Helping farmers without tons of subsidies, an idea.

[Odin2005]

It seems to me that one of the main reasons that family farms go under is scale, the farms are too small for how expensive modern farming is. I gre up in a small rural town and many farmers had trouble paying for combines and other farm machinery that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

My idea is that family farmers should form co-ops, this will give them their operations the pooled money and economics of scale to pay for good equiptment, good fertilizer, good seed, etc. so thay are able to compete with agribusinesses.

The reason I think farmers need to find an alternative to subsidies is that many of these subsidies depress the price of crops, putting small 3rd world farmers, whose governments cannot afford subsidies, at a disadvantage. We need to somehow find a way to help the family farm here, but at the same time allow the small farmer in the 3rd world to compete and make a good living, not stuck as a laborer on a cash crop plantation, or in stuck in a city slum with no job.

[Canuckistanian]

1. Why, that sounds like UNION talk, son

And we can't have that. Why, you'd be putting the good folks out at Monsanto out of work.

And we wouldn't want that, now would we?


WOULD WE?

[MuseRider]

2. Many of us are doing just that.

We lost our co-op years ago. We are now banding together to buy things in larger amounts and to help each other with the work.

[nosmokes]

3. but as long as you continue with chemical based

so called *conventional* farming (though no one has yet ever explained to me what the hell is conventional about dumping poison all over our food) and trying to sell to the huge processors like dole and their ilk you will continue to face an uphill battle. meanwhile, the largest segement of the food industry is organics, and by concentrating on local markets and direct to consumer marketing as well as estblishing farmer's markets and farmer/consumer co-ops and other marketing plans tht eliminate or minimise the role of middleman/processor the farmer/producer maximises profits and the consumer gets a purer, fresher product with a price/cost benefit for both.

[sam sarrha]

4. hog, beef and chicken farms should co-op manure methane generation

and get a percentage to heat barns and rune pumps etc and a cut of what is sold..

would solve a lot of pollution problems

[Sorwen]

5. A couple counterarguments to the subsidies argument

It is a commonly held belief that U.S. subsidies encourage overproduction and depress the prices of crops, putting third world farmers at a disadvantage and, therefore, harming developing countries. It's a theory that makes sense. I've also heard some counterarguments that make sense.

If our subsidies do, in fact, depress prices, then consumers benefit. That means consumers in developing countries benefit from access to cheaper food. If we eliminate our subsidies, then third world producers may become more competitive, but third world consumers would have to pay more for food. Also, overproduction of food should not be considered a problem in a world with a continually increasing population.

And if we want to create a level playing field, then not just subsidies would have to be eliminated, but tariffs would also have to be eliminated. The United States imposes very low tariffs on agricultural imports, while developing countries often impose high tariffs. These tariffs benefit developing countries by protecting domestic producers and increasing tax revenue.

There's also an argument that U.S. subsidies really don't depress prices. The idea is that subsidies encourage production, but if subsidies were eliminated, do you think U.S. agricultural production would really decrease? There would be a huge structural change in agriculture, crop mix might change some, but I think overall production might not change significantly. If farm subsidies were eliminated, I think there would be a big drop in the number of middle-size family farms. I think the land would mostly be farmed by huge mega-size operations, and there would also be a number of small niche, part-time, or hobby farms, but the middle would disappear. Despite these changes, the overall level of production may not drop, and, therefore, the aggregate price level would not change.

I think one thing we need to do is produce a dedicated energy crop like switchgrass. That could result in a reduction of other crops, increasing prices, and a supply of domestically produced renewable fuel.

[sweetheart]

6. coops is how its done here

the small "croft" farms in the scottish highlands
have cooperatives and a lot of un-documented economic
activity between farmers sharing common problems like
sheep dipping, clipping, plowing and fence mending.

But we'll see what comes of that when the EU cap
subsidies dry up. I'll wager that sheep flocks diminish
intensely and that various crofters take up much more
diverse niche animal raising, organic farming and wilderscape
creation (subsidy still present for leaving land fallow).

[politicat]

7. The whole point of subsidies is to keep agriculture going.

Unlike regular capitalism, agriculture is not about short term profits and should not be about high yields. Food consumption is an inelastic demand, so the goal of agricultural policy is to keep farmers in business through the bad years and to absorb the excesses in the fat years. Ag policy is supposed to be about ensuring that the food supply does not go away.

The problem is that under Nixon, the big corporate buyers got together and re-wrote the ag system, going from a subsidy system to a direct payment system. This means that the average monoculture farmer needs to have bigger yields every year just to stay even or only lose a little. That is good for ADM and Cargill, but bad for consumers (who end up with far more food than we need, causing obesity and other problems), the land (which needs ever more chemical fertilizer), those living down stream (who end up drinking the nitrate laden runoff water), and the farmer (who can't manage to keep above water without the direct payments, if s/he can even manage that). So now the big corps get their corn and soy cheap, process it so many ways that they make something like a 1000% profit, and the farmers get screwed.

We co-opted together a LONG time ago. That's what most of the community co-ops are in farm country. The problem is when Cargill comes in with their billions of dollars, puts in an elevator a mile down the road from the co-op, pays slightly higher than market prices for a couple years and loses money for the first couple of years, driving the co-op elevator out of business. Once Cargill has the monopoly, they drop the prices they're willing to pay back to market. (Where do you think Walmart learned the trick?) The co-ops only survive as long as they can be competitive, but they are still smaller than ADM and Cargill and Conagra. So they're at a disadvantage.

What has got to change is not the subsidies (in fact, we need to go back to the old land-bank, continuous elevator system that was developed as a solution to agricultural fluctuation the Depression) but the way we farm. Monoculture is bad for farmers because it depends on a short term profit system (as in industrial capitalism) rather than a long-term sustainability model (like in agriculture for the last 10,000 years). We also need to encourage our smartest farm kids to make a go of farming, because right now, we encourage them to get off the farm, leaving the less able ones to farm. Farming is not for the ignorant and the slow-witted. They're likely to get suckered into buying the shiniest toys and the hottest chemicals, and screwing themselves over in the long run (as well as everyone who depends on their fields to eat.) And we need to ensure that a farm family can have a decent, middle-class, white collar lifestyle from the fruit of their labors. There is no reason that any farmer in the US should have to get food stamps or ADFC to get through.