A good portion of meat is imported,companies owned by the Chicoms and processed by China and ILLEGALS. Furthermore our meat,dairy,produce etc is overly regulated and farmers in a impossible dilemma as they have to waste crops and livestock.
This is what poor trade practice results in. We ship a large portion of our farm production overseas and buy product back from those countries. Its partially a regulatory problem, partially a cultural problem, and mostly a trade problem.
I haven’t filed taxes in two years because I haven’t made enough personal income to. Thats the life of a farmer. I tend to operate on a five year cycle where usually two out of the five are bad years. Get three or four bad years and it may be game over. Thankfully I dont need much income as the equipment, house and property are long since paid for and the farm provides my vehicle and fuel expenses.
Ag economy and markets are a very complex thing and everything in that market is linked in some way or another. The end result of the past two years of the trade battle with China and now this economic shut down have resulted in what I expect to be a volatile ag market and possibly with the loss of some more of our countries farm production. Not sure what the total answer is but commodity prices are going to have to increase one way or another or people are going to shut down operations.
An alternative might be to cut some of the middleman out by allowing producers more freedom in their marketing but that also comes with the problem of now having to directly market your product. We are already doing this to a degree but there are restrictions on who you can sell to and how it is sold. I will have to sit down and read this bill to figure out what they are proposing before I make judgment.
If any are wondering, we produce cattle and sheep as well as all the supporting agriculture that goes with it like grain crops and hay production.