Should governments subsidize healthy food?

[AdminAssistant]

A lot of that depends where you are. In Kansas, I can get a cheap steak cut for less than $3, and that will be enough for two dinners. However, chicken can be pretty expensive (especially since I refuse to buy Tyson). We're just so close to cow country that it doesn't cost as much.

[Red Panda]

However, this has to be done in a way to insure that American farmers can still compete on a world market. The farmers who might get fined or threatened from hiring Hispanic laborers, because they might be illegal. Who are constantly being told what they can and can't spray. "Oh, you've been using this? Well, the patent is about to be up on that, so we'll put out a new study and require you to buy this new thing that's twice as expensive. And you have to use it, because your neighbors are. Oh, but you're within a mile of Myrtle's garden, so you have to use this chemical that's FOUR times as expensive so you don't kill her tomatoes." Who have multiple government agencies breathing down their backs, while seed, fertilizer, and implement companies bring in the dough.

It's hard as hell to be a farmer, which is why there are already so many "corporate" farms with upwards of 20,000 or 30,000 acres. So many got screwed in the ethanol craze - spending up to $500,000 to change equipment to plant corn instead of cotton, only to have prices bottom out. (Corn is still a bit more profitable than cotton.)

It doesn't make sense to me to pay to import wheat, soybeans, rice, cotton, etc. when we've got the land, the people, and the resources to grow it here. Why ship it in from China? India? Egypt? Do they have an EPA that approves what their farmers spray on their crops? Do they have agencies that regularly check local groundwater for contaminants?

Instead of subsidies for unproductive farms how about promoting more profitable corporate farms? What advantage do smaller farms have if they produce less for more other then producing the inspiration for John Melloncamp songs?

[AdminAssistant]

Instead of subsidies for unproductive farms how about promoting more profitable corporate farms? What advantage do smaller farms have if they produce less for more other then producing the inspiration for John Melloncamp songs?

As a farmer's daughter, I cannot come at this from an unbiased point of view. All I can tell you is that my father had pride in growing a successful crop. He cared about his land and took good care of it. He did the majority of work himself. He only had one full-time hired hand; the only time he hired a second full-time worker was while we were setting up our new house.

It's not just an occupation, it's a lifestyle. One works hard, builds a farm, passes the farm on to a son, another relative, or sells it cheap to a young kid just getting started.

Corporate "farmers" never get dirty. They drive ridiculously oversized pickups (that they don't need, because they wouldn't dare drive their precious into a field). Nothing about what they do is personal. It's pure profit. These are the guys that will hire illegal immigrants and pay them dirt. When he would hire summer help, Dad always insisted on papers, checked social security numbers, paid fair wages, and provided a place to live.

These CEO's of giant farm corporations don't know anything about farming. They may not have even grown up on a farm. Oh, sure, they might have a degree in agriculture, but you can't learn farming at a college. You either have to grow up in it, or work for somebody more experienced. Farming isn't a science as so many people think. It's an art. Where I grew up, people still read moon signs and follow the Farmer's Almanac. Farmers get a feeling for weather patterns and the signs for a good year or a bad year (this year will not be good). They have to know when the last frost will be and when the spring rains will come so that they can know when they should plant. The old men (which Dad is now in the ranks of) counsel the younger men.

Someone in charge of 20,000 or 30,000 acres isn't going to do all of that. They're going to mass-produce so that a loss here will be compensated by a gain over there. They won't know their land, their neighbors, or their employees.

From a standpoint of capitalism, small farms are not as profitable or productive as the mega-farms. But I cannot and will not say that abolishing this way of life is good for America. What corporate farms will do is turn these current landowners who can take pride in what they produce into robots of an agricultural machine. It will rip small communities all over the US apart.

[Red Panda]

I don't see how giving examples of small employment, outdated methods, and a lack of efficancy is defending small farms. It might be a lifestyle but so is being a slave owner or a fur trapper. Lifestyles become obselete. The big farms employ more people so it won't rip apart communities. If anything it will stabalize them. What is better for a community

A: Tiny farm that employees five people who might be unemployed if the farmer reads the moon wrong

B: Huge farm, employees 100 people and can take a heavy price drop in one produce by making it up in another area.

I'm not saying small farms should be abolished. They should be allowed to die a natural death without intervention from the governemnt or musicians.

