Posted on 02/15/2002 2:58:58 PM PST by RJCogburn
Farmers: Get a Job!
It kind of makes me wonder what country I'm living in when I pick up the newspaper and read this from the Associated Press:
"With crop prices mired near record lows, the government says farm earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new farm program or approves more emergency payments."
Hello? Is this free enterprise, profit-and-loss America, or have I crossed over into the Twilight Zone: Welcome to Cuba?
Before we dissect this "news," let's step back and appreciate the big picture. For many years the environmental movement has been warning that the out-of-control human race will imminently starve itself to death because of the Malthusian notion that population growth will outstrip food production.
Well, it hasn't quite worked that way. Instead of starving people and wealthy farmers (which is what should have happened if the doomsayers were right), we have fat people (see the recent Surgeon General's report) and farmers bellyaching about low crop prices.
The bad news, then, is good.
Getting back to the AP story: I'm a magazine editor, and I have yet to read in the newspaper that "editors' earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new editor program or approves more emergency payments." Do you know what I and my fellow editors have to do if our earnings drop to a level too low to live on? We have to look for higher-paying jobs! I assume that mechanics and real-estate salesman have to do the same.
But not the farmers. They have apparently been bestowed with the Divine Right to Farm. If they can't make enough to live on, they have the legal power to loot the rest of us so they can stay on the farm anyway. This sounds like insanity. Would someone please explain it to me?
Maybe the yeoman farmer, the noble man of the soil, is too busy lobbying for taxpayer subsidies to learn a little economics. But when a line of work won't pay a satisfactory income, it is the market's way of saying we have enough people doing that; go find something else to do. Why should farmers be an exception to a perfectly good rule?
An economist at Texas A&M was quoted saying, "Congress is looking at these numbers and saying, 'We can't live with that.'" Hah! He means that members of Congress won't let us taxpayers live with that, since they aren't planning to subsidize the farmers out of their own pockets. I can live with it, thank you. Besides, I gave last year, and the year before. I'm thinking it's time for the farmers to stand on their own two feet.
Do you realize that 30 percent of the wheat farmers' gross income comes from the government? Thirty percent! The guys that grow other grains and soybeans get 20 percent of their income from Washington. Can you say "socialized agriculture"?
I know how the farmers would respond. They need special treatment because they have to contend with the weather and price fluctuations. Like that's something new. Farmers have been plagued by drought, floods, and pests since biblical times. Uncertain prices are just as old. Guess what: the free market long ago evolved ways for farmers to transfer the risks to people willing to accept them in return for the prospect of high profits. They're called insurance and futures markets. The government has screwed up crop insurance because it thinks it can handle it better than private companies. The futures markets still work. The principle is simple. A farmer doesn't know what the price of his crop will be when he plants it. But there have always been risk-takers who are willing to bet that the price will be even higher than the farmer is happy to accept. So the risk-taker promises to buy the crop from the farmer at an agreed-on price. That gives the farmer a guarantee against a lower price and the risk-taker the chance for a real killing. Everyone is happy.
In other words, farmers don't warrant special treatment. Capitalist technological advances have made it possible to grow more food on less land and with fewer farmers. Why don't we face it already?
Sorry, The way things have been going I thought you were serious.
Cry me a river...
Yep, High tech it very competitive, and no doubt you have to work hard to stay on top. It's called competition. Not everyone has to have the latest piece of software or computer chip, but everyone still has to eat, Hank.
And Yes I did read Altas Shrugged, One of my favorite books.
Like Tom Daschle?
How much does it cost in other countries? Any idea?
wait, beer has to be in there somewhere also.
I hear you, too many TAXES on beer!
"Get a job"? This sob should take a job on a farm. The direction he is headed in is to have all farms controlled by some corporation. Or, some four corporations.
Farming, as a business isn't pretty. I know one guy who broke his back doing it. There are plenty of lost fingers and hands. It isn't easy work to work the land.
"Get a job." What a statement! The guy obviously never bailed hay.
The government program pays off the big land holders, people like Sam Donaldson and Ted Turner to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile it barely keeps the small farm owner above subsistance.
"Get a job". Too many fat people.
I don't think there is anything wrong with having too much food. We export it in large quantities. The rest of the world, the 5.75 billion or so that don't reside here, survive on it.
Even so, it comes down to this: The reason that we have farm subsidies is that we, as a nation, must be able to produce our own food. We must be able to attain it, regardless of the cost, even in some catastrophic situation.
There is no reason to come down on the farmers like this man has. Almost all of them think they are "doing their jobs."
They might not be very informed, like a "city person" would be, but they face hazards and find ways to deal with them.
This guy, the one who wrote the diatribe above should go be a farmer for a week. Then he might have a better perspective.
City - Waxman, Conyors, Lowey, Feinswine, Kennedy, etc.
Country - Hostettler, Paul, Bob Barr, etc.
You are right but it goes farther than that. When Trotsky, and Lennin took over Russia they had major problems with the farmers, because they were an independant lot, they resisted. Stalin had seen this so he designed a way around it, he shared his plan with FDR, he liked it, so it got implemented. Farm subsidies=created dependancy. After 65 years it is going to be nearly impossible to root out.
Like many other things it is about control.
You posted this to the wrong person, I believe.
Hank
Had fun at the Ag Expo.
Hank Rearden
Dont think so.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.