Farmer bailout is yet another funnel to white men

[MineralMan]

12. Do you eat food?

That's a serious question. If you do, all of it came from farms somewhere. The food you eat passes through many hands, in most cases, and each of those hands takes a profit from it. The farmer who grew the raw ingredients of the food you eat gets whatever is left.

My parents own a citrus and avocado farm. It's just 15 acres in size. For the past five years, it has barely covered the expenses of farming, and has not produced a penny of profit for my parents. They're about to sell it, since they're both 94 years old. When they do, it will almost certainly stop being a place that grows food. The valley they live in is not very far from Los Angeles, and those small farms are being bought up by people with plenty of money.

Those people generally turn them into hobbies, keeping horses for riding, and preserving just a few of the trees that produce the citrus and avocados.

In the Midwest, where I live now, Trump's moronic tariffs and other stupid actions have caused a huge increase in bankruptcies for small farmers. Dairy farms are shutting down. Corn and soybean farmers lose money every year. There have been many suicides among farmers in the Midwest, due to financial ruin.

Federal crop insurance and some subsidies have helped some farmers survive, but Trump is trying to make those go away, too, so he can build his wall and block the only people willing to do the hard work of harvesting the food you eat.

So, if you eat food, you're damning the wrong people. Yes, most farmers are white men. Not all, but most. Here in Minnesota, Hmong immigrants are farmers, too. There are black farmers in the South, as well. All face the same problems, though.

If you hope to continue eating food, I hope you'll stop dissing the people who grow it. They need that money, since Trump has fucked them over in so many ways.