Posted on 05/05/2019 6:06:07 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Sunday proposed a sweeping agriculture and rural investment plan to break up big agriculture monopolies and shift farm subsidies toward small family farmers.
“I think a farmer that produces the food we eat may be almost as important as some crook on Wall Street who destroys the economy,” Sanders said during a campaign event in Osage, a town of fewer than 4,000 people. “Those of us who come from rural America have nothing to be ashamed about, and the time is long overdue for us to stand up and fight for our way of life.”
Sanders’ plan expands on themes that have been central to his presidential campaign in Iowa since the start, including his emphasis on rural America and pledge to take on and break up big corporations.
During his Sunday speech, Sanders outlined the dire circumstances confronting rural America — population decline, school and hospital closures and rising addiction and suicide rates in many rural counties nationwide — as the impetus for his policy.
His plan includes a number of antitrust proposals, including breaking up existing agriculture monopolies and placing a moratorium on future mergers by big agriculture companies. He would also ban “vertically integrated” agribusinesses — companies that control multiple levels of production and processing of a product. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
What monopolies? Is there some kind of food you can only buy from one source?
Bernie’s actually right on this one.
We don’t generally allow near monopolies, which is why we have antitrust legislation, and what has been done to them to destroy small farms has been criminal.
Yeah, Bernie in general has terrible ideas.
But he is right about what monopolies have done to farming.
We have antitrust laws for a reason.
“Those of us who come from rural America have nothing to be ashamed about...”
There’s no way Bernie could ever:
Start a tractor, let alone drive one
Mow a field
Rake a field
Bail Hay
Plant Corn
Chop Corn
Milk a cow
Tap a tree
Make maple syrup
Spread manure
He’s an arrogant NYC jackass and the closest he’s ever been to a ‘farm’ is the local grocery store.
Disgusted Real Vermonter
Letting nitwit Sanders have control over our agriculture would be like letting a kid play with a box of dynamite with a pack of matches. Communists like him have caused millions to die of starvation.
He isn’t proposing breaking them up. Just reconstituting them to give the government even more control.
And by that whole “shifting subsidies” nonsense, the intent is to take over whatever small farmers still exist.
Precisely.
Not to mention, subsidizing the smaller farms means taking them over too.
Kulaks need not apply
He is for breaking them up, which is good.
He’s just also for a still-worse subsidy structure, which is bad.
First of all, they are of course not monopolies; their status quo is not “capitalistic”, but he’s not going to advocate for returning to a purely capitalistic model. Second, whatever plan he has of replacing the status quo, which he has not articulated, is going to lead to more government control. Third, he just openly advocated taking over whatever private small farms there are.
Will he establish people’s communes?
Good, because Americans are sick of high quality, abundant, and inexpensive food.
//sarc
How about breaking up socialist/government monopolies...
Once more—I am not for Bernie or his upgraded subsidies. I am for him breaking up the Big Ag monopolies and over-concentration.
Well, he is pretty good as spreading the manure....
Next week: Sanders’ Five Year Plan
What monopolies are there?
Whenever a socialist promises to break up a very large corporation, he is not intending to replace it with something smaller with less government control of its replacement.
Try the Gini coefficient on the likes of the big meat processors who then use that power to vertically integrate down the chain so once-independent farmers become debt-driven serfs. Or at the power of Monsanto in the market.
Don’t forget ADM.
In Central America, the communists call it “land reform” ... looks like Bernie the Stalinist is also Bernie the Sandinista.
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