[Wingates_Hellsing]

Moreover, I think that's quite the unfair assessment of the average corporate farmer's attitude. Sure, it's a job and not their life (unless, for them, their job is their life) but that's no reason to believe they don't take their jobs seriously. In farming higher quality and quantity of crops = profit. Therefore, even if they only care about profit, they want to make the best possible product and as much of it as possible.

[AdminAssistant]

Moreover, I think that's quite the unfair assessment of the average corporate farmer's attitude.

I'm just going from what I've seen, especially from the big rice farmers in my part of the country. Rich assholes, the lot of them. And they whine and cry about how hard it is to be a farmer from the inside of their brand new tricked out Ford pickup, when I've probably spent more time actually working in a field than they have.

[Boozy]

I'm a farmer's daughter, too. Our farm has been in the family since my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather first cleared the land.

It's also a "corporate" farm. My father incorporated the company about 10 years ago. It's a profitable business, and we treat it as such. We don't see it as a "way of life" so much as a way of supporting our family.

We aren't big fans of subsidies. We are an efficient operation, and yet we are forced to compete with a bunch of two-bit inefficient operations. A truly free agricultural market would be much preferred.

And my dad does drive around in a shiny new truck, but so what? He earned it.

[AdminAssistant]

I'm a farmer's daughter, too. Our farm has been in the family since my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather first cleared the land.

It's also a "corporate" farm. My father incorporated the company about 10 years ago. It's a profitable business, and we treat it as such. We don't see it as a "way of life" so much as a way of supporting our family.

Pretty much every farm is incorporated to some extent. Dad incorporated his. It's a very smart move because it protects the private assets of the farmer if there's a poor crop due to drought or flood. Your family's operation still sounds like a typical family farm to me.

[Boozy]

I'm curious as to what you would consider a "typical" family farm operation and how you would differentiate that from a corporate operation.

[AdminAssistant]

I'm curious as to what you would consider a "typical" family farm operation and how you would differentiate that from a corporate operation.

Size.

The local farmers where I'm from manage, at most, 10,000 acres.

My fear is the tend towards massive, corporate farms. That there will be one corporation in charge of hundreds of thousands of acres. They'll be able to produce cheaper goods, which means that the smaller operations won't be able to compete. Land that's been in families for generations will be gobbled up. Then those same families will have to work for said corporation because that's the only option for them.

As I've said, I can't be unbiased about this. When Dad had to finally sell out (after a hellstorm of bad luck, bad weather, poor crops, and medical emergencies)....Yeah. Watching him and mom at the auction while 30 years worth of work was being sold to the highest bidder. The land that he grew up on - sold. The only thing he kept was the land our house is currently on, his shop, and his father's B John Deere tractor. But seeing how it's affected him and the other farmers like him who couldn't stay in the game anymore - it breaks my heart.

[Red Panda]

Sure thats sad, but on the other hand would you go up to the single mom in the ghetto and say "I'm sorry food is so expensive, but I'm busy preserving my way of live and stopping cheaper methods of producing food." Corporate farms are the way America should be heading.

[Lace Neil Singer]

It would be a lot better, rather than taxing food of any description, to go towards the direction instead of teaching people to cook. You'd be surprised at how many people there are who haven't the faintest idea of how to throw a meal together themselves. Those are the people who survive off processed food and takeaways; not cuz they're deluding themselves into thinking such food is healthy, but cuz they don't know how to cook.

I learned to cook cuz my mum taught me, but cooking (or home economics) was also taught at school. I don't know if it still is, or if there could be accessable adult education classes for teaching cooking, but it seems to me that it could solve at least some of the problem.

[Boozy]

Size.

The local farmers where I'm from manage, at most, 10,000 acres.

My fear is the tend towards massive, corporate farms. That there will be one corporation in charge of hundreds of thousands of acres. They'll be able to produce cheaper goods, which means that the smaller operations won't be able to compete. Land that's been in families for generations will be gobbled up. Then those same families will have to work for said corporation because that's the only option for them.

I guess what I'm saying is that large corporate farms are not necessary the soulless evil beasts you made them out to be. Some were originally small family farms. Some very sizable operations are still run by the children and grandchildren of people who worked the land with their own two hands.

There is nothing innately noble about working in the dirt, and there's nothing innately evil about becoming wealthy from the production of food.

Preserving the way of life for farming families is simply not feasible for the rest of America. My advice to the children of American farmers is to do exactly what you're doing -- get an education and get out. The economy is changing, and to be successful, Americans need to change with it.