company.

If there is aproblem; its the US government not enforcing competition rules, breaking up monopolies and encouraging INNOVATION in the agribusiness sector - sorry, giving moneyht o farmers merely continues the same laziness; take the cash away, and force the farmers to change.

Oh, and if you don't like farming, sell your farm and invest the money in another business venture - farming in a business, not a chariety case that requires hand outs.

oh, and as for subsidies; lets say New Zealand gave $1billion to a software companies, and able to majorly under cut US software businesses, to the point that the US couldn't compete, and software companies were put out of business - would you say, "oh, thats ok to subsidise it!"?

You are half-right: American policy for the last fifty years in Agriculture has been designed to force farms to either go big or go out of business, and the large agribusinesses today are the direct result of those policies. If the US were to change its emphasis, those businesses would wither, and we'd very likely have superior-quality food and ease the current glut of overproduction to show for our efforts.

Where you go wrong, however, is to suggest that the farm system ought to be left completely to the whims of the market. This is an astoundingly stupid proposition, for a very simple reason: if the car industry is left to the vagaries of the market, and the industry collapses because of it, then poor people will simply take the bus to work. In other words, while it might cause shocks through the economy, the loss of the car industry 1) isn't going to be devastating to the overall mode of production in this country, and 2) there are other ways of meeting our needs. If the bottom falls out of the farm industry and lots of people go out of business, that means that people will starve, and starving people tend to riot. In other words, the loss of the agriculture industry would be devastating to the overall mode of production in this country, and that devastation would lead to a cascading increase of chaos that would overwhelm our system of government and the peace that our current economic prosperity depends. In short, it is far, far better to have some subsidies that keep food readily available and prices cheap than to allow for the possibility that there isn't enough food to go around.

Moreover, you are all still forgetting that the farm industry simply is not like other industries, and because of it, capitalism simply is not a good fit for it. Profits are generally low, investment required to start up a farm is always extremely high, and the prospect of returns on investment is dependent upon a lot of highly suspect variables. That means that corporations, or even individual investors, are simply not going to invest in such an industry unless there is some government intervention, because left to its own devices the market provides abysmal profit for the amount of risk assumed. The government reduces those risks by ensuring minimum prices and avoids massive overproduction (not to mention promotes the health of the farm: you people seem to not understand that the soil requires fallow years in order to replenish the vitamins and nutrients that grow the crops and provide you the eater with all the nutrition you get, yet market forces often force farmers to avoid ever allowing fallow years. This process only strips the land and reduces it to useless wasteland) by paying for land that remains fallow. The very things that you see as needless government intervention is in fact the primary reason 1) why any farmers have remained in business at all, and 2) why American farmland is still the most productive land per acre in the world.

Please. American farmers have it good. They're the beneficiary of what is possibly the single biggest protectionism policy in the world, they get paid not to grow certain crops, and if demand on say, tobacco, falls off, they get subsidized to let them down easy. They get to sell vast amounts of subsidy-funded foodstock on the global market at undercutting prices that guarantee purchasers, and put small subsistence farmers in Africa and Asia who need the money a hell of a lot more than they do out of business with the government's help and blessing.

. . .Which is no doubt why many farmers qualify for welfare despite working about 60-80 hour weeks. Oh wait, that suggests that they have it bad. I am so sorry for letting reality intrude on your delightful theory of how things should operate.